When I go into the tunnel, I have my ear to the ground. If I didn’t ride the subways, I wouldn’t even know a Homie from a Gangsta. A Homie is my friend and a Gangsta could kill me. When a Gangsta makes an emotional connection with me he becomes my Homie. In the wrong circumstances any Homie can become a Gangsta. Little known fact: There is no difference between Gangstas and Banksters except rich people don’t have to ride subways and Banksters get away with murder.
Being rich will not only buy good P.R. spin and placement in the press, but being rich can keep you out of jail. Attorneys often use spin the same way P.R. people use spin—to influence juries, the public, and the media. Spin can be used to transform what appears to be a black and white situation into a murky gray area, where there is neither wrong nor right. In the gray zone, someone can be both wrong and right, and there are minute degrees of distinction made between partly right, partly wrong, mostly right, and mostly wrong.
For example, take the Affluenza Defense. The affliction “affluenza,” was cited by a psychologist to bolster the legal argument that a North Texas teenager from a wealthy family should not be sent to prison for killing four pedestrians while driving drunk because he had been afflicted by affluenza.
Affluenza has been used to describe a condition in which children—generally from richer families—who have a sense of entitlement, are irresponsible, make excuses for poor behavior, and sometimes dabble in drugs and alcohol. The story has been told and retold, and I can’t understand why more people aren’t outraged; but I also have a unique perspective of why we’re all so easily influenced by spin. Perhaps most people don’t understand that it took considerable money to hire a legal team who would concoct the Affluenza Defense, and even more money was required to hire the expert witnesses. In this case, the psychologists who were paid to assess the situation supported the legal assertion that the Affluenza Defense is a valid psychological excuse to mitigate the seriousness of the crime.
Now consider my poor Homie on the subway. If he should suffer from the misfortune of getting tried for a petty crime in Brooklyn, he will not be able to afford the price of high-quality legal counsel. In fact, he will be assigned a public defender who does not have the resources available to fabricate a legal strategy as creative as the Affluenza Defense, which is a prime example of the P.R. and legal resources that money can buy. Should My Homie get into trouble, he is going to the slammer on Riker’s Island. Forget about him!
From the top down, we are witnessing large numbers of politicians, their cronies and their friends getting away with murder. They all have one thing in common—money, almost unimaginable, large sums of money.
Getting away with murder is not easy. Now I speak of murder metaphorically. The murder might be some sort of egregious conduct (a sin) or the murder may be an actual murder. Either way, getting away with murder, real murder or metaphorical murder, is not guaranteed. There is a challenge. The challenge is how much money you will be able to throw at your case. There are no convicted murderers sitting on death row who are wealthy. Aside from being convicted of murder, the inmates on death row only share one other attribute in common. Across the board, death row inmates are unequivocally poor. With no dollars or legions of P.R. professionals and well connected attorneys spinning paradox to judges, juries, the public, and the media, the poor rarely get away with murder. It is important to keep in mind that murder is only one form of evil. There are many others.
Excerpted in whole and part from American Spin ©2015 by Patricia Vaccarino
Patricia Vaccarino has written award-winning film scripts, press materials, articles, speeches, web content, marketing collateral, and five books. Please see her press kit.