Here’s a bit of information for those of you who have recently arrived on Planet Earth: people don’t like lawyers.
You know the old joke: Q: What’s the difference between a dead lawyer lying in the road and a dead skunk lying in the road? A: There are skid marks in front of the skunk.
And, of course, Robert Cray’s cheer-up lyrics from “Nothin’ But a Woman”:
You can give me an hour alone in a bank
Pay all my tickets, wipe the slate blank
You could buy me a car, fill up the tank
Tell me a boat full of lawyers just sank . . .
Well, you have to hand it to the Biggest Little’s Supreme Court, which recently decided not to adopt two new proposed updates to the state’s Rules of Professional Conduct, which govern behavior by lawyers.
According to a March 5 article in the BeloJo, the local advisory committee formed by Chief Justice Frank Williams, and headed by former Supremes major domo Joe Weisberger, proposed this novel idea, based upon American Bar Association “model rules”: allowing, but not demanding, lawyers to disclose information “to prevent the client from committing a crime or fraud that is reasonably certain to result in substantial injury to the financial interests or property of another . . . ” Can you say Enron, boys and girls? Evidently, you can if you have a degree from Suffolk Law School, night division. Sure wouldn’t want to protect the interest of the general public, would we?
The second real hummer, and this is worthy of a follow-up to a Britney Spears’ news item, was the rejection of another ABA prototype that would have — get this, it is pretty complex — prevented lawyers from having “sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationships commenced.”
It’s wonderful that we are at least using the highest measure of ethics possible. P&J think this would have been a slam-dunk to get adopted, as we could fill an infinite number of courtrooms with witnesses who would testify, “I got screwed by my lawyer.”
Sleep tight, Joe Bev.
Girls talk
You gotta hand it to the gals when it comes to grabbing headlines. Anna Nicole Smith has set a world record for most meaningless media coverage given to a faux-breasted, trailer park temp¬tress with a fondness for drugs and alcohol who contributed so much to the commonweal.
This ability to stay in the spotlight despite being dead was no mean trick. Smith was able to keep Britney Spears off the front page, despite the latter’s head-shaving, one-day-at-a-time (Wednesdays only, please) rehab.
On the political front, kudos to Hillary Clinton for desperately trying to upstage Barack Obama, her fellow senator and presidential rival, during the “Bloody Sunday” memorials in Selma. She staged a simultaneous speech at a church down the street from where Obama had been booked, and then resorted to bringing in hubby Bill, who quickly zipped up his fly as he arrived, no doubt, to garner further attention. Getting a little nervous about Barack, Hill?
Finally, we had conservative blonde bimbo Anne “Nicole Smith” Coulter call John Edwards a “faggot” during a big-time radical right gathering that also featured Vice President “Big Time” Cheney, Bush butt-boy Rudy Giu¬liani, and Mitt “The Moron Mormon” Romney, during an earlier Night of the Neanderthals. They must be quite proud of you Annie. They know they will be hearing about you for weeks to come.
