Letters

How fiercely I argued, during past years, with European visitors who would arrogantly dismiss our American values. “The American religion is worship of the Holy Dollar!” the Europeans would say, in a tone of righteousness that brooked no argument.

But I did argue vigorously, outraged: “Look at our free press! Look at our great justice system!”

And, every year, my first life partner, a builder in New York City, would make his and his firm’s big-money contributions to both parties. Ideological ambiguity? Nonsense: He and the firm were just buying access.

Oh, how I hated those Christmas parties in his senior partner’s 17-room duplex on Fifth Avenue, an apartment renowned for its prior owner’s impeccable credentials and fame. I remember the plaster Caesars lining the vast, marble-floored gallery. I remember the 5-foot niches in the huge, graceful dining room, displaying silver flamingos.

The place was not a tribute to good taste. It just reeked of money, like the McMansions overwhelming our village.

More than the tacky, expensive decor, I hated having to attend those mandatory Christmas parties: the governor, the mayor, the senators, the judges. And most of those honored guests were busily drinking aged scotch. Wives, if present, stuck to vintage champagne. And pounds and pounds of gray Iranian caviar.

That doesn’t happen here, on the East End, does it? There’s no kiss-kiss among developers, politicians and judges? Shame on you for such nasty thoughts: Just look at our free local press!

Just look at the contribution to the election of State Supreme Court judges! That’s the money pit that my Stanford University undergraduate classmate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor used to worry about. Is it any different in federal court? It goes right up into the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

But what’s the use of all the evidence, all the documentation, when the people, who are the most hurt by corruption, shrink away from taking a stand, defend the very same politicians who rob them blind, drive them our of their homes, out of their village.

And still, still, even at my ripe old age, I am personally deeply hurt by the willful ignorance, collaboration with corruption, by the very people that corruption is hurting. “I have to live with them,” these salt-of-the-earth people say.

And, so, I have to witness again how the newly elected reformers, the good guys, sweep evidence of malfeasance under the rug, stifle protest and maintain all the bad laws they were sworn to repeal. Why keep on fighting? Because, as Papillon shouted at the sky while floating out to sea on two bags of coconuts to escape from Devil’s Island, I also shout:

“Hey, you bastards, I’m still here!”

Evelyn Konrad

Attorney-at-law

Southampton