It was screened at Sundance last January and nationally released four months later. Wikipedia says its gross revenue so far is $176,885. This is a pity considering that the film described Saipan as a “mysterious” tropical paradise with first class hotels and golf resorts.
Anyway, years ago, I was contacted by someone from New York who said she was a production assistant for a film project about Abramoff and she wanted the Variety’s help. Our newspaper was more than happy to help and I had a conversation or two with the PA (who flew in from NYC) regarding those days when I was covering Capital Hill and the several media events that involved the U.S. congressmen, staffers as well as conservative and libertarian think-tank policy analysts brought in by Jack.
Watching the film, I was of course smiling as the photos I took and the MV front page story I wrote about Tom DeLay’s visit flashed on the screen. Also appearing in the film were former AG Pam Brown, former Gov. John Babauta, former Gov. Lang Tenorio, Gov. Ben Fitial, businessman Willie Tan, former Reps. Alejo Mendiola and Norman Palacios, who, I believe, had the “best line”: “It’s just politics for me. …[H]opefully it’s not illegal. [Laughs] That I don’t know. But I think it’s not illegal.”
Everything is clear-cut in this documentary. There are good and bad people. And then there are the naïve, the duped and the hypocrite. For “historical background,” the director used footage from Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Capra, to be sure, was a great director. (“It’s A Wonderful Life” remains the best Christmas movie of all time.) But as the very liberal Gore Vidal once noted, for Capra, “politics was not what it is but what he himself had screened.” Capra wanted to believe that in politics there could be a virtuous hero unblemished by the need to compromise and make deals — a politician who doesn’t act like a politician. Such a hero did exist. But only in a Capra movie.
In “Casino Jack,” the villains besides Abramoff and DeLay are money (even though it took money to produce this documentary and its producers, I assume, are hoping to recoup their expenses); “free enterprise” (a very good idea that has never been tried in the CNMI); U.S. Republicans (never mind if it was the Republican Senate that conducted public hearings on Abramoff and it was the Department of Justice under a Republican administration that indicted him), and Chinese sweatshop owners (Uncle Willie is an American citizen).
But explaining nuances would have deviated from the main Capraesque story line, which is money makes you greedy — and a Republican.
This may be news to most Americans, but the “corruption” and “greed” depicted in “Casino Jack” involved chump change that would not even merit a public hearing by a village council in a Third World democracy. In such countries, corruption is across the board. Everyone’s into it. The police, the media, the prosecutors, the courts.
Bribery and thievery involving hundreds of millions of dollars are business as usual. From time to time there will be disclosures of scandalous corruption cases, but such exposés are aimed to embarrass particular politicians, usually in an election year. No one’s ever prosecuted. Unless you’re a small-time bureaucrat or government employee. (Erap was charged and detained — in his villa — because he refused to leave the country. Convicted by a kangaroo court, he was quickly pardoned, was allowed to run for president again — despite a constitutional prohibition — and finished second. Like the Marcoses, his family members are prominent elected officials. As for GMA, the high court has ruled that the massive corruption of her administration can’t be singled out for investigation.)
In the U.S. and other mature democracies, the mere appearance of an impropriety will get you into trouble. If there is strong evidence that you committed a wrongdoing, it doesn’t matter who you are, you will be charged and prosecuted. The only “problem” with the U.S. political system is that it is run by humans. And humans have a tendency to act like…humans. Power can get into us. Easy money can make us greedy. Jack Abramoff and his associates were committed idealists — true believers. Once they tasted power, however, they committed the same excesses they had deplored in their political adversaries.
“This is a story about human failure,” says Neil Voz, one of the former congressional staffers indicted in the Abramoff case. “I mean [sighs] I don’t think corruption is a partisan issue. The corruption I was involved in was a human failure. It’s an issue of power. I became a machine, a cog in the machine like, ‘hey get up, do your thing, get yours,’ — I just lost track of what brought me here.”
Greed and corruption cannot be abolished — we might as well abolish the human race — but as the older democracies have shown, they can cease to be the norm. We can set high standards for public service and insist that they are consistently met.
“The price for a free society is to be vigilant about our democracy,” says Melanie Sloan, director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who was also interviewed for this film. “They were…influenced by Jack Abramoff,” she adds, “because we let them.”
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