Chicago has some shady history, but it is as pure and sweet as honey-dew vine-water compared to Hollywood, Washington,D.C. and Buckingham Palace - stop-overs in the Big Apple, of course. Chicago has always had its cap set for out-of-town rogues, blackguards and swindlers: Edward Prince of Wales, Charles Tyson Yerkes, and Brooklyn Al Capone.
Last night, Chicago Rubes hailed Charlie Sheen's trodding of the boards at the venerable Chicago Theatre. Charlie Sheen is a sad creature bringing his Torpedo of Truth to the youthful Mensa members with Mom and Dad's ready cash. Not a shocker that. Folks stood in line to purchase tickets to see Tiny Tim, Bill Maher, Glen Beck, Andy Dice Clay and Blue Man Group ( I could never get my tiny brain around that one!).
However, Alexandra Wolfe's Daily Beast article on plutocrat-pimp Jeffrey Epstein and his gushing posse of pals that includes, of course, Bill Clinton, Katie Couric, Woody Allen, George "First Rat Off" Stephanopoulos and Prince Andrew is a head scratcher.
I admire people who stick by their friends - Harry Truman and Tom Predergast, Jim Carville and Bill Clinton e.g. and generally speaking I am sicked by rank opportunists who abandon people who have made them what they are e.g. Jane Addams and Ald. John Powers et al and Judy Barr Topinka and George Ryan.
There is always a Rubicon for our individual ethical and moral feet when it comes to friendship and loyalty - do we get our toes wet or keep our panties dry?
Cardinal Law hide pedophile priests - not out of any sense of personal loyalty for a stumbled runner, it seems to me, but to hike his ecclesiastical skirts and avoid further inquiry.
Retired Bishop Imesch of Joliet was hounded by the media and greedy lawyers for not divulging information taken in sworn depositions years before, in order to make more money for Jeff Anderson and Associates.
Huge difference.
Now, a pedophile like Jeffrey Epstein gets a celebrity pass. I would not be seen in the same Zipcode with a louse like the above handsome and toned gent my contemporary, let alone attend a gala bash in support of his pimping out under-aged girls to celebrities and English nobility.
Here is another spin on the Epstein/Prince Andrew BFFEs:
While "Randy Andy's" antics with wannabe "It Girls" have long been the stuff of prurient tabloid fodder, it is his cretinously ill-advised choice of associates that is causing the present rumpus. The duke has been a frequent guest at the Florida residence of Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire who served a 18-month jail term after pleading guilty to soliciting a prostitute. More recently Virginia Roberts, a masseuse, alleged sexual encounters with Epstein and his friends (but not the prince) when she was 17-years-old. The British Mail on Sunday reports the FBI is re-opening the Epstein case. Though no allegations of direct impropriety have been made against him, the duke did receive a massage at Epstein's home 10 years ago, and was photographed with him as recently as December 2010. His impecunious ex-wife, Sarah Duchess of York, who was recently caught out in a cash-for-meetings scandal when she claimed she could broker encounters with her former husband for a fee, accepted £15,000 from Epstein to pay off debts, apparently at the duke's instigation.
Prince Andrew, nicknamed Air Miles Andy because of his lavish use of publicly funded travel, is providing a blessed distraction from the prospect of quite so many worthies being caught with their hands in Libya PLC's till, but surprisingly no one seems the least bit grateful. Both Prime Minster David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have expressed their continued confidence in the duke, yet elsewhere in the Tory ranks the tumbrils are rumbling about whether he should resign his post as U.K. Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.
I like the tone of this writer's prose. Prince Andrew was married to the equally loathsome lard ass Sarah Duchess of York, or Fergie the Shakedown Artiste.
Yes, 'confidence in the duke!' Kids meet the Prince, Prince meet the kids!
I believe that Long-John Wentworth, a pal to honest rogues and roues, would have kicked Epstein and Andrew's collective asses up and down De Koven Street.
