Ken Lay's Political Funeral

I read USA Today’s report, which detailed the eulogies and remembrances of Ken Lay. Not surprisingly, many of his friends took the opportunity to defend Ken Lay and tell the audience that he was a good person. One mourner even stated that he was a “victim of a lynching”.

None of us will ever really know the kind of man or the kind of character within Ken Lay. However, from a distance, when you see that one mourner stated in their eulogy “Ken Lay wouldn’t do anything illegal, even if you put a gun to his head”, it is a little hard to rationalize that statement with the jury verdict in his Enron case.

President Calvin Coolidge was famous for the statement “the business of America is business.” At that time, businessmen ran the country and, in fact, women were not even expected to concern themselves with the particular of business and government. President Grover Cleveland stated “sensible and responsible women do not want to vote,” as a means of defending why women should not even have the right to vote.

I refer back to these quotes because it seems applicable to Ken Lay and his friends. It seems to me from looking at all of this from a distance, that there is a certain level of existence that apparently believes that once you reach that level of entitlement, you do not have to answer to the same level of accountability that the rest of us answer to.

I still believe in the jury system and I still believe that when a wrong is committed, there must be some accountability for that wrong. Even at the Lay funeral, his friends continued to express the opinion that prosecutors, the media, and jurors had vilified an exceedingly good man. I guess they do not believe in the jury system.