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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Hero?
XXX marks the spot.
XXX marks the spot.
PSAYINGS.5X.1. Am I the only one who's having trouble with this? Let me give you my timeline. First, I heard on the radio that Deep Throat has finally come forward to announce his identity. He's a ninety-year-old man who used to be Number 2 at the FBI. My immediate thought is of a deathbed confession: an old man wants to get a burdensome and painful weight off his chest. Later that afternoon, I turned on TV cable news and there I saw footage of the old man smiling and waving at the camera next to his beaming daughter. Here's that picture:
Then the daughter appears to be giving a press conference, and I concede her words are something of a blur to me because she seems to be taking a bow on behalf of her old man and using syllables that sound something like "he-ro." Subsequently, I seem to hear the same syllables being tossed around by other TV pundits. They keep replaying footage of the old geezer smiling, waving, smiling, as if he really is pleased as punch with himself. Apparently, my deathbed confession take was delusional.
As should be abundantly clear to everyone here, I am no lawyer and so I do not understand all the legalities associated with Mark Felt's role in the Watergate investigation, but my gut feeling is that they can't possibly create the sort of context that would make this guy a hero.
I do have sympathy with the plight of a whistleblower -- generally underlings in some huge organization that is doing wrong and can't be stopped from inside. I understand their need for secrecy in the amassing of evidence, both as a practical investigative tactic and as a safeguard against the possibility of harm befalling them or their families. I do not believe that it is always wrong to be an "informer," as my lifelong fondness for the movie On the Waterfront should attest. I liked it before I knew it to be Elia Kazan's defense of his naming of names in congressional investigations of the Communist Party, and I liked it after that (though I note that many on the righteous left continued to defame Kazan even after the fall of the Soviet Union made it possible to confirm that many members of the American Communist Party were, in fact, Soviet spies).
The informer can indeed be heroic. Whatever its beginning, the climax of such a hero's tale occurs when he comes forward to put a face on his charges; he testifies in public to some commission or committee responsible for determining the truth. This one act simultaneously puts his integrity to the test of cross-examination and kills or mutilates his career in the organization he is exposing. It is a moment both brave and tragic -- the latter because a whistleblower with real information has almost always been an accomplice in wrongdoing to that point in the road where his conscience called a halt. The real life instances of a Serpico whose hands were clean throughout are rare. More often, life imitates the fiction of On the Waterfront, where Terry Malloy (Brando) has gone along with wrong or illegal practices because it was simpler, easier, or more profitable to do so.
After the climax of the heroic version of this plot comes the denouement, where there can be redemption for earlier sins because the hero is willing to pay a price even if the law gives him immunity. Elia Kazan gave Terry Malloy a redemption he himself was denied by his erstwhile peers in Hollywood. After enduring a terrible beating, Malloy returns to work at his old job, proving his courage and his loyalty to the principle that had inspired his actions.
What part of this rite of passage can we connect with Mark Felt? Almost none of it. He was no underling. Rather, he was a very powerful executive who could have made a huge impact by going public as soon as he objected to the goings on in his organization. Did he? No. He chose a route so sleazy that even the men whose careers he helped make gave him a nickname borrowed from a dirty movie. Did he come forward after the presidential downfall he worked to effect had been accomplished? No. He remained at the FBI because his career there was more important to him than helping to salve the national wounds that have continued to fester ever since. The character he most resembles is the phantom sniper who, according to 40 years of conspiracy theories, got away with the assassination of John F. Kennedy: he hides in the shadows to bring down a U.S. president, then disappears without ever having to account for his deeds. He's a creature of the dark, a dishonorable self-aggrandizing weasel, a well-connected coward, a snitch.
Too mean to say about a ninety-year-old? No. Think of the scorn and abuse that has been heaped on Linda Tripp. What's different? She had the guts to come into the sunlight. This guy comes blinking out into the spotlight decades after the fact, and he actually has the nerve to bask there like a contented reptile. Doesn't anybody have a sharp stick they want to use?
