Bob Lonsberry on Orrin Hatch pardoning a druggie
From Bob Lonsberry’s blog at KNRS in SLC:
A little harsh?
How to get a presidential pardon.
Orrin Hatch is a United States senator.
No one knows why.
The people who first sent him to Washington are all dead now. They went extinct before the last ice age.
But still he lingers, one of the longest-mooching Republicans in the Senate, waiting hopefully each week for a call to appear on “This Week” or “Face The Nation” or one of those other shows normal people don’t watch.
To be honest, I like him. He has integrity.
Unfortunately, he’s also clueless, and he does dopey things
Like John Forte.
John Forte is a drug dealer, and soon he will be an out-of-jail-free drug dealer.
Thanks to Orrin Hatch.
Seven years ago, John Forte was caught at an airport back east in possession of 31 pounds of cocaine. The retail value was something in the neighborhood of $1.5 million.
Which is against the law. They’re very specific about that. If you go traipsing around with what is scientifically known as a whole crapload of cocaine, the cops are going to take poorly to it.
They’re going to think you’re a drug dealer.
They’re going to think that you’re the WalMart of drug dealers.
And, doggone it, they’re going to lock your skanky backside up. They’re going to lock you up and throw away the key. You will go to prison and you will stay there.
Unless Crazy Uncle Orrin thinks you can help his songwriting career.
Which, honest to goodness, strikes me as a potential warning sign of Alzheimer’s. If you’re 105 years old and you think you’re a songwriter, you need a brain scan, stat. Especially when your chicken scratching is as pathetic as this guy’s.
He scrawls out the most vapid stuff imaginable, but because he’s a big senator who’s not afraid to reward his friends, the occasional used-to-be celebrity will record one of his tunes. When you’re cut 14 on Tony Orlando’s latest release, you don’t really need to rent a tux for the Grammys.
But back to John Forte, Bishop Hatch’s drug-dealing friend.
It turns out that there is a connection between the two. And that connection got John Forte sprung from the big house. A 14-year mandatory sentence is about to vaporize into thin air.
Pay attention, this might be hard to follow.
John Forte went to a swanky school named Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He went there to study violin.
Which, naturally, prepared him for a career in rap.
A very short career.
In 1996 he produced two “songs” for The Fugees. That went so well that they broke up the next year. Which led to John Forte, the year after that, releasing an album of his own.
Which fell flat on its face.
Which is what happens when you suck.
But back to the connection between drug dealer Forte and clueless centenarian Hatch.
It turns out that while at Phillips Exeter, John Forte became friends with Ben Taylor.
Who is the son of Carly Simon.
Who was the wife of James Taylor, who I love but who last had a hit song when my middle-aged carcass was still in high school.
Tangent: You’d think with all that money he makes singing “You’ve Got A Friend” on PBS fundraisers that James Taylor might have been able to afford braces for young Ben.
But I digress.
Forte knew Ben who is the son of Carly who recorded a song for Orrin who knows W who pardoned Forte.
See how that works?
It’s like the passing of a social disease, and we know that’s nothing to clap about.
John Forte isn’t from Utah – which Crazy Uncle Orrin theoretically represents in the Senate – and he has no contact with or relevance to Senator Hatch. There is nothing whatsoever about Brooklyn-native John Forte that would draw the get-out-of-jail-free attention of a Utah senator.
Except Orrin Hatch’s vain and self-absorbed view that he is a song writer.
Carly Simon – whose last song of any note came out just in time for Richard Nixon’s second inaugural – is proof positive that even older women can look good with enough air brushing. But I digress.
She is not a constituent of Crazy Uncle Orrin. But she did record one of his songs.
Dozens of people heard it.
All of them are surnamed Hatch or are relatives of his congressional staffers.
But Carly Simon records one of his songs – which makes him money, right? – and she had an entre. And so former Mormon bishop Hatch takes up for a gigantic drug dealer.
Which is pretty much all that’s left for you when your rap album tanks.
Orrin Hatch went so far as to describe this guy as a “genius” whose musical talents need to be returned to society.
In case you forgot: He produced two songs and had an album that was stillborn.
Yeah, that’s what society needs.
So Crazy Uncle Orrin, prompted by his “friend” from the “music community,” overlooked any number of his constituents who might actually deserve a presidential pardon – as well as two Border Patrol agents unjustly sitting in federal prison – and pulled the strings on George W. Bush to get him to pardon a New York City drug dealer.
In case you forgot: It was 31 pounds of cocaine.
And it wasn’t actually a pardon, it was a commutation – which is a French word meaning, “Homey be home for Christmas.”
Now, some might find it odd that of all the drug dealers in all the prisons, Senator Senile chooses to help the one who is recommended to him by the former singer who – if she is so inclined – can make him money by recording his songs.
They might also find it odd that a guy from the most morally conservative state in the Union – where drug use is not only against the law it’s against God – is standing up for someone who distributed drugs.
Which brings up another point. In defending his action to a reporter, and praising his new-found delinquent friend, Crazy Uncle Orrin said that John Forte wasn’t such a bad criminal because he didn’t actually USE drugs, he only SOLD them.
That’s right, the people who transport and sell the drugs that kill untold Americans every year, they’re not so bad. Using is worse than selling.
But only in Orrin Hatch’s world.
The only thing more disappointing than this Orrin Hatch break with lucidity is the fact that George W. Bush has allowed his presidential power to be co-opted by a piece-of-trash drug dealer, a long-forgotten singer and a deluded old man who has confused the recording industry’s fawning before his senatorial power as some sort of admiration for his tuneless drivel.
Sorry to be harsh, just trying to be honest.
John Forte doesn’t deserve to be free, and if Orrin Hatch believes he does, then Orrin Hatch doesn’t deserve to be a senator.
John Forte got sprung after just seven years . The people of Utah have been doing hard time under Orrin Hatch for 32 years, and there’s no parole date in sight.
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