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;void(0)) BLUE-COLLAR SENTENCE Like most of you I was glud to the TV following the ongoing saga of the Paris Hilton situation. However, unlike the OJ Bronco chase I was really wondering if our unfortunate damsel indistress was pondering if her jail sentence would be cut short only to be replaced with the dreaded community service sentence that so many celebrities and white collar criminals have been getting lately. These sentenes have been occurring so often lately that there is now a shortage of jobs for these white collar criminals to perform. Like you I grow weary of the constant requests from these white collar criminals who have plea-bargained their way out of a prison sentence volunteering to work for me as part of their punishment. Just a few weeks ago I was lounging in the front yard of my neighbors, Sam and Joan Quidnunc. A gentleman in an expensive charcoal gray, pinstriped suit showed up at the gate with a sqeegie in one hand and a garden rake in the other. "Good afternoon folks," he said, "I am the former president of Shylock Insurance and Loan Corp., and I was found guilty of illegal loan practices and insurance fraud. I was given a choice of 10 years in prison or doing one thousand hours of community service. I chose the latter and I was wondering if I could wash your car." "That's very kind of you," Sam told him. "But we had one of the convicted felons from a CPA firm involved in the Enron case wax our car yesterday. He was working off fifteen hundred hours to pay his debt to society." "Maybe," the executive said, "I could clean your windows. I believe I am the only white-collar criminal that does windows." "I'm sure you do good work, but we really don't need our windows washed today." said Sam. The guy started to sound desperate. "Look I hate to beg, but if I don't put in five community service hours by the end of the day, the judge will send me to jail. How about letting me rake your lawn?" "But there are no leaves falling. It;s summer in Florida." "I doubt the courts will pay much attention to that. They just need to know that I did something." "That's perjury, which is probably what gotyou where you are today. The object of a sentence like this is rehabilitation so that a person will never commit a nonviolent white-collar crime again." "I know, but how can I do it if no one will let me perform the work? I am also a trash man - the best in this judicial circuit." We could use someone to handle the garbage. But how do we know you won't come into our home and juggle our household books while we're not watching?" Joan Asked suspiciously. "Trust me. Ever since I have had to cut lawns I realized the folly of putting large sums of other people's money into my own account. Nobody who has ever cleaned toilets in community service goes back to a life of crime again." "You sound pretty sincers," she admitted. "I think it only fair that we give you a chance to rehabilitate yourself. But if you try to open so much as one Swiss bank account while you work for us, I will see that you never perform an hour of community service again." "Yes mam. Thank you - oh, thank you. If you let me take out your trash, I will have only eight hundred ninety-six more hours to complete." After you have finished with the trah, my neighbor Don Morris, needs his lawn mowed." "I don't do lawns. But I have a friend putting in five hundred hours for illegal computer fraud, and he's a whiz with a lawn mower. He loves it so much that when his sentence is up, he is thinking of asking the judge if he can stay on touching up the lawns around the court house." I said, "What I like about you white-collar criminals is that once you're caught, you have a good attitude. You seem eager to carry out your sentence." "Community service may not be the same as working for a Fortune Five Hundred company," he said, "but it beats the heck out of picking up cigarette butts on the yard of some Florida Big House." Oh yeah, don't forget your autographed copy of “The Ackee Chronicles”. Tony VanSluytman - the Author  Newsletter Directory The Aton Project - Home Page Tony VanSluytman info Tony VanSluytman - the Author | Return Home | The BOOK DOCTOR | The BANYON NETWORK | The Banyon Buzz Newsletters | The Aton Project Newsletters | Contact Us | |
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