By:
Remember "That Was The Week That Was," the old TV show that looked back on the news events of the preceding seven days with a rich blend of biting satire and irreverent humor? Well, it’s a real shame there’s no comparable offering on the air these days to chronicle the remarkable turn of events that unfolded in New Jersey last week.
What a wealth of material!
First there was U.S. Sen. Robert Torricelli, the only New Jersey politician who has unlocked the secret to getting his name in The New York Times every day. Unfortunately for the senator, the secret appears to be having various federal prosecutors and political opponents feeding the paper a steady stream of allegations regarding questionable campaign contributions and personal gifts from shady characters.
Then there was state Senate President and acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco, who also managed to gain the attention of the New York press though not, it should be noted, with the same grinding regularity as Sen. Torricelli. Mr. DiFrancesco’s formal entry into the race for governor, for example, got him scant coverage, but his decision to quit the race just three days later, following reports of indiscretions ranging from some ill-advised family loans to allegations of influence-peddling in his position as municipal attorney in his hometown of Scotch Plains, made him page-one material in New York, not to mention the big story on "Action News" in Philadelphia.
Not to be outdone, Mr. DiFrancesco’s counterpart in the Assembly, Speaker Jack Collins, stepped up to the podium the very next day and made headlines with his decision to spare embattled Supreme Court Justice Peter Verniero the prospect of impeachment proceedings in the lower house. Noteworthy for its creativity (and for the fact that he was actually able to keep a straight face throughout his announcement) was Speaker Collins’ stated rationale that if Justice Verniero had, in fact, offered any misleading testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in describing what he knew about racial profiling, and when he knew it, while serving as the state attorney general, he could be indicted and tried for perjury in state court rather than face the ordeal of impeachment and trial in the Legislature.
Mr. Verniero, it may be recalled, caused quite a stir himself a few weeks earlier, when he suffered some astonishing lapses of memory during his appearance before the Judiciary Committee. His performance was so unconvincing that the entire committee Republicans and Democrats alike petitioned the Assembly speaker to initiate impeachment proceedings, an action unprecedented in modern New Jersey history.
None of this, of course, would have raised so much as an eyebrow back in the old days, when politics in the Garden State smelled as bad as the Secaucus pig farms and the Meadowlands garbage dumps. Back when Frank "I am the law" Hague ruled Hudson County, Frank "Hap" Farley ran all of South Jersey and the party bosses treated the State House as their own personal fiefdom, the career path of many a politician went from the city council to the freeholder board to the legislature to the Congress to the federal penitentiary. It was this inglorious past that prompted former Gov. Brendan Byrne to quip that when he died he wanted to be buried in Jersey City so he wouldn’t have to give up his right to vote.
It’s punch lines like this that would lift the Torricelli, DiFrancesco, Collins and Verniero episodes of the past week from grade-B drama to grade-A farce, complete with music and lyrics by Mark Russell and a cast of characters straight from the pages of a Damon Runyon novel. It may be a far cry from what New Jersey deserves in the way of both representation and reputation, but viewing this unlikely series of events as a form of 21st century burlesque worthy of laughter may be the only way to keep ourselves from crying.
