Reply #59: Riley Protests Too Much [View All]

Riley Protests Too Much
BY Scott Horton - Oct 27, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001526

HAMLET: Madam, how like you this play?
QUEEN GERTRUDE: The lady protests too much, methinks.
HAMLET: O, but she’ll keep her word.

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, act iii, sc ii (1599)

Deep in the heart of Shakespeare’s longest .... is a vehicle to do what social convention forbids, namely, explore the guilt of the king for high crimes.....

Hamlet has endured as a dramatic powerhouse, in spite of its length, in spite of its complexity, because it delivers profound psychological insights. And in the gothic novel now unfolding in Alabama, Hamlet lives again. The core of this drama is an unnatural and overhasty climb to power by a man of very modest abilities, but determined and ruthless ambition, who has now ascended the throne, as it were. Up to this point, the name of this focal character has rarely been mentioned. He of course knows his role and understands fully that as the tightly wound ball of yarn unravels, it will inevitably be exposed.

On Thursday, the organ of the Alabama Republican Party, the Birmingham News, published a highly contrived interview between two of the principal actors behind the scenes in the Siegelman drama, Governor Bob Riley and Brett Blackledge. Here are Riley’s comments, as transcribed by his faithful bootlicker:

“When it gets to the point where he says he believes that the governor of Alabama went to Washington, met with the Justice Department, convinced them to put the resources into a conspiracy to get Don Siegelman, that is so far-fetched, that is so totally wrong that I’m disappointed that someone like Artur Davis could possibly believe that,” Riley said in his first extended interview on the Siegelman case. “What he is doing is impeaching the testimony of two prosecutors, with people that he has known for years, he is impeaching their credibility based on no facts, only using political concerns to do so. . .”

“For anyone, including Artur Davis, to think that the governor or the governor’s office played a part in that is absurd,” .......

These numbers and this timeline make clear that the indictment and prosecution of Siegelman had a determinative effect on the Alabama gubernatorial election–precisely as was intended by their authors. .....