Why We Write

 

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

– Edmund Burke

I was talking with a colleague in Pittsburgh yesterday, and he says “Why haven’t we heard from Bo lately?”

My first thought was that I should smack the SOB.  He’s been as busy and on the road doing discovery as I have; its not like a blog just writes itself.  These things take a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of prying.

But then I got to thinking.  I realized that he actually reads this stuff.  I had no idea that anyone was reading it.

I mean, look at the comments.  Nobody is commenting, not even anonymously.

And then this afternoon I heard someone down the hall ask my paralegal if she’d seen it.  She claimed ignorance, as she has promised to do, but that’s when it hit me that people really are reading what I’m writing.  Maybe, I thought, this impromptu New Year’s resolution of mine just might make a difference.

If you’re here, you probably want to know why I’m doing this.

So sit down by the fire in your comfy chair, get yourself a cup of hot chocolate, and let me tell you why I started writing a blog.

Around New Year’s Day, a few of us in the office were talking about resolutions.  We all had the same BS ideas.  When I started thinking about them later, i realized how superficial and self-centered they were.  People wanted to lose weight, save money, travel more.  None of the resolutions involved other people, or doing anything toward making the world a happy, sugar-coated place.

About the same time I was talking to a friend (a no-good law-school dropout), and he starts his standard round of drunken bitching about how underwhelming Justice Brent Benjamin is.  He’s complaining about seeing Benjamin buying diet cherry Big K cola at the Ashton Place Kroger, and — to quote him directly — that “steady line of vapid South Hills fuckers” groveling at Benjamin’s feet like he’s some kind of celebrity.

Basically, my friend can’t stand the way Benjamin got elected.  Who can?

What got me was when he started ranting about how Benjamin and his BFF Don Blankenship run the Supreme Court.  That’s when I realized he’s clueless.  Granted, he didn’t graduate from law school, but I was still thinking “c’mon, everyone knows how the Court works.  Don’t they?”

Then I realized the answer is no.  Most people outside the legal community have no idea how the Court really works.  They have no idea that Benjamin is relatively powerless on the Court.  They had no idea that Spike Maynard is Blankenship’s BFF and marionette.  Well, until the pictures came out, anyway.

My friend, see, has a blog that he posts to fairly regularly.  I asked him why he won’t say anything about the Court.  He couldn’t come up with a very good reason — he couldn’t even come up with a decent rant about Benjamin.

I started thinking (selfishly) how I could do a better job than my friend blogging about my favorite music, sports, the joys and pitfalls of owning dogs and having a fulltime job (solution: lots of Clorox wipes), my political views, etc., etc.  But that would be all about me.

What pissed me off was my job and my ability to practice in a courtroom.  I can’t practice law, at least fairly and on an even plane, with this Supreme Court.  My clients — the people of West Virginia — are getting screwed and the upcoming elections might fix that.  But the average schmuck on the street doesn’t understand that. 

I mean, at the same time judges are chopping medical malpractice verdicts for people mangled and killed by doctors because they are “excessive,”, a doctor got a $25 million verdict against Charleston Area Medical Center because he hurt his reputation.  How the hell do I easily distinguish these cases for my clients?

And so this blog was born.

If you’re reading it, its probably because you want to know what’s really going on at the Court.  As my paralegal keeps saying, “What he hell is going on up there?”  If you’re like my buddy that I talked to in Pittsburgh, you probably feel the same way.

I have determined to write it because I know this stuff needs to be written.  It needs to be made public.  All that is necessary for evil to triumph on the Court is for good people to do nothing.

I’ll keep passing on the information as I get it, when I have the time to write.  If you get a juicy tip, leave me a comment.  Or e-mail it to me at bo.rumpole@gmail.com.  Confidentiality is assured.