Kingpostgate Slogs On
Some things start small and seemingly innocuous, but grow big and nasty. Just ask the ghost of Richard Nixon about his early denials of having anything to do with the little burglary at Watergate. Or Anthony Weiner about his emphatic denials about having anything to do with photos of his junk being sexted to women. Or the San Francisco Fire Department, which ever so slowly and agonizingly confessed to having twice run over the young Chinese girl who survived the Asiana plane crash, thus besmirching their reputation.
We’d like this whole mess of Oracle Team USA having illegally modified their AC45s and the accusations of cheating to just go away so we can get on with the Louis Vuitton Finals, the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup, the America’s Cup Finals and the Superyacht Regatta. But the mess and the accusations won’t go away. A big reason is that Oracle’s Russell Coutts, unfortunately, sounds as prevaricating as Nixon, Weiner and SFFD.
In today’s Chronicle, Tom Fitzgerald asked Coutts why Oracle Team USA employees would take it upon themselves to break the rules, if the payoff was insignificant and the risk of punishment so great?
"That’s a really good question," Coutts responded.
As Coutts is the honcho of the OTUSA America’s Cup effort, does anyone believe that he doesn’t know exactly what was done to the AC45s, who did it, and why?
"We don’t know the facts," Coutts went on to say, causing the Bullshit Detector app on our iPhone to red-line and the phone to catch fire in our hand.
Excuse us, Mr. I Think Everybody Else in the World Is a Brain Dead Moron, but do you really think anybody believes your responses? Or that they don’t make you look like a complete idiot? But maybe that’s why you have been reported to get paid more than $1 million a month.
Coutts told Fitzgerald that he had "a fair idea" who might have been responsible for the illegal modifications, but couldn’t identify them because of state employee-confidentiality rules.
A friend ran that statement through the Bullshit Detector on his Android phone, and the less expensive smartphone simply vaporized. One of the best ruses politicians use to explain why they can’t give you an explanation for a simple — but devastating question — is that it breaks some phony confidentiality rule and/or gag order.
We still can’t get our head wrapped around this whole mystery/scandal, as no explanation seems to make much sense at all, but we do know that the longer OTUSA pussyfoots around in giving a believable explanation, the worse they look and the more suspicions grow. As they say when you’re caught flagrantly breaking a rule during a race, if you gotta eat shit, you may as well take big bites.