The hills are alive with the sound of music, mostly because we have been amusing ourselves, singing “Schadenfreude” to the tune of “Edelweiss.”
Those of you with a command of colloquial German might be outraged that one might try to shoehorn all of the syllables of the properly pronounced word into Oscar Hammerstein’s scansion, but more might be outraged that we could be indulging in the practice the word conveys. Translated directly, Schadenfreude means “damage joy,” perhaps most elegantly articulated in our popular culture by Nelson Muntz’s two-syllable laugh on The Simpsons.
Proverbs 24:17 advises against it, the old Catholic Church considered it a sin, but it’s hard not to find a silver lining in somebody else’s misfortunes, especially political ones. I first experienced Schadenfreude when President Richard Nixon ran out of options in 1974. My heart soared like a six-ton Sikorsky that August day when America’s least-loved Commander-in-Chief sailed off to San Clemente for the last time. Was it because he had tried so hard to subvert the Constitution or because he was so anxious to get me drafted and sent to Vietnam? I was disinterested in differentiating, so much Freude I was taking in his Schaden.
I worry, though, that Schadenfreude has karmic implications. In the dogma of the medieval church, there’s surely a Latin phrase that states, “Morose delectation will come back to bite you hard.” Better perhaps not to delight in Richard Nixon’s disgrace, lest you wind up with Kenneth Starr prosecuting Bill Clinton. Karma’s got nothing better to do than hang around waiting.
Nevertheless, I have found myself feeling the Schadenfreude upon each new revelation in Governor Robert Bentley’s tale of Whoa. Perhaps like you, I was caught unaware by the announcement that the First Lady wanted to become the First Ex-Lady. In the annals of marital discord, there must be comparatively few wives who, having celebrated a golden anniversary, decide that now’s the time for a divorce. Generally speaking, if you’ve got trust issues, you’ll make a move by the tin or crystal anniversaries, certainly no later than the coral.
There is no sugarcoating on the former Dianne Jones’s divorce complaint, filed in Tuscaloosa County August 26: “Plaintiff states that there is such a complete incompatibility of temperament that the parties can no longer live together…there exists a conflict of personalities which destroys the legitimate aims of matrimony…their marriage has suffered an irretrievable breakdown…further attempts at reconciliation are impractical.”
Also, Mrs. Governor wants to get paid. She seeks to be awarded sole title to the real property the couple acquired, plus alimony, plus having the governor pick up the tab for all the debts the couple accrued as well as for her attorney’s fees.
Since the governor takes no state salary for his position, he may have to sell his collection of antique Petri dishes on eBay if things go south in court. We may not learn what happens in court, however, because a judge appointed in 2011 by said governor somehow found it expedient to seal the records of the divorce proceedings because, “it would be in the parties’ best interests that the public not be able to access the record.”
I imagine that most people who undergo a divorce would rather not have the public access their records, but that’s not the way it works in a democracy. Public records are supposed to be just that, and what makes a septuagenarian ex-dermatologist and his angry wife more privileged than you or me?
Nothing will rile up sedentary prose jockeys faster than being told they’re not allowed to see something. Somebody in the Bentley administration experienced in handling the press could have advised him to be candid with the people who elected him, because honesty can elicit empathy from your friends and neighbors when hard times happen.
Unfortunately, just such a somebody is accused of having caused the divorce, and that’d be the governor’s former press secretary and current senior political adviser, Mrs. Jon Mason. That the accusations seem to emanate from Facebook and right-wing talk radio matters not a jot; innuendo and out the other.
A GOP State Executive Committee drone named Terry Dunn turned on his smudge pot on Facebook September 3, not long after a fellow Republican, Rep. Allen Farley of McCalla, requested that the state attorney general’s office investigate the governor’s possible misuse of state aircraft, based presumably on the appearance of Mrs. Mason’s name on records of official flights with the governor. Lots of other names appear on those flight lists, among them Dianne Bentley’s.
Josh Moon of The Montgomery Advertiser has raised a salient point about the reporting of this matter: “The goal with the way these stories are structured is obvious — to finagle a way of turning rumors into news by using just enough factual info to hopefully mask the uninformed, unconfirmed speculation.”
He’s right, and the lack of hard-source reportage undercuts my Schadenfreude. I’ve never cared for politicians who fancy themselves above their fellow citizens by dint of having been elected, and care less for those who use their position to impose their concepts of moral authority over the rest of us. An ungracious plenty of hypocritical state government officials deserve public comeuppance, and our governor may be at the top of that heap of sludge.
That our homegrown Montgomery Burns might have a girlfriend seems dazzlingly implausible, but there are accusations to be answered and allegations to be proven, all over the capital. These rumors have not appeared out of nowhere, and in the present age of bureaucratic obscurantism, it will be difficult for a decimated cadre of Alabama political reporters to follow the money to its sources.
Speaking of money, rumors about Governor Bentley and the Ashley Madison hack might yet prove providential. If the legislature wants to wipe out that $185 million budget shortfall, just enact a tax on adultery.