Enron trial - watch out, David Blaine

The trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, the two head weasels in the Enron weasel-pit, begins today in Houston.

The pre-trial coverage seems to indicate that the defense will consist primarily of this amazing hypothesis: Enron was a healthy company right up until it's overnight collapse, and neither Lay nor Skilling did anything wrong.

Rrrriiiiiight.

The defense will argue that a combination of CFO Andrew Fastow's criminal activity (which he did only for his own misbegotten benefit, not the company's, you understand), over-zealous prosecutors, and media hysteria have brainwashed the public into believing nefarious deeds were perpetrated by anyone else within Enron. You've been duped, people!

This is pretty ballsy stuff. I give them an A+ for chutzpah.

I am pretty sure that the media is not very fair or even accurate in many cases, and the complexity of this case probably means that most of the reporters who cover it don't understand it (I know I sure don't, even though I am no reporter). As for the average American, I have no illusions that there's any real comprehension of what went on at Enron out there. Most people wouldn't know off-balance-sheet financing from shinola. The possibility of being duped is certainly there.

However, with all that disclaimer on the table, there's WAY too much smoke here for there to be no fire.

This whole thing makes me want to puke. The image that comes to mind is a bunch of rodents fighting inside a barrel of snot. I hope both Lay and Skilling wind up in the slam for decades. And no country club, either. Hard time with the skin-heads, Crips, and Mexican Mafia.

As little Susie Derkins once said in an immortal Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, "While I'm wishing, I want a pony."

I will be keeping an eye on this one. The lawyer slickness co-efficient looks to be very high, the fake-sincerity factor should be off the scale, and the condescension-to-fact ratio will be absolutely extraordinary. This has all the makings of classic, early-21st-century entertainment to me.