Defense Against the Dark Arts

I am not now nor have I ever been a lawyer. Sure, there are easy jokes to make here about how lawyers are somehow subhuman or amoral or duplicitous which is super hilarious and ONLY COINCIDENTALLY the same language Nazis used about Jews. I imagine that might be the reason the once robust social pillar of Lawyer Jokes has withered away considerably over the last 40 years as we've blossomed into a more sensitive and aware society: for the same reason the Airplane Food Jokes have faded as well once we realized they were almost identical to the language Italian fascists used to use about gypsies.

The reputation lawyers get, of course, is a bit naturally unfair. Human beings are ruled by emotion, driven mainly by hormones and caffeine, which really, really respond to ideas like retribution, comeuppance and revenge. Lawyers, however, are tasked with standing athwart that, armed with procedure and bureaucratic ninjutsu, keeping the darkest of our impulses at bay so that we may live in an orderly society relatively free of both murder and false claims of murder. Although, this is America, so maybe slightly less free of those things on a relative international scale. Inevitably, a lawyer will be provided to the worst of the worst, the Jerry Sanduskys and O.J. Simpsons of the world, and our eyes will burn as our natural human lust for a balance of blood is frustrated.*

I'll be honest, it hasn't been the best week for the reputation of lawyers, especially Michael Cohen, former lawyer for then-candidate and now-President of Our Waking Nightmares Donald J. Trump. Sure, his testimony seemed either directly devastating or a signpost on the road to things that are actually devastating to the governmental and financial enterprises the Trump family have been trying to run in hilariously unconvincing parallel for several years now. Cohen is such a compromised human, such an inverted pinnacle of cartoon bad guy lawyerism, the best defense the Trump people can come up with is "you can't believe what that guy says, he's always been a liar and a crook. And we should know because we employed him to be our liar and crook for many, many years."

I imagine the fact that Cohen is Jewish makes it all the more problematic from a social point of view. The only real saving grace is that the dummy lawyer making that stupid Trump "defense" argument is Rudy Giuliani, out there proving that Italians--and really, therefore, all of us**--can be just as shiftily incompetent as the worst stereotypes.

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*Goddammit, I know there's a stinging social joke about Robert Kardashian and how a quarter century later we made his dumb kids billionaires for no reason, but it's late and I'm behind schedule. If you think of how to phrase it, go ahead and drop me a line in the comments or at ochlocrat.blog@gmail.com. If it's good, I'll remember to use it in the future and probably forget to credit you.

**who happen to be from the Mediterranean region, maybe? What are Moroccan lawyers like anyway?