The Rape of California
by Tim Hall
An article in today's New York Times attempts to shift the blame for Enron's collapse to California.
The article, titled "Mystery of Enron and California's Power Crisis," is a classic example of the Times' head-scratching and shoulder-shrugging in the face of bald corporate criminality. Start with the title: Enron is a "mystery," we are told, while California is suffering from a different, and separate, "power crisis."
First line: "One of the deepest mysteries in the collapse of Enron has been the role that the power crisis in California played in the company's rise and fall."
Here again, the thesis is: Enron's collapse is a Divine Mystery, somehow caused by ("the role played" by) California. Besides giving the impression that California was an active, perhaps malevolent aggressor intent on bringing down Enron, the deeper implication is that California is suffering from something like an "image crisis," that somehow California's sense of its own "power" was the root of the problem (an assessment with which the Bush administration would no doubt agree).
Moving right along: "This spring, as authorities focused their attention on the off-balance-sheet partnerships that Enron used to inflate its profits, it seemed that the question might be forever buried under more pressing inquiries."
Translation: Whew, thank God those authorities are finally investigating these California folks; why, we were worried that it was all going to get "buried" under "more pressing" inquiries.
"Now, though, newly released documents about Enron's practices during the crisis in 2000 and 2001 are causing regulators and prosecutors to re-examine the connection. Some outside experts say they may find that California played a crucial role in the company's demise."
This is the kind of sleazy journalism that you could build an entire class on media ethics around. At the beginning of the fourth paragraph the article finally gets around to mentioning—in an afterthought carefully quarantined by em-dashes—the fact that Enron was, essentially, a bullshit corporation solely dedicated to the illegal manipulation of power prices and the defrauding of investors:
"Fallout from the documents—memorandums that appear to offer the first proof that Enron deliberately manipulated California's energy market—widened yesterday."
The article then appears to offer an explanation for "California's role" in the "Enron mystery." In a journalistic sleight of hand that can only be described as Orwellian, history is reverse-engineered to make it appear as if Enron were just the unwitting victim of California's maniacal "power crisis," despite the nearly indisputable fact that said "crisis" was an illusion caused entirely by Enron all along. The Times tries to make the case that it was the power price caps, imposed only after what can now be called "The Rape of California" by Enron, that brought about Enron's collapse. The argument being, once the scoundrels at Enron were being called to account for their vile price manipulations, the bubble burst, and their imaginary "profits" suddenly became "losses."
And it was all California's fault.
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