Tabula Rasa

Johnnie Cochran died today. Now people like to point at the O.J. Trial as a sort of low for the law, because for most people, it was kind of of this fake show, this Billy Flynn type of side show to distract from the truth. The point is though, Cochran did the job he was hired to do by his client, and he did so brilliantly. Did Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden try a bad case? Yes, but still, the way that he, and his Dream Team colleague, Barry Scheck, poked just enough holes in what was truly a mountain of evidence against Simpson to create reasonable doubt, which was of course his job. Was he a publicity hound? Of course. But that's fine, especially when you have the skill in the courtroom to back it up. I remember one of my first classes with the Ford Institute, we were sitting in our classroom, which I think was Norris 105, and Joe Stroud asked everyone, as part of an icebreaker exercise, what we eventually wanted to do, it seemed, I swear, that half the people said they wanted to be prosecutors. While I understand the allure of putting people behind bars, somebody still has to protect the rights of those who are being prosecuted. Really, I know that very often defense is considered to be kind of slimy work, but true due process, the true beauty of the justice system, is that ideally, everyone is supposed to have an equal opportunity for justice to be served.

Congratulations to my friend Cameo, who just got offered two jobs in DC, with the Center for Responsive Politics and 21st Century Democrats.

I took the job in New Hampshire by the way, I'm going to be calling back later this week to get some benefits and apartment information, meaning some more information on realtors and where the apartments are. One fear I have, and its not all that important, but it is a fear, is that the only places available will be one bedrooms, which are great, but that I frankly, don't have enough furniture. My apartment, if it is a one bedroom, is going to look awfully bare.

I was looking around online at work yesterday, and because I'm also looking to find potential topics for a play to write, once I get back into the flow, I probably want to write a one act, or a full length, almost for practice and then perhaps try something a little more serious, which is something I really have never tried. I was thinking that something about, or resembling the career of Vaughn Meader would be good, if, of course, something like it hadn't already been done. For those of you who are under 35, and therefore don't know who Vaughn Meader is, he was a comedian from Maine who had great, and by great I mean nearly unprecedented, success in the early days of Camelot with his impression of JFK. His "First Family" album, which was recorded in a single day, and released just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, became the fastest selling album in history. It sold 4 million records, which is still an impressive number today, in a manner of months, shattering the previous record of fastest selling album. He was huge, and the album was basically considered one of the great political satires ever. Then came November 22, 1963. Meader described how he literally heard the news in a cab, and how he knew his career would never be the same. In his performance after the assassination, Lenny Bruce's first words were: "Poor Vaughn Meader". Meader vowed to never do the impression again, and he never really recovered, at least to the point where he had been before. He basically became, as he said himself "a living reminder of tragedy", and his life ended up spiraling out of control. To me, its great fodder for drama, because you have someone who's whole life is ahead of him and then is basically destroyed because of something someone else did.