WASHINGTON – Adolf Hitler, Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur. And now Ken Lay?
It’s easy to understand why so many conspiracy theorists were convinced that Hitler had staged his supposed death and somehow escaped the smoking rubble of Berlin; he was one of history’s greatest monsters, a man responsible for millions of deaths, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to believe he had one last evil trick up his sleeve.
The fans who for years clung to the hope that Elvis was still alive, on the other hand, simply loved their King so much that they couldn’t bear to believe he was gone.
And as for Tupac, it will be easier for deniers to accept the Byronic rapper’s death when the music industry stops putting out new Tupac records. The man has been so prolific from his Big Recording Studio in the Sky that even I have to wonder.
Hitler, Elvis and Tupac were all icons. So the existence of a Web site called kenlayisalive.org that places the Enron founder in that pantheon must mean Ken Lay is now an icon, too.
Almost immediately after Lay’s death was reported Wednesday, Internet bloggers began speculating that he had somehow faked his demise, which “conveniently” came just before his sentencing – doubtless to a well-deserved term in prison – for his role in what was arguably the most spectacular business fraud in American history.
“I wonder how many doctors you need to bribe to fake your own death,” wrote Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” in his blog. “Is one enough? Or is there some special double-checking that the police do if the guy is heading for prison? I’m sure there’s a body, but I wonder if it’s his. I have a bad feeling that some pizza delivery guy’s last words to his co-workers were ‘Hey, I have a delivery to that Enron guy’s house! Wish me luck!’”
Ken Lay’s sudden demise – and no, I haven’t seen the body, but I’m pretty sure they did a lot of double-checking – obviously leaves many people with a feeling of having been cheated yet again. The man was found guilty of swindling good, honest, hard-working people out of hundreds of millions of dollars, and just when he was about to be sent to jail where he would spend the rest of his life in hopeless despair, the swindler escaped his punishment by dying. How convenient.
Those feelings are understandable, if not quite logical. Imagine that the sentencing judge had had the power to order Lay put to death. Wouldn’t we have considered that a harsher punishment than a long prison term? And wouldn’t Lay, with his folksy charm, have found a way to survive in relative comfort behind bars? How long would it have been before the prison guards were bringing him extra food in exchange for stock tips?
Still, his death seems hard to accept. His trial and conviction had certified him as a bona fide evil genius, a master illusionist who could fill sheets of paper with meaningless numbers and convince gullible employees and investors that they were seeing an actual company and actual profits. Enron was built on shakier foundations than your average Ponzi scheme, yet Lay was smart enough to fool all the analysts and accountants, at least long enough to rake off an enormous fortune for himself.
Is that the kind of man who could be so inattentive to his own health that he drops dead of a heart attack, even though clogged arteries are routinely discovered through checkups and corrected through medication or surgery?
Or is it the kind of man who would stash a few million in some super-secret offshore tax haven where investigators would never find it? And who, on the eve of being sent to prison, might be clever enough to find a way to reunite himself with those ill-gotten gains? Perhaps on some tropical beach?
Only in the movies, I’m afraid. Like I said, I’m sure they double-checked.
And anyway, I doubt that beach is big enough for him and Tupac.
Eugene Robinson is a Washington Post columnist. Contact him by writing to eugenerobinson@washpost.com.
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