Modern irony -- it's hard to identify the good guys

1.  Irony #1:  In 1951, Georgia passed  a law against wearing a mask that conceals your identity, either on public property or on private property without the owner's consent.   The law, aimed at the Ku Klux Klan in its revived heyday, is still on the books.

Last weekend, a white supremacist group held a rally at Stone Mountain Park.  They said it was to be a peaceful gathering to celebrate Southern heritage and culture and had nothing to do with the Klan or intimidation of anyone.   They had no Klan regalia, no masks, no flags or burning crosses..   Only about two dozen of the anticipated hundreds showed up for their rally.

But about two hundred counter-protesters showed up from a newly organized AllOut ATL group, reportedly made up of left-leaning groups.   Some of them wore masks.  Park guards and local police were successful in keeping the two groups apart, corralling the small white power group in a remote parking lot.

The counter-protestors were upset that they couldn't confront the white power group, resulting in chases through the woods and confrontations with the police.   One of them allegedly threw a smoke bomb at police.  Six of the counter-protesters were arrested under the 1951 law against wearing masks.

The police explained later that using this arcane mask law to arrest demonstrators helped to lower the temperature of the confrontation without having to use more physical methods that might have provoked further, possibly violent, confrontations.

Here's the irony:   The 'good guys' got arrested under a law that was designed to outlaw the 'bad guys' of an earlier time.


2.  Irony #2:   When he was Republican Speaker of the House and thus second in line to be president, Dennis Hastert was a "good guy," a former high school wrestling coach who went into politics and was beloved in his small home district in Illinois.   He was the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in history.  One of his virtues was no whiff of scandal at a time when two previous Speakers had to resign under clouds of marital infidelity.

But Hastert had also had a secret life as a serial sexual molester of the teenage boys on his wrestling teams.   Whether that behavior continued beyond his years as coach has not been publicly revealed.   The earlier abuse only came to light a few years ago when he ran afoul of the law for concealing large sums of cash he was withdrawing from his bank accounts to pay off one of the boys (now a middle-aged man), whom he had agreed to give $3.5 million for his pain and suffering (and, of course, to keep quiet.)

The statute of limitations had passed on the abuse, so he could not be tried for that.    Several months ago, he was tried and convicted for the illegal bank transactions and for lying to the FBI about it.  The law, designed to catch money launderers and drug dealers, requires any cash withdrawal of $10,000 or more to be reported and explained.  Hastert was only trying to conceal a sordid, guilty past.    But it backfired and  brought about his downfall:  public exposure, shame, and now jail time.

Here's the irony.   When he was Speaker, Mr. All-American Good Guy, the coach with a secret past, had presided over the hearings on impeaching President Bill Clinton -- officially for lying under oath but really for a sex scandal involving a young female intern in the Oval Office.   It may have been unrelated, but somewhere back then Hastert made a statement urging that repeat child molesters should be given life sentences in jail.

This week, at his sentencing hearing for the banking violations, the judge turned it into a full-on exposure of the sexual abuse, referring three times to the defendant as "a serial child molester."   Hastert for the first time in court had to admit to having sexually molested five different teenage boys while under his charge as their coach and role model.

He also had to face testimony by one of the victims and the sister of another (now deceased) and a scathing rebuke from the judge, who then sentenced him to 15 months in prison, probation, and fines.    The prison time was unusual for the the banking crime, but it would have been much longer if he could have been actually tried and convicted for the abuse crimes.  If Haster's own past recommendation had been followed, it would have put him in jail for life.

Here's the irony shared in both examples:    "Good guys" who did something bad were only caught by these laws designed to catch "bad guys" for doing something different than what the "good guys" actually did. 

Ralph

PS:   I had intended this post to be about irony, but this second one about sexual abuse of teens by a coach got a bit heavy.   I don't want my tone to suggest that I take this lightly.  Perhaps I will write more another time about the deeper issues of sexual abuse, the effect on even older teen-age boys, especially when the adult is a role model.  It's not just about sex;  it's about abuse of power and trust.   There's also the interesting issue of denial and self-delusion in the abusing adult, which I'm guessing was large part of Haster's inner process.