this one goes out to all my Singin' in the Rain ot3 truthers—
Cosmo Brown had always known it would end like this.
Cosmo was a lot of things—in fact, you could argue he was too many—but he wasn’t dumb.
From the early years, when Cosmo and Don were just kids playing for pennies in pool halls, to their stint dodging rotten vegetables on Vaudeville stages across the very backwaters of America’s backwaters, to their first real breath of success in Hollywood (and then the second and the third and the fourth), Cosmo would catch a glimpse of his handsome, charismatic friend from the corner of his eye—a flash of dark hair, that perfect tooth powder ad smile—and know that for all Don’s protestations, someday the guy was gonna meet a wonderful girl and get married, settle down, and very gently slip off to the far edge of Cosmo’s life.
So yes, Cosmo had seen Kathy Selden coming. Not the details, not her sense of humor or her musical little laugh or the madcap way she really threw herself into dancing with them around Don’s place at 1:30 in the morning—and okay, certainly not the part at the beginning where she had jumped out of a cake at a party, but he thought a fella could be excused for not correctly divining that.
The general outline of the thing, though, how Don’s eyes followed her around a room...he had been preparing for Don to propose to Kathy ever since she’d tried to throw a pie at Don’s face. And when the happy day came, Cosmo had been ready with his best man suit, his best man speech, a slightly updated version of “Here Comes the Bride” that’d had Don and Kathy laughing all the way down the aisle.
Don and Kathy would buy a house together. They would have a swimming pool and a dog and then inevitably, a small parade of adorable little snot-nosed kids who would call him Uncle Cosmo, and they would spend less and less time with him, not on purpose but busy with the rest of their lives, and ultimately Cosmo would learn to make his peace with it because he’d have no other choice and he would have to try to move on and not live too much in his memories. He could picture it so clearly, he figured if the songwriting gig with Monumental didn’t pan out, he could always return to the backwater circuit with a new act: The Amazing Cosmo of the Cosmos—ladies and gentlemen, he sees the future, he reads the stars, he silently pines for his best married pal and all the while tap dancing!
Don and Kathy inviting him along on their honeymoon, though—that part was a surprise.
“What?” said Cosmo, hands frozen over the piano keys. He’d been busy with a brand-new assignment; on the heels of The Dancing Cavalier, offers were pouring in and he’d taken the first one scoring a movie that didn’t star anyone he was secretly in love with.
Don had looked a little wounded when Cosmo broke the news last week, but a guy had to start making his own way in the world. Besides, orchestrating layers of strings to swell as the camera zoomed in on Don and Kathy blissfully locking lips in radiant monochrome, oblivious to the rest of the world—well, Cosmo knew that dance, he had mastered the footwork, and he didn’t especially feel like a reprise.
It wasn’t lost on him that Kathy had dropped by his rehearsal space alone today. Of course, he had no idea what this meant—he didn’t think it was about the new job; Don didn’t tend to stay sore at him for that long—but Kathy was acting perfectly natural, and so probably the smart thing was to follow her lead.
“It’s a two-week transatlantic cruise,” she said now, gracefully dropping beside him on the piano bench. “We thought it would be nice to see Europe, take in the sights, get away from all the cameras.”
“Ah yes, such a wallflower, our dear Don,” said Cosmo solemnly. “Besieged on all sides by the love of his public, a tragedy of our times, up there with Lear! Hamlet! Caesar! The one with all the Greeks and the giant wooden horse, nay, nay, neigh.” He played a tragic little trill, for effect. Kathy huffed a laugh and smacked his arm.
“You know that’s not it,” she said. “Being watched all the time—we can’t always do what we want. It’s rotten.”
Tell me about it, thought Cosmo.
He was sort of seeing a fight choreographer named Archibald, who came from old money and was a “the third” or a “the fifth” but nice enough Cosmo might even forgive him for that. Archibald was trim and athletic, with dark brown hair that was just starting to go gray at the temples and enough discretion that Cosmo didn’t think they’d get caught. The only problem was that he didn’t laugh at Cosmo’s jokes, seemed to just tolerate them.
“What do you two even talk about, then?” Don had asked, when Cosmo had let this slip over drinks the same night he’d explained about the new movie project. (Cosmo had been trying to spend less time with Don and Kathy since the wedding but Don had said, “C’mon, pal, we miss you” and Kathy had laid one hand on his arm and peered up at him with her big green eyes and Cosmo was only one man.)
Cosmo had frowned, because Don hated Archibald, for reasons that were frankly mysterious. Then he’d looked up and grinned a grin he didn’t exactly feel and said,
“Tell you when you’re older,” and then Don had choked on his dry Martini even though Cosmo knew Don knew about Cosmo’s tendencies. It wasn’t something they discussed, and Cosmo had never properly gone with a guy before, but whenever a big-shot producer started complaining about all the degenerate queers in showbiz, Don always sharply steered the conversation someplace else. It was all very gallant and noble and knightly, and someday Don would play King Arthur and Kathy his lady Guinevere—
“Honestly, sometimes it feels as if we’re living in a fishbowl,” said Kathy now, in the present.
“And so your solution is to relocate,” said Cosmo, “to the biggest fishbowl on this here magnificent earth. The mighty ocean!” He struck up a sea shanty. “Oh blow the man down, blow the man down / way ay, blow the man down…”
Not everyone appreciated his musical flights of fancy, but when Cosmo turned, she was leaning with her elbow on the side arm of the piano, watching him with her chin on her hand and laughing.
“Just for two weeks,” she said. “So, are you coming?”
“With you two,” said Cosmo, just so there could be no misunderstandings. “On your one and only honeymoon.”
“Yes,” said Kathy.
“As what, your first mate?”
“Sure.” She grinned and threw him a quick salute. Cosmo was almost never attracted to women but in this case, he understood the appeal.
He swallowed. “You are aware of that ancient saying, ‘Two’s company and three’s a fast track to divorce court’?”
“You’re hardly a threat to our marriage, Cosmo,” she said, and he agreed, of course, in both directions, even, but it still stung to hear her say it out loud. For want of anything better to do, he gasped, clutched a hand to his chest and reeled backwards so hard, he threw himself off the piano bench, landing in a somersault on the floor.
Kathy spun around fluidly on the bench to face him, pleated skirt whirling a little, heels of her shoes clicking together.
“Oh, I said that badly,” she said. “I only mean that it’s more fun when you’re around. We have a better time, Don and me both. Remember the night we decided to make Dueling Cavalier a musical?”
“Do I remember the best night of my life?” Cosmo peered up at her from the hardwood. “Why yes, madam, now that you mention it, I believe it might ring a bell or two.”
“The best—” She frowned for a moment, and he remembered then that as a newly married woman, a newly married woman to Don Lockwood, no less, she’d no doubt experienced any number of evenings that blew that one out of the water.
Even besides that, it felt awfully revealing all of a sudden. Cosmo threw an arm over his eyes. He felt naked. He wished he was naked, because that might at least distract from whatever his face was doing.
“So it beats your time with Archibald, then?” said Kathy shrewdly.
Cosmo uncovered his eyes. He forgot, sometimes, that new as Kathy was to the moving pictures business, she was still a city girl, with a city girl’s worldliness. Also, Don had probably told her; that seemed like the kind of second-hand secrets married people shared with each other. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Hardly a topic for mixed company,” he said.
There was a pause.
“So yes,” she said and smiled with a smugness that would’ve been unbecoming were she not as cute as a button.
“What do you and Don have against the poor man anyway?” he groused. “He’s never done so much as sneezed in your direction, and if he did, I’m sure he’d use a handkerchief.”
“For one thing, we know you could do better,” said Kathy, folding her arms.
Cosmo elbowed his way back to sitting, brushing himself off with dignity. “Well, better’s not exactly knocking on my door right now.”
“This town doesn’t have an ounce of sense.” She reached down to offer him a hand up, pulling Cosmo to his feet; she was stronger than she looked. “Listen, two weeks away, it’ll be good for you.”
“What about you two?” Cosmo protested as he reclaimed his spot on the bench, Kathy sliding to make room.
“What about us?” said Kathy with wide eyes.
“Two newlyweds might want some alone time?” he offered weakly.
Kathy shrugged. “I told you, there won’t be reporters or cameras. It’ll be plenty private.”
“What about your matrimonial needs?”
“Which needs?”
His eyes narrowed; she was a terrific actress but suddenly he wasn’t sure he was buying it. Kathy wasn’t dumb either.
“You have to know what I mean. Don’t make me play Cole Porter at you,” said Cosmo. She hesitated, and Cosmo began to pluck out a melody: “Birds do it, bees do it / even educated fleas do it…” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Let’s do it,” sang Kathy, finishing the stanza in her lovely alto, “let’s fall in love.”
Cosmo stopped playing.
“I do know,” she said simply, “of course I do, and we’re not worried about it, alright? Listen, do you want to go?”
Cosmo, who had been carefully not asking himself that question, stared down at the piano keys. Did he want to go? He thought back to that night at Don’s, the three of them giddy with excitement and inspiration and sleep deprivation, running through the house, clowning around and dancing with no audience except each other—he hadn’t felt like a hanger-on then, like a third wheel or an extra limb or a chaperone. He’d felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, one note of a perfect chord.
Still.
“I can’t swim,” he said.
“They’ll have lifejackets,” said Kathy.
“I’ll have to work.”
“We’ll bring a piano.”
“All my houseplants will die,” said Cosmo.
“All your houseplants are fake,” she said. This was true, although he wasn’t sure how she knew since she’d never been to his house. She sighed. “Remember the night of that first screening, when you were about to expose Lina and instead of explaining what was happening, Don told me I had to sing, that I didn’t have a choice?”
He winced, thinking of Kathy’s heartbroken, tear-stained face before they’d pulled up the curtain and revealed who was really singing when Lina moved her lips.
“Yes, and I feel just awful about it.”
“Well, Don doesn’t,” said Kathy. “Because he knew it would take too long to convince me to do something that mean to her.”
“Mean?” Cosmo echoed. “She tried to trap you in a lifelong contract and steal your voice. A common sea witch wouldn’t stoop so low.”
“But there wasn’t time,” she pressed. “And anyway, he knew how it would end.”
“What’s your point?”
“We already bought your tickets,” said Kathy.
Cosmo gaped at her.
“We’ve cleared the trip with everyone at Monumental and anyway, like I said, we’ll have a piano on the boat.”
Distantly, he was aware his mouth was still hanging open. Kathy reached over with one light finger under his chin and gently closed it.
“That’s better,” she said, folding her hands daintily in her lap. It was around this time she seemed to realize it wasn’t some routine, that Cosmo really was well and truly stunned. “Of course, nobody is going to force you to go with us if you truly don’t want to,” she said into the silence.
“These tickets,” he said at last, “are they refundable?”
“Gosh,” said Kathy easily, “I can’t imagine they are, no.”
The thing was, none of them were hurting for money or work anymore, so the fact that Don and Kathy might be out even a few hundred dollars didn’t catch at him the way it might’ve some years earlier. No, the thought that really seized his imagination was the mental image of Don and Kathy planning this together, Don and Kathy discussing the matter with each other, maybe over breakfast—toast and coffee in their dressing gowns, so sure it was the right thing to do that they’d decided to just go ahead and make preparations: oh and a ticket for Cosmo, of course.
He could do it, he realized. He could go. He wanted to go. It was foolish, but Cosmo was an entertainer; he’d been doing foolish things in front of a roomful of witnesses since he was in shortpants.
“I’ll pack tonight,” he said.
“Perfect!” Kathy hopped off the bench and straightened out her dress. “And bring something nice to wear at dinner for a night or two; it doesn’t need to be black-tie formal, a good suit will do.”
He nodded. “I shall leave the top hat and monocle at home. Two weeks, you say?”
“Yes, and another half-day on either side flying to the harbor and back.” She reached into her coat pocket, and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “The itinerary,” she said. “Don and I are so glad you’ll be coming.”
“Uh-huh,” said Cosmo. “Say, where is that fella, anyway? What’s the big idea, can’t even stick around to ask his best pal to his own honeymoon?”
“He’s planning the trip,” said Kathy brightly. “Last-minute details. Anyway, he thought you and I should have a chat, one on one. He thought it might help.”
He blinked. “Help what?”
“Help us,” she said.
It was all starting to feel like a farce, like one of those old Vaudeville acts with a lot of fast talking.
“Did it?” he asked.
“I think so,” said Kathy warmly. She turned and began to walk towards the door. “See you at the airport tomorrow. Six AM sharp.”
“Six AM,” he said, and then, foolishly, “You know, I can see why he likes you.”
Kathy dimpled. “Oh, likewise!” She tossed him another smile and then she was heading out of sight down the hallway, shoes clacking rhythmically on the tile.
“Well,” said Cosmo to no one. He felt pole-axed, he decided. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt pole-axed in his life before, but there was no other word for it.
He played a chord, then another chord, then a few more.
“Pole-axed,” he sang, “out of whack,
when you are near there’s only one drawback:
I can’t be clever, no I lack the knack,
Darling, I’m pole-axed, out of whack around you!”
It wasn’t exactly Cole Porter, but he’d take it, he thought, reaching for his pen. There was still an hour or two left before he’d need to race traffic home and dig out his suitcase. Apparently, he had early morning plans.
(ETA: if you didn't see, there is now a second part here!)
(ETA THE SECOND: the whole finished thing is now here!
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One of America’s most corporate-crime-friendly bankruptcy judges forced to recuse himself
Today (Oct 16) I'm in Minneapolis, keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. Thursday (Oct 19), I'm in Charleston, WV to give the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Friday (Oct 20), I'm at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.
"I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." The now-famous quip from Robert Reich cuts to the bone of corporate personhood. Corporations are people with speech rights. They are heat-shields that absorb liability on behalf of their owners and managers.
But the membrane separating corporations from people is selectively permeable. A corporation is separate from its owners, who are not liable for its deeds – but it can also be "closely held," and so inseparable from those owners that their religious beliefs can excuse their companies from obeying laws they don't like:
https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2014/10/13/hobby-lobby-and-closely-held-corporations/
Corporations – not their owners – are liable for their misdeeds (that's the "limited liability" in "limited liablity corporation"). But owners of a murderous company can hold their victims' families hostage and secure bankruptcies for their companies that wipe out their owners' culpability – without any requirement for the owners to surrender their billions to the people they killed and maimed:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed
Corporations are, in other words, a kind of Schroedinger's Cat for impunity: when it helps the ruling class, corporations are inseparable from their owners; when that would hinder the rich and powerful, corporations are wholly distinct entities. They exist in a state of convenient superposition that collapses only when a plutocrat opens the box and decides what is inside it. Heads they win, tails we lose.
Key to corporate impunity is the rigged bankruptcy system. "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," so every successful civilization has some system for discharging debt, or it risks collapse:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/
When you or I declare bankruptcy, we have to give up virtually everything and endure years (or a lifetime) of punitive retaliation based on our stained credit records, and even then, our student debts continue to haunt us, as do lawless scumbag debt-collectors:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act
When a giant corporation declares bankruptcy, by contrast, it emerges shorn of its union pension obligations and liabilities owed to workers and customers it abused or killed, and continues merrily on its way, re-offending at will. Big companies have mastered the Texas Two-Step, whereby a company creates a subsidiary that inherits all its liabilities, but not its assets. The liability-burdened company is declared bankrupt, and the company's sins are shriven at the bang of a judge's gavel:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit
Three US judges oversee the majority of large corporate bankruptcies, and they are so reliable in their deference to this scheme that an entire industry of high-priced lawyers exists solely to game the system to ensure that their clients end up before one of these judges. When the Sacklers were seeking to abscond with their billions in opioid blood-money and stiff their victims' families, they set their sights on Judge Robert Drain in the Southern District of New York:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers
To get in front of Drain, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, NY, then waited 192 days to file bankruptcy papers there (it takes six months to establish jurisdiction). Their papers including invisible metadata that identified the case as destined for Judge Drain's court, in a bid to trick the court's Case Management/Electronic Case Files system to assign the case to him.
The case was even pre-captioned "RDD" ("Robert D Drain"), to nudge clerks into getting their case into a friendly forum.
If the Sacklers hadn't opted for Judge Drain, they might have set their sights on the Houston courthouse presided over by Judge David Jones, the second of of the three most corporate-friendly large bankruptcy judges. Judge Jones is a Texas judge – as in "Texas Two-Step" – and he has a long history of allowing corporate murderers and thieves to escape with their fortunes intact and their victims penniless:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice
But David Jones's reign of error is now in limbo. It turns out that he was secretly romantically involved with Elizabeth Freeman, a leading Texas corporate bankruptcy lawyer who argues Texas Two-Step cases in front of her boyfriend, Judge David Jones.
Judge Jones doesn't deny that he and Freeman are romantically involved, but said that he didn't think this fact warranted disclosure – let alone recusal – because they aren't married and "he didn't benefit economically from her legal work." He said that he'd only have to disclose if the two owned communal property, but the deed for their house lists them as co-owners:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24032507-general-warranty-deed
(Jones claims they don't live together – rather, he owns the house and pays the utility bills but lets Freeman live there.)
Even if they didn't own communal property, judges should not hear cases where one of the parties is represented by their long term romantic partner. I mean, that is a weird sentence to have to type, but I stand by it.
The case that led to the revelation and Jones's stepping away from his cases while the Fifth Circuit investigates is a ghastly – but typical – corporate murder trial. Corizon is a prison healthcare provider that killed prisoners with neglect, in the most cruel and awful ways imaginable. Their families sued, so Corizon budded off two new companies: YesCare got all the contracts and other assets, while Tehum Care Services got all the liabilities:
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/prominent-bankruptcy-judge-david-jones-033801325.html
Then, Tehum paid Freeman to tell her boyfriend, Judge Jones, to let it declare bankruptcy, leaving $173m for YesCare and allocating $37m for the victims suing Tehum. Corizon owes more than $1.2b, "including tens of millions of dollars in unpaid invoices and hundreds of malpractice suits filed by prisoners and their families who have alleged negligent care":
https://www.kccllc.net/tehum/document/2390086230522000000000041
Under the deal, if Corizon murdered your family member, you would get $5,000 in compensation. Corizon gets to continue operating, using that $173m to prolong its yearslong murder spree.
The revelation that Jones and Freeman are lovers has derailed this deal. Jones is under investigation and has recused himself from his cases. The US Trustee – who represents creditors in bankruptcy cases – has intervened to block the deal, calling Tehum "a barren estate, one that was stripped of all of its valuable assets as a result of the combination and divisional mergers that occurred prior to the bankruptcy filing."
This is the third high-profile sleazy corporate bankruptcy that had victory snatched from the jaws of defeat this year: there was Johnson and Johnson's attempt to escape from liability from tricking women into powder their vulvas with asbestos (no, really), the Sacklers' attempt to abscond with billions after kicking off the opioid epidemic that's killed 800,000+ Americans and counting, and now this one.
This one might be the most consequential, though – it has the potential to eliminate one third of the major crime-enabling bankruptcy judges serving today.
One down.
Two to go.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
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