American Douchebag Mark Ciavarella
I feared that in an Obama America the American Douchebag would be running to Russia or Riyadh to join their soul-mates. Fortunately for me and mah blog it was an unfounded fear. Rush stepped up to the plate just in time to show how deeply hypocritical is the American Douchebag by saying he hoped the Obama presidency would fail. If anyone of any stature had said that they hoped president Bush would fail, Rush would have been the first to send them to Gitmo to be interrogated by Jack Bauer.
- Always remember the first rule of Douchebaggery: When you do it, it’s a crime. When I do it, it’s my priviledge.
Non-douchebags have a word for this attitude: Corruption. You might also call it hypocrisy, but why dress up an old sow like Limbaugh if you don’t have to? Non-douchebags believe in fairness, equality under the law, and justice. Douchebags think might makes right.
So I am going to list — by name — the most spectacular douchebags in America and their crimes for your reading pleasure here on my blog. But my aim is not to shame a few “bad apples.” My aim is to show the world that douchebaggery is a philosophy, however incoherent, that has been around for a long time, one that has gone through some surprising changes over time, and one that has brought us to our current state of degradation, brought us to the verge of economic and political ruin, brought us back to the future of douchebaggery!
Item one on the evidence table is the curious case of Mark Ciavarella and Michael T. Conahan. The right dishonorable judges from Luzern County, PA had a reputation for being tough judges. They didn’t coddle weakness, and they acted as though mercy was a “personal virtue.” In their rigor and severity they resembled others with the same douchebag philosophy. But unlike their mullah soul mates, these guys refined their douchebaggery to a level of perfection you could only find in Bush era America: They put kids in jail for money.
Imagine the scene: a slimy, overweight, mustachioed man who runs the “youth detention center” — a.k.a. for profit juvie jail — slips into Ciavarella’s office past a woman in the waiting room who is crying into a wad of tissues. He takes a seat on an overstuffed leather chair in front of the honorable judge’s desk.
“What can I do you for Bill?” says Ciavarella.
“Just here to thank you keeping the streets safe Judge.”
“That’s the role of strong government Bill.”
“And the role of private enterprise is to incarcerate the bad guys efficiently and at a low cost to the state,” says the slimy man with a smirk.
“I couldn’t agree more. How is our business venture in Florida this month?”
“We’re all making profits Mark. I think the dividend this month will be twenty thousand.”
“Good to hear Bill,” says the corrupt judge as he leafs through some of the cases on his docket: A girl accused of slandering a teacher on MySpace, a high school sophomore who took a punch at an upper-class-man who picked on him every day at lunch, a sixteen-year-old busted with a joint in the glove box of his car. He made his decisions on their incarceration in a split second — six months for the first two at Bill’s privately run detention center, a year for the last one. All of the money to house, clothe, and feed these three would come from the taxes of the childrens’ parents, and a percentage of that money would go to redecorate his kitchen.
“Well, I just wanted to stop in and say ‘hi’ and tell you about your dividend. I’ll catch you later.”
“Good seeing you Bill.”
Outside the judge’s door the mother of the young woman, who is about to lose any chance of going to a good college or getting a good job, sits and weeps. She knows Judge Ciavarella is known as the hanging judge on the juvenile circuit.
Read the rest of the story here!
American Douchebag 