I don't know the meaning of life. I don't decipher intense medical terminology. I don't read The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic or any literature which requires a Ph.D to comprehend.
But I am smart enough to get by. To know when I've made a mistake. To learn from that mistake.
I've made many mistakes over the years, as have most people I know. Most are the kind that have little, if any, impact on the world outside of my own.
Some are things I knew I should not do at the time, but for whatever reason - stupidity, naivete, being "macho," whatever - I went through with them anyway.
Some are learning mistakes, often from trying too hard to impress someone in an area where you know less than the person you are trying to impress.
And some come simply from being in the wrong place at the wrong time and trying to adapt as quickly as possible to the situation.
Then there are MISTAKES. Bloopers. Blunders. Follies.
Like the Charles Keating situation.
Here's a guy who reeks of mistake, who has the label "error" embedded on his soul. A man who's financial dealings have put him in the "Who's Who of Major Faux Pas." A man who appears to have robbed people blind, silly and however else you can rob someone through a cliche.
Keating - who looks a lot like George Bush, for comparison's sake - is charged with defrauding an estimates 22,000(!) investors, mostly elderly, out of $250 million on now-worthless junk bonds.
Both sides made mistakes. The investors, who fell for his down-home swagger and promise of BIG MONEY; and Keating, who is nothing more than the lowest form of scum on the earth.
It's easy to feel sorry for the investors. People are victims all the time, whether through pyramid letter schemes, too-good-to-be-true telephone sweepstakes or through savings-and-loan bailouts (yes, the American taxpayer will be dishing out something like $2 billion to bail out Lincoln Savings and Loan - the operation Keating screwed up).
But it's hard to be as charitable with out hearts for a man like Keating, who used and abused innocent people's money to build himself a fortune, while at the same time doctored up his books to make it look like he was being fiscally responsible.
Keating has obviously made some mistakes. One doesn't land in jail for the things he's accused of just y chance.
"Chance" happenings don't even offer that chance.
His bail is at $5 million - an astounding figure, even among mega-numbers like $250 million lost and 22,000 defrauded.
And I thought paying college loans was depressing.
Still, there is no satisfaction with his arrest in Los Angeles on September 18.
He is claiming bankruptcy. The Lincoln S&L is bankrupt. The money is gone. Investors have nothing to show for their trust in Keating's (lack of) judgment.
And I - we - are footing the bill, courtesy of the U.S. government's bail-out plan and the allowance of financial negligence by the so-called "Keating Five," which includes Michigan Sen. Donald Riegel.
I'm not the smartest man in the world. But it could be a hell of a lot worse.
I could have been one of Keating's victims.
This article originally appeared in the Ogemaw County Herald.
