Blogging: The Hidden Agenda

Admittedly, it's all a ploy to get Working Assets to notice me and give me a book deal, like they gave Glenn Greenwald for "How Would a Patriot Act." The editor, Jennifer Nix, lives just down the road in Sausalito. How can she not notice another lawyer churning out verbiage about Bush outrages? I'm right here, Jennifer.

Let me say a few words about Glenn. My facts are based on reading the Chronicle article about him and Working Assets. The piece ran a couple of weeks ago, and that's all I'm going on, that and reading Unclaimed Territory, his blog, ever since. I won't give you the URL because you're reading me right now. It's a nice blog and says all the right things about the NSA/FISA violations, Alberto "The Torque" Gonzales and his threat to prosecute journalists for violation of the Espionage Act, the Iraq War, etc. All the stuff you read on the Huffingtonpost.com every day, in other words. Jonathan Turley and Bruce Fein, even John Dean, have covered this stuff to death, and reached the inevitable conclusion that Bush gets up, every morning, every day of the week, and resumes violating the law, committing felonies left and right. No lawyer who went to an accredited school, took Con Law and passed the bar would have much trouble figuring out that Bush doesn't have a leg to stand on. Every legally trained person knows it. The only reason there is even a hint of controversy is that we have an utterly gutless Congress, including the faux-brave Arlen Specter, who pretends to be exercising oversight but is actually falling all over himself to amend the FISA law to accommodate Bush's law breaking. Imagine that.

Cop (outside bank): Come out with your hands up!
Robber (from inside bank): Not until I shoot the rest of these people, take all the money and do anything else I want!
Cop: Why can you do that?
Robber: I have the absolute right to do it!
Cop: Who says so?
Robber: I do!
Cop: How about we amend the Penal Code to make what you're doing legal? Would you come out then?
Robber: I'll think about it! (Bang! Bang!)

A first, in other words. Congress is utterly hopeless. We have been fully transformed into a system of men, not laws. But I was talking about Glenn Greenwald. He is praised for not being a "name caller," and for writing long, lawyerly arguments. Also, he spends most of his time in Brazil, according to the article.

Okay, let's take a look at my blog and me. I live right here in California. My passport expires in July, and since I'm so disorganized and lazy, I'll probably wind up trapped here under the Bush tyranny. I can write long, lawyerly arguments as well as the next lawyer who hates being a lawyer. I have to say, though, and maybe this is name calling and will turn Jennifer off: Glenn's writing is a little sententious, and I don't mean the first meaning, "terse and energetic." I mean the subsequent, probably incorrect definitions, such as "pompous, overblown and full of aphorism." This is something lawyers who hate being lawyers do. It's all they know how to do, actually, write sententious prose based on secondary sources. I don't have any "sources" in the White House and I doubt Unclaimed Territory does either. The blogosphere is just people feeding off those felons-to-be, the ones with sources, real journalists, who now face rendition and probable water-boarding in Jordan as the result of revealing that the CIA runs a gulag of prisons in places like Jordan where they do water-boarding. I wish water-boarding were a fun thing, something you did behind a speed boat with a tow rope, but I don't think so.

Anyway, lawyers write like that because I think litigating attorneys, pound for pound, have to do more writing than any other profession, including journalists and novelists. Hey, I've purged my "closed files," lined up 20 or 30 banker's boxes in a parking lot, representing maybe just a decade's worth of work, and ordered their shredding. That's a lot of writing, even if only half of it was me. The other half was some other shmuck practicing law, "opposing counsel." I've got all their originals, or did, till they went to the landfill or back to Strathmore. Dostoevsky? Tolstoy? Pikers. You could take all their combined works, add Herman Melville, and fit it into two of those boxes, with room left over for my billing records, 1982-85. Now I'm not saying anything about quality. That's the point. To churn out all that pablum, all those letters, memoranda of points and authorities, briefs, discovery documents, all that "costly nonsense" (Dickens, Bleak House), you have to write fast with ready-made phrases, like gluing strips of words together. "Apparently opposing counsel seriously contends..." "Assuming this is not another instance of disingenuousness..." you sneer. On and on.

Hey, if you've ever read Scott Turow, you know how this stuff translates into lawyers writing fiction. His prose actually reads like a brief. If he wants to get the idea across that a lawyer is emotionally devastated by the revelation his wife has been unfaithful, he'll describe his protagonist with the fanciful name, Rusty Thornbrick or something, as follows: "Elias Ortega y Gasset, his wise and patient counsel, delivered the hammer blow as gently as possible. It didn't help. Rusty was emotionally devastated by the revelation his wife had been unfaithful."

So I don't know about bloggers writing legal arguments on the Web, unless, of course, they truly think of an original point that has simply been overlooked. And really, Jennifer, as you read back through my posts, can't you see some of those? And that title: "How Would a Patriot Act." Too cute by half, if you ask me. Mine would be more subtle, something like "The American Fourth Reich: Life Under Der Fuhrer Bush," something that doesn't betray my bias too quickly.

So that's what I'm aiming for. Just a book deal. A good friend from Berkeley days, so faithful a friend that he has won the coveted Croix d'amitié for lifetime achievement in friendship, has as much as implied that my blog is little more than a self-indulgent exercise in vanity. It is so much more than that. It is the desperate cry of the currently non-practicing lawyer: please, please, don't make me do that again! No more glu-lam sentences, no more dreary numbered pleading paper! No more legal bullshit. Free-form bullshit, Jennifer. Where do I sign?