Rod Serling was the master of the black and white screen, his sets were superb, and somewhere among his productions I remember a pawn shop. This small inconspicuous establishment featured dusty, almost opaque windows, where all manner of musical instruments hung in plain sight, along with other dim and unidentifiable items.
Inside, the aged proprietor stood behind a small barred window, where he appraised items, passed the agreed sums to the donors and would later, after the payment of the proper fees, interest and the principal, would pass the object back to its owner or sell the item to someone else. Often, however, a particular article, in Serling's imagination, would pass its evil essence on to its subsequent owners, time after time.
The interior of the shop was rather dark, but again various objects were visible — bicycles, ladders, racks of clothing, firearms, sporting goods, you name it. Many would be hung with cobwebs, denoting their long association with the shop, its proprietor and their lack of redemption.
During the Clinton administration, an enormous, well lit and gaudy pawn shop was operated out of every room in the White House, including the Lincoln bedroom, where people of repute and education, persons of power and prestige, persons from academia and business, persons from the military and private think tanks, would pawn their souls and their consciences at Bill's pawn shop for additional potency and omnipotence, for the perquisites and remunerations of office, for future riches and bankability and for a chance to serve at the beck and call of the President, regardless of his legal foibles, troublesome peccadilloes and tendency to embroider.
Unlike Serling's rather hum-drum shop, Clinton's was grand beyond all reason, bordering on a hayseed arkansas brand of a leggy Las Vegas writ large, and featured a private Secret Service, valets, military jets, historical bunk rooms, an overabundance of uproarious road trips, a powerful military to boss around, chances to wear tailored tuxedos and cocktail dresses, enormous and slavish staffs, tremendous parties, continuous and primarily positive television coverage, a willing, slavish and hagiographic press in The New York Times and its wholly owned affiliates, a personal public relations service in CNN, a legal defense team consisting of every Democratic member of Congress and trial lawyer in america, a protective wife who viewed the slightest sign of betrayal as a personal treason and an america too absorbed in riches to notice much of the show, unless invited inside.
Time after time, person after person, from Madeleine albright to Sandy Berger, from Jimmy Carter to Les aspin, folks rushed inside the pawn shop with hearts and souls in hand, pushed them under the bars and signed them over to the jolly drawling man behind the window without a question about their use or a peep in protest at their cheapened value.
Imagine Sandy Berger, attired in a tweed overcoat with the collar up and holding a worn briefcase, wearing his signature horn rimmed glasses, his graying hair combed back, as he approaches the shop. He stops and ponders his future and the fabulous riches and immense stature which might cascade his way if he walks in and surrenders his valuables. Then he circles for awhile as he ruminates on this fateful decision on the pawning of his conscience, his morality, such as it is, and his soul. Still he waivers and assesses the possible payback. He paces up and down the sidewalk as he slowly augurs in towards the door. But languidly at first, then inexorably, his pace picks up as he is drawn, like water going down a sewer drain or stellar gas being dragged into the maw of a Black Hole, toward the waiting portal and his eternal association with Bill Clinton, for better or worse, in legality or illegality, forever. and in an instant he crosses the threshold and stands before the barred aperture, where his reputation and his life are pawned for a sou. and in the blink of an eye the deed is done and he is marked forever.
Following the rather messy departure of the Clinton administration and its long trail of problematic and as yet unopened baggage - including the sealed boxes containing the redacted portions of the Barrett Report and their window on recrementitious executive abuses - many of the personal items, so eagerly pawned by so many of the willing acolytes, still hang in the dirty window of the closed and now discredited pawn shop, where Sandy Berger's heart and soul are still visible among the other dusty and forgotten items. However their permanent retrieval remains problematic as the owner, even as a private citizen, charges enormous rates of vigorish on unclaimed incidentals, making their return prohibitive and all but unheard of. It is difficult for former customers to break the ring of juice.
Sandy Berger, former National Security advisor, with his conscience pawned so long ago, was caught stealing top secret documents from the National archives by stuffing them in his socks and in his underwear and pleaded guilty to the theft in april of last year. For some reason he was driven to this asininity and beltway wags have noted that the missing documents pertained to specific dates and activities within the Clinton administration. Could it be that the items in the pawn shop, its owner and Sandy Berger have a thread in common? Is it because Berger's conscience and soul still hang in Clinton's shop window that Sandy undertook his outrageous and blatant attempt at opprobrious larceny? Can he ever redeem his pawned conscience or will the factorage on the ticket always remain just out of his reach?
and now this disgraced and utterly discredited toff has joined a trio of other fellow pawn shop donors and peacocks — Madeleine albright, William Perry and Gen. Wes Clark — to author a "new" report where they contend, in what purports to be entirely novel language, based on "new" evidence, that - with fashionable thoughts and phrases said to be outside and beyond those already used by other liberal tools like The New York Times, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Murtha, Harry Reid, Howard Dean - the, "Bush administration has broken faith with the american soldier and Marine."
a curious world wonders if the contents of any of Berger's desperately purloined stocking-stuffers and supposedly "destroyed" Clinton-era security documents found their way into this tendentious polemic produced by four of the epoch's greatest apple-polishers?
Sadly, before the jaundiced quartet of authors trundle out another similar screed they might consider pooling their resources and consider getting their honesty and objectivity out of hock before they begin work on another fiery invective with reward enough to free their consciences.
Funny, but the old shop holds its captive items so very well that it almost seems as if there really is some negative essence attached to the old pawn tickets. Rod Serling would be so proud of this ongoing production.
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