Comedians often develop the most curious obsessions with their grievances. So let's explore some more my "attorney's" exploits in the lawyerly arts.
Let me fast forward to my second stint in jail. One of the new guys (who was there for some crime of the century) was quite pleased that his public defender was actually in private practice. So, obviously, our defendant would receive the highest quality defense. I listened to his story until it became clear that his attorney was my attorney as well.
I said, "You know you're gettin' the chair, right? Oh, he'll be buckling down the leather straps. You're doomed. I hope you have your affairs in order." It's my special brand of jailhouse bedside manner.
To the best of my ability to determine, my lawyer was what is known as a "panel attorney." That's where private law firms offload their deadwood on to the federal government and charge full price.
If you are assigned a panel attorney, you will be convicted, no two ways about it.
I'm not demanding Clarence Darrow here. All I ask is that you allow me to communicate to you information that will make the case go bye bye in five minutes. Take off your social worker hat. Take off your six-credit-hour, undergrad psychiatrist hat. Try playing lawyer for a change. Crack open a law book. Confine yourself to your one represented field of expertise.
So I remember when I got hauled off to jail the second time for dutifully not existing. This is the part where my attorney and I were in conference and his face flushed when I told him that my audience and I were laughing our asses off at him.
"Wh, why would you want the prosecutor to defend you?"
"Because she knows what she's doing."
"And I don't?"
"You can't even calculate a sentencing guideline. You had me pleading guilty to the completely wrong sentence. You don't remember miscalculating the sentencing guideline?"
And then he replied in a fashion that cemented his status as someone better suited to presiding over real estate closings. His eyes defocussed and moved ever so slightly off mine and he said in a dreamy voice as if he were floating through space, "No." He gently shook his head from side to side like he simply couldn't remember! It must be all in his client's head. Poor Chris. Poor Chris needs his meds and that's why Chris has this false recollection of his.
("No, Chris, I don't remember that. I know it's a matter of public record, but I'm so stupid that I'm going to claim to be unaware of publicly available facts. Now excuse me as I float across the galaxy and inspect this pulsar over here. Maybe I'll find my new career as a psychiatrist and open my own practice and plant my flag of excellence, just like I have in the field of law.")
And then, thirty days later, after I got out of jail this second time for my crime of complying with everyone's demand that I not exist, he and his sidekick were all smiles. Apparently someone up the chain of command "read them in" to the whole story. "Yeah, guys? Just mind your p's and q's with Chris King. If he needs to speak with the president on whatever matter, he just types something. And he has a curious and as yet publicly undefined relationship with the Secret Service."
So there I was, standing on the sidewalk outside the courthouse in my prison blues, once again disgorged from the maw of the United States legal system, unsure as it was whether it would choke to death on me. And my attorney and his sidekick were there, and they congratulated themselves on a job well done, and they were quite solicitous of my needs (better late than never) and they said, "Maybe you can write a fun story about us, kind of like how you wrote one for the prosecutor, where you two ducked into the broom closet and made out. Can you write a fun story for us?"
Oh, I'll write a fun story alright. Don't you worry about that.
See, in comedy there is an express ticket to being ridiculed, a maglev train straight to getting your pants pulled down right here in front of everyone, and that is to request being treated in a gentle, fun manner while, one, not knowing the first thing what you're doing and, two, feigning ignorance of your own errors.
I in no way require that people be nice. I require only that people know what they're doing. And that they be honest.
