Although there is feverish energy and tumult, there is also consternation. While everyone agrees it is time for heroics, we’re still holding on for a hero. So far, no go. The crowd searches each others’ eyes and scans the vids. It seems almost anyone would do, given the givens, but somehow every nomination inspires a plurality of objection so the top candidates rattle along on the shoulders and heads of the second tier-types while the also rans, run up behind. And the clock is ticking, no one can ignore that. Whom, oh whom will we ever find to send to the Head Office? Head Office, of course, is a fine American can-do euphemism for the latest French engenue taking Hollywood by storm. Not Anouk Aimee, the guillotine.

Why no volunteers? I had a shirt that was my favorite shirt and it suffered the fate of all favorites; it was worn to shreds. It had a Gary Larson cartoon on it, two bears being observed through a rifle scope. The one bear, who has noticed the hunter smiles and waves and points at the other fellow. This is substanially what is happening on the public stage but it is not two bears, it is a whole Country Bear Jamboree! Only the bears are divided in two camps and the camps have devolved into antagonistic cliques and the cliques are composed of individual bears that are conflicted within themselves so the finger pointing is omni-directional. Roseanne Moore would like to shorten up the bankers and traders and one thing you can say about the Occupy Wall Streeters, they have left ample room for executions. Mayor Bloomberg, given his supportive noises, could be expected to step up to the task. In apposition to OWS we have TEA. These folks also are aggravated and feel themselves ill-used by “the system” and they also seek to behead their presumed enemies; only through elections. These heads will roll in the sense that they will roll their possessions out of their offices on little carts; perhaps then to jail but most likely not. So there is some conflict in the resolution of these two podes however media types and OWS organizers may want it. In a spirit of compromise let me propose to attack the nexus between Big Gub and Big Biz which we all know exists and all agree must be throttled if not destroyed. The hipsters want it so to collect their dues from the Bigs; the squares want it done to keep the Bigs from draining themselves and everything else. These ends might be at cross purposes but for tactical reasons, let’s agree to call a halt to business as usual.

If we are going after The Bigs, we should go first for the Biggest. That would be those fat, fraternal twins, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Any institution whose name starts with an F, however folksie, must be presumed to be a member of Your Federal Family. So these two are despite claims to the contrary at their birth and all their long, long lives. If your gripes are with the mortgage industry, all roads lead to Fannie and Freddie like all roads once lead to the crib of Romulus and Remus. Yet these giant corporations of finance are hardly ever mentioned, are they? In Gucci Park the PolarFleeced rabble bemoans the fact that corporations lack a neck to chop. And so they do, literally, but the lesser players with offices on Wall Street are no less neckless, that hasn’t stopped the occupation of their alleys and streetcorners. It hasn’t stopped the invasions of their chief officers homes. It hasn’t halted the assault of urine and feces at their lunchtables. And that was going on before the first OWS tent was pitched; long before Bank of America started charging you five dollars for your ancient birthrights. If Wells Fargo played fast and loose with their mortgage portfolios, and they did, it was with the full, eager and lucrative involvement of these buyers of loans and sellers of securities; with the knowing connivance of the SEC and with the cooperation of Congressional overseers. I am not suggesting not to hang the bankers, nor even to hang them last. Just let’s not hang them first. But there is a neck most deserving of that distinction.

Whether you believe in the Great Man Theory or think history is like the flow of a river, and we are but rocks, on this topic there truly is a single scoundrel, walking around free as you please, without whom the bubbles could not have inflated and there would not have been the even more disastrous attempts to re-inflate their bursted carcasses. That would be our own Bubble Boy, from the not-mean-enough streets of Brookline; the one, the only Barney Frank. Representative Frank is probably the best known name in the House now that Weiner has faded from the scene. His eagerness to appear on any willing media on nearly any topic has endeared him to booking agents and the nation at large. Ostentatiously gay, infinitely nasty, pompous, feral and fat, the man is a disgrace in his carriage, in the conduct of his office and in the conduct of his romantic life which conspicuously overlap. Who recalls now those events of decades ago when Mr. Frank’s housemate and bedmate was arrested for operating a gay brothel out of the Frank family residence? Perhaps you recall the Frank indoor plantation which raised Hemp for Victory under halogen lamps? Neither of these activities were known to Mr. Frank though. Astonishingly, in our current crisis, this history of opportunistic blindness, deafness and failure of olfaction was used as a defense to any Frank indictment. Look how much this guy DOESN’T notice! Is it so much to believe that he didn’t understand what was going on at Fannie and Freddie?

That is a good one. A good one indeed. But Frank’s actions and statements make such a defense useful only among the useless. Those who assert that Barney was a fool certainly are putting forward his best case. It cannot survive the weakest memory, however. Has anyone heard the name Jim Johnson? This gentleman is the successor to Frank’s arrested pimp boytoy. He got a much better payday though, having secured a plum job as a bigwig in the mortgage industry, yes at Fannie. One good look at Barney will convince any fair minded American that he paid his dues indeed for his position, still that cannot excuse or make endurable the state of affairs when one of the largest financial instituions in the nation, and a department of the government in all but name, is overseen by their chairman’s but-buddy. Fans of equality might answer; if these were married hetero squares would one be allowed to manage the other in the receipt and dispensation of billions in loans, assets and tax money? Could be a conflict of interest there. And in the Frank/Johnson matter this is no hypothetical. The long term alteration of lending regs and practices to expand credit to the uncreditable has Frank’s hoof prints all over it. The video evidence is overwhelming with Frank even encouraging more rolling of the fiscal dice, which would be YOUR home, if you have a mortgage, even as the luck had long run out. Frank personally and repeatedly fought any attempt, foremost those by Bush and McCain on separate occassions, to even closely examine the state of Fannie and Freddie as an insult to the fine, intelligent and honorable men at their head. Frank’s homosexuality, media alliances and bulletproof liberal District made him an untouchable, enjoying affirmations of his every action comensurate with Al Sharpton; the highest standard.

Today a few of the Wall Street Occupiers have split off from the main camp and intend to march on the homes of Rupert Murdoch, the Koch’s, Jamie Dimon and a few other malefactors of great wealth. They are skipping Mike Bloomberg for reasons unknown but remarkably no one is proposing a march or sit-in or even any frank language for Barney. He seems to be teflon but no one knows because no one dares reach to grab him by the collar. Any who attempt such a thing, declaring that satisfying Barney Frank’s sexual needs may indeed be a proper function of the government; a task of such monumental difficulty that only a national effort could take it on but perhaps the price is a bit high, well, what are you? Homophobic? You aren’t homophobic, are you? Because that is bad. The fear of being painted with this vapid accusation is indeed the true reason that Barney Frank, architect of the inflation and collapse of the housing market that has harmed us so deeply, is free to, guess what?

Do it all again.

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