In the good 'ol [sic; should be "ol' "] days, crime bosses eschewed the spotlight. Had they been aware of Oscar Wilde’s aphorism—“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”—they would have chosen not being talked about every time. They also took pains not to be seen, heard, recorded, filmed or photographed. As Ben Kingsley’s Meyer Lansky warns Warren Beatty’s Ben “Bugsy” Siegel in the biopic “Bugsy”: “Famous isn’t good, Ben. For Clark Gable, it’s good. For Joe Dimaggio, it’s good. Famous, for you, is not good.”
In the age of celebrity, this caution is passé. The anonymity gangsters once desperately clung to is now nearly nonexistent. Even a big shot like the late, unlamented John Gotti found the media’s pull irresistible, and sought out the cameras and microphones wherever possible.
President Donald Trump, the “Don” of the Trump family, is clearly more in the Gotti mold than the Corleone. Due to his unrestrained ego and pathological need for attention, he has placed himself and others at serious legal risk. He has also destabilized the institutions of government.
We are about to experience an upside-down reprise of the Kefauver hearings of the 1950s. But in this case, the parade of witnesses will be offering a glimpse not into a vast and murky criminal underworld, but into the corruption and criminality of the biggest political figure in the country.
If only Don Trump had a consigliere as wise as Meyer Lansky, we might have been spared all this.
C. J. STORELLA
Forest Hills
