Abramoff works for The Firm?
Time magazine reported this week that there are pictures floating around of Jack Abramoff and President George W. Bush together. They didn’t release the pictures, because their source wouldn’t give them up. But they did see the photos up close.
That touched off a bunch of speculation that the pics were held back because the source was shopping them around to the highest bidder, whether it be the White House or the tabloids.
Last night on MSNBC, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff suggested that the source of the photos is Jack Abramoff himself, and that he’s using them to keep the White House in line!
But it does raise a question in my mind at least as to whether Abramoff is maybe sort of sending some sort of signal out here: “Hey, I’ve got this stuff.” Maybe he wants something from somebody at the White House, or he wants someone at the White House not to do something, and just sort of subtly playing with people here.
Brilliant! Don’t mess with Jack Abramoff– he’s too good at this game. We at ROTM would love to see the Karl Rove-Jack Abramoff Evil Genius Political Smackdown. Hell, we’d probably buy that on Pay Per View.
But the blackmail-with-pictures game reminds us of one of the least mob-movie-like mob movies of all time: The Firm. You don’t consider it a mob movie, because it’s Grisham, and there’s nobody talking in funny New York-ese accents. But that’s just because it’s set in the south. The Firm is actually a mafia-subsidiary.
And they pull a similar move on the unwitting Mitch McDeere, if you’ll recall. They secretly take pictures of him cheating on his wife and then use the pictures to shut him up when he threatens to go states-evidence against the Firm. The unforgettable threat of Bill Devasher, played by unlikely gangster and erstwhile oat-enthusiast Wilford Brimley:
Not just screwing, Mitch. All sorts of intimate acts… that can be particularly hard for a trusting wife to forgive and impossible to forget.
I don’t think the Abramoff-Bush pictures show anything like that. But they do show the president shaking hands with an admitted felon.
We’ve got to hand it to Jack for playing this kind of hardball with the White House. Makes us wonder if his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, was the basis for the movie. (note to self: should we consider purchasing the url http://www.lawyers…orthemafia.com/? franchise anyone?)
Of course, Bill DeVasher’s threat is less potent in this situation– our trusting nation will most likely forgive and, if not, we’ll certainly forget.