There is a line that is correctly attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald (but one that is almost always misused) that goes “there are no second acts in American lives.” Often, the person spouting it will scoff at the sentiment and then list many Americans who have gone on to brilliant second acts in their lives.
Many believe that the line was set to appear in “The Last Tycoon,” the unfinished novel that Fitzgerald was working on when he died at age 44. But it actually first appeared in an essay that he wrote nearly a decade earlier and he used it as a set-up to repudiate the thought himself. The original line is “I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.”
In most cases, a second act can be a good thing, as can a third and a fourth. But, in some cases, they should have stopped at one or two. Enter Rudy Giuliani. This guy’s first two acts were spectacular. The crusading prosecutor, followed by America’s mayor. His words and actions after 9/11 earned him the respect of hundreds of millions of people.
I understand he didn’t want to fade away when his mayoral run was over. The spotlight can be seductive and some people don’t want to just rest on their laurels for the final quarter-century of their lives. But, jeez, dude! You could have joined Greenpeace and helped deter Japanese whalers. You could have taken your legal skills to The Innocence Project, helping to free those who had been wrongly convicted. You could have worked the dinner rush at Popeyes.
But, instead, you hitched your wagon to the ultimate loser. Rudy Giuliani’s third act is going to be remembered for running hair dye, a humiliating press conference near a sex shop and a crematorium, successful multimillion dollar lawsuits against him, and one horrible lie after another.
Still, his third act is nothing compared to how bad his fourth act is going to be. For his fourth (and probably final) act, probably the only thing that will keep Giuliani from going to prison will be if he gets lucky and dies first. Not even a magnanimous President Joe Biden (or a craven President Donald Trump) could save him because the felony charges Giuliani faces all over the country are state charges.
I don’t have high hopes for Giuliani’s fourth act. He could probably level off his downward trajectory by becoming a jailhouse lawyer, helping others. But he’s more likely to accelerate his negative slope. He reminds me of the cellblock snitch who killed Caretaker in the original (Burt Reynolds version of) “The Longest Yard.”
Giuliani’s fate is sealed, but what about all of the other bad actors? What about all the people who, through lies and cowardice, have sent this country spinning off into chaos and hatred, all in service of a little Bitch Boy who couldn’t accept that he had lost, first to a woman and then to an old man? When are they going to face the consequences?
When Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced the charges, I was one of the people to whom she referred when she said, “I understand that, for some of you, today didn’t come fast enough…” It was about damn time.
However, like most Americans, I don’t want vengeance. I want justice, and we’re living through the greatest possible example(s) of justice delayed being justice denied. In Florida, it’s being delayed by a loyal Trump appointee who couldn’t judge her way out of wet toilet paper.
In Washington, the right-wing members of the Supreme Court, apparently miffed that their approval rating isn’t worse than that of the House of Representatives (yet), are playing six-person Judicial Twister in an embarrassingly transparent attempt to keep their lord and master from facing justice.
And don’t even talk to me about Fani Willis, who was shocked that a Black woman in a position of authority would have her personal life scrutinized. Yeah, we all have needs, but they should come second behind the needs of the country.
So that leaves us with the ongoing trial in New York and the upcoming legal actions in Michigan, Nevada and Arizona. Kris Mayes said that it took 13 months to come up with the indictments; I hope she sets a goal of 13 weeks to start making real things happen.
Frankly, I would have been willing to wait a couple more months if it had meant indictments for Congressmen Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, both of whom were deeply in the sedition mix. (When the Unhinged White People stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Gosar was on the floor of the House, spewing lies about 400,000 altered ballots in Arizona. He didn’t get to finish his speech. He had to run away.)
It will be enjoyable watching the rats scurry now that the light has been shone upon them. It’ll be fun to see which of the fake electors flips first to save his/her hide.
The immediate reaction of State Senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern was to adopt the posture of Johnny Ringo in “Tombstone,” who said, “We was just funnin’ about.”
Kris Mayes isn’t.
