In Defense of...American Attorney, Hunter Biden!
Who among us hasn't yelled FTW while actually FTW?
“You need to understand something,” she said, explaining things like she was explaining them to a child. “I went to Columbia [University] to find some Kennedys so I could become a junkie.”
While it’s good to have goals, a series of articles about the depredations of America’s most benighted family had her setting her crash collision course for living la vida loca. In total it took her all of a few weeks to do what she came for, success not being fully realized until an attempt, that November, to do a family Thanksgiving dinner. A dinner during which she got dope sick and had a Eureka moment: I’ve arrived!
And with that she excused herself from the table, went to the bathroom to throw up, and headed back to the city with some murmured excuse about midterm exams. Crisis, at least initially, averted.
“The mafia hasn’t changed though,” said Derek Galanis, a self-described member of a crime family who also holds the unique distinction of being the only person I know whose father took out a contract to kill him, according to him. “The prey is still human weakness and no human is weaker than the sons and daughters of rich people.”
…[H]ere was Hunter Biden doing it all and filming it. The focus. The grit. The determination. As well as the sheer joy of fucking up…
Galanis, in a series of interviews we’d done before, and immediately after, his release from prison, laid out that a new vertical for the modern mob family on the go was the systematic separation of wealth from the scions of the wealthy via financial fraud, chicanery, and computer crime, as well as the old mainstays drugs and gambling, minus gambling’s handmaiden, extortion.
Because?
“Because these rich kids have more cash than they do brains,” he said. “And parents always willing to bail them out.”
So while I had steadfastly ignored the never-ending right wing lunacy regarding President Biden’s son, Hunter, Galanis was the first to speak to me about him that got me to listen. In a story that will slip you down an almost impossible Rabbit Hole of names, dates, associations and associates, Galanis makes the case that Hunter was not the exception, but most certainly the rule.
Of course in regards to presidential fuck-upery, Hunter wouldn’t be the first. By my lights that would be Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s brother, and a public urinator of great renown. Sure, many people have urinated in the White House. Not many have urinated on the White House.
But what would you expect from a man who publicly proclaimed to the Los Angeles Times that he drank half a gallon of vodka and whiskey a day. Which was right about the time he got busted for taking huge buckets of cash from the Libyans. And, again, publicly urinating on a tarmac right before meeting some foreign dignities and, I’d like to imagine, waving to the assembled press corps while doing so.
So when the chatter got heated regarding Hunter Biden, and askance alimony payments, hookers, drugs, cash, the Ukraine, and Presidential level parenting that proclaimed it all a big nothingburger, I was soft on it. Right…up…until a story, in a journal of note (Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post), described Hunter smoking crack, while speeding at 172 miles per hour, and filming it all.
Cue: long, low, respectful whistle of earnest admiration.
“I want you to, instead of pissing and moaning about how bad crack has been for you,” I advised, tone deafness be damned, “to just embrace it.”
I don’t know you, nor your personal habits but I can only assume many of you have driven. Some of you have even sped. But the world changes entirely when you drive 172 miles per hour. The fastest I’ve driven, and this was at a NASCAR raceway for an article I was doing on the Marlboro Racing School, was about 200 miles per hour. And it was…hallucinatory.
Having been instructed to look down track I scoffed. I’d been driving since I was 13, and would brook with no outside interference. But when the car got to about 180 miles per hour and I was looking the normal driving distance in front of the car (about 10 feet), everything in my field of vision started melting. The information was coming into my brain through my eyes so fast that it was melting and I was passing out. The driver shook me awake and pointed angrily down track. Adjusting for 100 yards down track I could see again.
It should be noted that I was also not smoking crack while doing so.
But I could imagine going that fast and smoking crack and this is clearly pro level stuff not for the faint of heart. And yet…here was Hunter Biden doing it all and filming it. The focus. The grit. The determination. As well as the sheer joy of fucking up that he brought to bear on the whole enterprise got my attention, interest and, ultimately, respect.
I mean let’s see Donald Jr. (or Tom Cruise) try that stunt.
Moreover, I found the Republican umbrage at the whole l'affaire Hunter so, sort of, tone deaf. Have the Matt Gaetz imbroglio, the Bob Allen agita, and the Larry Craig cruise, taught us nothing?
This query is not driven by political pedigree. Cast back your mind to the days of yesteryear when Andrew Gillum struggled to explain the gay male escort and the crystal meth in a room he was passed out in. Or when that “bitch” set up DC Mayor Marion Barry.
In the true spirit of Christ I come not to castigate the sinner, certainly not for any sort of political gain, but to deride hypocrisy and push for the quiet embrace of our less than perfect selves. A friend of mine once had a crippling addiction to crack. A British video director he had found himself underneath it all, selling all of his video editing equipment, $20-30,000 worth, for $20 of crack on not even just a few occasions.
He’d liquidate all of what had made his life worth living and then the eternal turnaround where, riven by guilt and regret, he’d call me and piss and moan about how poorly he had acquitted himself. A two-step I’d grown tired of.
“I want you to, instead of pissing and moaning about how bad crack has been for you,” I advised, tone deafness be damned, “to just embrace it. Be the best crackhead you can be!”
This angered him and he tried to convince me that I didn’t understand and I interrupted. “I understand that you’re addicted to guilt. And maybe crack. But mostly guilt,” I raised my voice like a preacher. “Now I want you to commit to joy and just get out there and like the Nike slogan suggests: just DO it!”
The phone line went dead. And a few days later so did he. Cause of death: heroin overdose.
So you can see my point, most perfectly embodied by Hunter Biden and that is, if we’re all going to hell, might as well scoot there at 172 miles per hour with a smile on our crackpipe sporting faces with not a care in the world that we can’t succeed in ignoring.
It is, after all, the American Way.
Thanks are to be levied for those of you who have already pre-ordered my memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon. Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here! It starts mailing August 29, 2023.
And if you plan on seeing OXBOW at any of our upcoming shows know that having the book first will be the only way to get it at shows. Getting it autographed then? Simple. Just show up at the show with it and I will accommodate.
Also here’s a surprise: Feral House is also planning on special giveaways to accompany the book. You have now been warned.
I think it would make perfect sense to implement a Jekyll-Hyde Audit on people seeking to be elected. The J-H audit would be a verified, vetted document listing the candidates' preferred choices regarding in alcohol, drugs (street/pharmaceutical), sexual preferences (including kinks) and outward manifestations of power (reckless driving, ostentatious use of money [ie fur-lined sink, solid gold toilet seat], trophy hunting et al) so no one is really dismayed or horrified when the shit is suddenly made public. This audit would also include a manifest of problematic family members (spouses, siblings, children) capable of doing similarly heinous things to besmirch or denigrate said candidates. Plus it would be really amazing reading while waiting for delayed planes or friends/family members to finish medical procedures that prohibits them from driving themselves home. As the assorted political lives continue, their vices and the audits will need to be updated. ie, "March 15, 2030: Discovered the joy of having jalapeno bean dip troweled into campaign staffers' butt-cracks.' Would those disclosures make us feel more informed or more jaded? I do not know....
Eugene, sounds like your friend fully embraced his true self! Any idea if your book will end up as an ebook at some point? Old eyes and a nomadic travel schedule makes hauling around dead trees kinda annoying for me.