On Finding Peace: Ken Lay's death reminds us of what we know. - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

sfloriII · #1 07-09-2006, 07:24 PM

I think this is particularly well put.

On Finding Peace
Ken Lay's death reminds us of what we know.

Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

All deaths are sad, and some are shocking and sad. Ken Lay's this week was both, though I don't suppose it should have been a shock.

Putting aside all judgments and conclusions, all umbrage, outrage and indignation, and all debates on who was most responsible for the Enron scandal--putting all those weighty and legitimate concerns aside--isn't it obvious that Ken Lay died of a broken heart? We forget that people do, or at least I forget, but they do.

His life was broken and would never be healed. Or if it was to be healed it would happen while he was imprisoned, for the rest of his life, with four walls to look at. All was wreckage around him. He died, of a massive coronary. But that can be another way of saying broken heart.

Is this Shakespearian in the sense of being towering and tragic? I don't know. I think it's primal and human. And I think if we were more regularly conscious of the fact that death through sadness happens we'd be better to each other. I'm thinking here of a friend who reflected one day years ago, I cannot recall why, on how hard people are on each other, how we're all complicated little pirates and more sensitive, more breakable, than we know.

He said--I paraphrase--"It's a dangerous thing to deliberately try to hurt someone because it's not possible to calibrate exactly how much hurt you're doing. You can't know in advance the extent of the damage. A snub can leave a wound that lasts a lifetime, a bop on the head with a two-by-four will be laughed off. One must be careful. We'll always hurt others by accident or in a passion but we mustn't do it with deliberation."

We are human beings, and to each other we are not fully knowable. There's a lot of mystery in life. The life force can leave before we even know it's withdrawing.

On TV Wednesday, on cable news, they weren't calling him "CEO scam artist" but, literally, on CNN, "beleaguered businessman." They didn't know how to play the story. To rehearse, on the day of his death, the allegations against Lay and the jury verdict--guilty of fraud and conspiracy--would be . . . ungracious, lacking. But to ignore the scandal--which is after all the reason he is famous, the reason we are reporting his death--is journalistically incoherent. Reporters tried to find a middle ground. Lay came from nowhere, rose high, messed up, fell.

Fair enough.

But part of what happened to him, one of the interesting parts of the sad story, is that it is an illustration of the changing nature of scandal. There has been a huge change in the impact scandal now has on a human life in the modern world.

Once you could get in terrible trouble and just vamoose and find a place to hide. You could lam it, lay low, start over. You could reinvent yourself. You could cross an ocean and go to another continent and begin again.

You could leave the scandal behind you.

You could create a new life by creating a fiction. It is 1794 and you are in fact a farmer's son from Normandy who stole a purse. But you've just arrived in Philadelphia and have taken to announcing that you're a member of the French nobility fleeing the revolution. And they believe you! You work in a store, own a store, found a chain. In time you are the sober scion of an old main line family. Or it's 1930 and you're a socialite who caused a scandal, so you go to the hills of Umbria and begin to call yourself the widow Jones.

You could hide or start over. As late as the 1950s a Blanche Dubois could have confidence her tale of lost love would be believed. She could rely on the kindness of strangers.

But no one's quite a stranger anymore.

Now, with modern media, there's no place to hide. In the age of Google there's an endless pixel trail.

You can't disappear and start over because you can't disappear.

And--I'm serious--there's a sadness to this, a less human, less rich, more constricted and constricting quality to modern life because of it.

The modern media age has leveled the trees behind which people used to hide. If Ken Lay had been found not guilty and gone to live on the most obscure street in the third biggest town in Chad, you know what they'd say as he walked by. "That's the guy that headed the company that stole the money." They have CNN there. They have it everywhere.

Too bad. People need second chances, and thirds, and fourths.

The answer? There is no answer. The lesson is not, "Human beings will have to have fewer scandals and embarrassments," because human beings can't have less scandals and embarrassments. They're human. They'll do what humans do.

The only relief in this area will be here: when every embarrassment is famous for a day and every scandal known worldwide for a week, they'll all start to blend into a big blur. And you can hide in a blur for a while.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

Carleton Hughes · #2 07-09-2006, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfloriII

I think this is particularly well put.

On Finding Peace
Ken Lay's death reminds us of what we know.

Thursday, July 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

All deaths are sad, and some are shocking and sad. Ken Lay's this week was both, though I don't suppose it should have been a shock.

Putting aside all judgments and conclusions, all umbrage, outrage and indignation, and all debates on who was most responsible for the Enron scandal--putting all those weighty and legitimate concerns aside--isn't it obvious that Ken Lay died of a broken heart? We forget that people do, or at least I forget, but they do.

His life was broken and would never be healed. Or if it was to be healed it would happen while he was imprisoned, for the rest of his life, with four walls to look at. All was wreckage around him. He died, of a massive coronary. But that can be another way of saying broken heart.

Is this Shakespearian in the sense of being towering and tragic? I don't know. I think it's primal and human. And I think if we were more regularly conscious of the fact that death through sadness happens we'd be better to each other. I'm thinking here of a friend who reflected one day years ago, I cannot recall why, on how hard people are on each other, how we're all complicated little pirates and more sensitive, more breakable, than we know.

He said--I paraphrase--"It's a dangerous thing to deliberately try to hurt someone because it's not possible to calibrate exactly how much hurt you're doing. You can't know in advance the extent of the damage. A snub can leave a wound that lasts a lifetime, a bop on the head with a two-by-four will be laughed off. One must be careful. We'll always hurt others by accident or in a passion but we mustn't do it with deliberation."

We are human beings, and to each other we are not fully knowable. There's a lot of mystery in life. The life force can leave before we even know it's withdrawing.

On TV Wednesday, on cable news, they weren't calling him "CEO scam artist" but, literally, on CNN, "beleaguered businessman." They didn't know how to play the story. To rehearse, on the day of his death, the allegations against Lay and the jury verdict--guilty of fraud and conspiracy--would be . . . ungracious, lacking. But to ignore the scandal--which is after all the reason he is famous, the reason we are reporting his death--is journalistically incoherent. Reporters tried to find a middle ground. Lay came from nowhere, rose high, messed up, fell.

Fair enough.

But part of what happened to him, one of the interesting parts of the sad story, is that it is an illustration of the changing nature of scandal. There has been a huge change in the impact scandal now has on a human life in the modern world.

Once you could get in terrible trouble and just vamoose and find a place to hide. You could lam it, lay low, start over. You could reinvent yourself. You could cross an ocean and go to another continent and begin again.

You could leave the scandal behind you.

You could create a new life by creating a fiction. It is 1794 and you are in fact a farmer's son from Normandy who stole a purse. But you've just arrived in Philadelphia and have taken to announcing that you're a member of the French nobility fleeing the revolution. And they believe you! You work in a store, own a store, found a chain. In time you are the sober scion of an old main line family. Or it's 1930 and you're a socialite who caused a scandal, so you go to the hills of Umbria and begin to call yourself the widow Jones.

You could hide or start over. As late as the 1950s a Blanche Dubois could have confidence her tale of lost love would be believed. She could rely on the kindness of strangers.

But no one's quite a stranger anymore.

Now, with modern media, there's no place to hide. In the age of Google there's an endless pixel trail.

You can't disappear and start over because you can't disappear.

And--I'm serious--there's a sadness to this, a less human, less rich, more constricted and constricting quality to modern life because of it.

The modern media age has leveled the trees behind which people used to hide. If Ken Lay had been found not guilty and gone to live on the most obscure street in the third biggest town in Chad, you know what they'd say as he walked by. "That's the guy that headed the company that stole the money." They have CNN there. They have it everywhere.

Too bad. People need second chances, and thirds, and fourths.

The answer? There is no answer. The lesson is not, "Human beings will have to have fewer scandals and embarrassments," because human beings can't have less scandals and embarrassments. They're human. They'll do what humans do.

The only relief in this area will be here: when every embarrassment is famous for a day and every scandal known worldwide for a week, they'll all start to blend into a big blur. And you can hide in a blur for a while.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

The man was an ethically flawed thief who betrayed the position of trust placed upon his shoulders with catastrophic results for many,f-ck him!

Never,never let your mind grow accustomed to mingle virtue and vice,the man was a crook,get used to it,the "business" world is rife with such scum.
You may recall that ill timed and hilarious sound bite of his wife complaining about the possibility of 2 houses being seized,give me a break.Justice will come to those who can afford the best hired guns to manipulate the "legal system" as it's now constituted.

Botnst · #3 07-09-2006, 07:39 PM

Okay, he's dead.

Now what about the thousands of people he screwed out of millions? It appears that the criminal conviction will not stand and so, that particular attack against his assets will disappear.

However, because we have a strong tort system in this country the victims still have a chance in civil court to get some sort of compensation and to prevent his heirs from benefiting from Kenny-boy's criminality.

Good.

And yes, God rest his soul, but his assets belong to others.

sfloriII · #4 07-09-2006, 07:39 PM

Never said I liked the guy.

raymr · #5 07-09-2006, 09:12 PM

He took the easy way out, as far as I'm concerned. I wonder how much of that ill-gotten money was given to the Bush campaign by Kenny-boy? In spite of, or because of it all, I'm sure his heirs will be well provided for. Even if the feds take everything, theres probably a hefty life insurance policy waiting to be tapped.

loneranger · #6 07-09-2006, 09:42 PM

There are two explanations for Lays' death. 1) He asked God to judge him so God did. 2) A pessimist thinks the glass is half empty, an optimist thinks the glass is half full. From experience dealing with large corporations, fudamentalist preachers, government officials and other assorted, high level liars and thieves; I always wonder who poisoned the water. Until someone runs a DNA test in an independant, foreign country in an independant lab, I'll believe the "Eraser" has been hired and Lay is in another country waiting for his wife to join him in 4-5 years. It's good to have friends in high places.
If you think I'm crazy remember the 20 years ago the CFR was just a deranged conspirasists paranoid pipe dream. Now they give interviews on the major networks. Have your fun now, 20 years to slavery.

1611AV or perish.

Kuan · #7 07-09-2006, 09:50 PM

There must be some kind of point to the article but I can't figure it out. Is the point that even death will not heal some wounds?

Emmerich · #8 07-09-2006, 10:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymr

He took the easy way out, as far as I'm concerned. I wonder how much of that ill-gotten money was given to the Bush campaign by Kenny-boy? In spite of, or because of it all, I'm sure his heirs will be well provided for. Even if the feds take everything, theres probably a hefty life insurance policy waiting to be tapped.

Don't forget most of the Enron groundwork occurred well before Bush became president, and Lay was also a well known friend and visitor to the Clintons.

He was a crook and that aspect of his personality (or anyones) is not a political issue. It could be related to politics of course, but his politics is not the cause of it. Point is you could call him a Democratic crook or Republican crook, fact is crook is the word that matters.

aklim · #9 07-09-2006, 11:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymr

He took the easy way out, as far as I'm concerned.

How? He willed his heart to stop?

aklim · #10 07-09-2006, 11:28 PM

In any case, I think it is closed. He is dead and being that he is in the middle of an appeal, the charges will be dropped and he will be "not guilty". Being that, they cannot touch his money since he is not guilty.

raymr · #11 07-09-2006, 11:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aklim

How? He willed his heart to stop?

Think. Lethal injection is one option that comes to mind. Maybe he figures that was better than staring at concrete walls for the rest of his life. His body is supposedly being cremated so all evidence will be gone.

aklim · #12 07-10-2006, 01:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by raymr

Think. Lethal injection is one option that comes to mind. Maybe he figures that was better than staring at concrete walls for the rest of his life. His body is supposedly being cremated so all evidence will be gone.

Space aliens who abducted him and placed a cloned body of him also comes to mind but I don't buy either.

t walgamuth · #13 07-10-2006, 07:54 AM

my lawyer friends that i eat lunch with in the back room of the local tavern say that the civil suits to recover the funds that were stolen can continue to operate against his estate, they think.

it seems that in cases like this nothing is ever set in concrete.

i hope the money can be gotten and distributed amongst the folks who lost everything because of the lies. as a lesson to those who would want to do it themselves.

unfortunately there are many ways to steal from folks who trust you. and too many of them are legal.

tom w

Carleton Hughes · #14 07-10-2006, 08:55 AM

What it reminds us of is the lucky bastard cheated justice,hope they bleed his estate dry in compensation.

Botnst · #15 07-10-2006, 09:07 AM

Forgot to mention that I've always liked Peggy Noonan's style.