Do you know what a goober is? I’ve only associated the word with some uncouth expulsion of a bodily substance. Is a goober what you pick out of your nose. Or, if you were to hold your finger over one nostril and shoot something out of the other one is that a goober? (Something I’ve never done by the way.) Or, maybe it is a goober that you spit over the railing while you’re sitting in a rocker on your front porch with an early morning can of beer. (Also something I’ve never done. My porch is screened in.)
You can imagine my surprise when I looked up the definition of goober and didn’t find anything about snot rockets. A quick Google search brought up two definitions.
A peanut
A foolish person
So if you’re short and a fool it’s sort of a double goober. There’s also a regional thread as you are more likely to be a goober if you are from Georgia or Arkansas. I was looking for a word for Newt Gingrich. And what about when that goober from Arkansas dropped a goober on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.
But that’s not all. There is a disgusting concoction of peanut butter and fruit preserves that goes under the brand name of Goober and another Nestle product called Goobers which are chocolate covered peanuts.
As usual, I turned to the Urban Dictionary for more elaboration. There I found “basically a goober is just a kindhearted, rather oblivious goofball. It’s a term of endearment really. It comes from the ancient Scottish verb ‘to goob’, which has to do with doing a dance and smiling sheepishly while doing so, exposing the goubs in one’s teeth. Basically a goober is just a kindhearted, rather oblivious goofball.”
Unpacking all that leaves you with a vision of a doofus doing some sort of jig with a big smile on his face so you can see the stuff stuck between his teeth. That brings us back full circle to the uncouth bodily substance issue.
If you were a college student in 1969 there’s a good chance you saw the movie Easy Rider at least once. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda riding through the South on their choppers were the Marlboro Men of the counter culture.
And if you were moseying or truckin’ across campus at the time you may well have had the music of Easy Rider recycling in your head, including the song “Don’t Bogart Me” by a group called the Fraternity of Man (who are remembered for very little else). The song is best known for the first line of its chorus: “Don’t bogart that joint, my friend.” Lest you aren’t familiar with the term bogart, the next line of the song “pass it over to me” makes the meaning pretty clear.
This was my introduction to the word bogart, an antonym to the word share. Or, to use it is a sentence:
“Jeff Bezos, don’t bogart the world’s wealth.”
“Don’t bogart that search traffic, Google”
or
“Rich countries, don’t bogart those COVID vaccine doses.”
Up until the time I walked out of the movie theater humming that Fraternity of Man tune, my only encounter with the word bogart involved the famous actor Humphrey Bogart. Turns out there is a connection between the guy who played Rick Blaine in Casablanca and selfish behavior involving a joint. Bogart was known to dangle a cigarette out of the side of his mouth without actually pulling on it. While surely few would want to share that cigarette, this is the behavior that came to be christened “bogarting.” The actor Bogart, by the way, died of esophageal cancer.
Frustratingly, spellcheck refuses to accept bogart as a word. Merriam-Webster knows better. The meaning is pretty straightforward: “to consume without sharing,” adding the variations bogarts, bogarting and bogarted. The Urban Dictionary definition is a little more expansive: “to knowingly and covertly attempt to consume a larger share of the communal weed than is proper, at the expense of one’s homeboys/girls.” Living as I do in a state that recently legalized recreational marijuana, I’m expecting my homeboys/girls to bring the verb bogart back into fashion.
The Oligarchs, Michelle PostRegeneration. The Taiwanese artist Kang Muxiang produced this from steel elevator cable from the skyscraper Taipai 101
Seward Johnson’s artists
Seward Johnson died a little more than a year ago in March of 2020 at age 90. He was the grandson of Robert Wood Johnson I, the founder of Johnson & Johnson. He worked for the family firm for a bit before he was fired by his uncle Robert Wood Johnson II.
Johnson is famous for his giant and life-sized bronze statues, often castings of living people engaged in their daily activities. He was the CEO of the Atlantic Foundation which created and opened the Grounds for Sculpture in 1992.
Virgil Ortiz is from Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, where he was born in 1969 and where he still lives. His grandmother Laurencita Herrera and his mother, Seferina Ortiz, were both renowned Pueblo potters. While Oritz works in several mediums, he primarily considers himself a potter.
His creations are focused on a historical event that occurred in his part of the world in 1680. The Pueblo Rebellion that took place in that year has been called the first American revolution. Pueblo tribes throughout the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico banded together to drive out the Spanish settlers, a goal they accomplished, ridding the province of 2,000 Spaniards.
Oritz tells that story through the creation of sci-fi characters leading the rebellion in the year 2180. In Ortiz’s story, Tahu, a young blind woman, leads the Venutian soldiers in a futuristic rebellion. With forces that include an army of blind archers and aeronauts she leads her people on a quest to find a new safe place to live after their homeland has been destroyed.
Kade, Cacique of the Horseman Tribe
Tahu
Venutian soldiers
Tahu
Aeronaut costume
Photos are of Virgil Ortiz works on display at the Montclair (N.J.) Art Museum. You can see more of his art at https://www.virgilortiz.com/.
Samuel B. Kent called himself the Lion King, King Kent, the emperor of Galveston. He liked to tell anyone who would listen that he was the government. History, however, will remember him by another nickname, the sex judge.
Born in Denver, but raised in Houston, Kent was all Texas. At 6’4″ he was part of a state champion basketball team in Houston, attended the University of Texas in Austin where he was an English major, and later graduated from UT Law School. After graduation he moved to Galveston where he worked for a private law firm. A member of the Republican Party, he was nominated by George Bush and confirmed as U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas in 1990. While it is common for district courts to have multiple judges, Kent was the only show in town in Galveston.
In a 2009 story in Texas Monthly (Perversion of Justice), Skip Hollandsworth, describes Kent’s behavior: “As the most powerful jurist in Galveston, Judge Samuel Kent intimidated everyone: the lawyers who argued cases before him, the defendants and plaintiffs who appeared in his courtroom—and the female courthouse employees he groped, kissed, and forced himself on when no one was looking. Imperious, charismatic, and seemingly above the law, he almost got away with it. Until one woman decided to fight back.”
That woman was Kathy McBroom. McBroom, a married woman with three children, was hired in 2002 to be Kent’s case manager.
Based on her later testimony in court and in Congress, Hollandsworth describes what happened:
“Almost exactly one year after she’d taken the job, on a Friday afternoon in August 2003, Cathy was walking down the hall when she saw the judge, who had just stepped out of his private elevator. She snapped to attention. He was returning from a long lunch with friends, and as usual a courthouse security officer was accompanying him to his chambers. The judge saw Cathy and waved at her. ‘I hear there’s a new exercise room somewhere around here,’ he said. ‘Want to show it to me?’
“‘It’s right here,’ said Cathy, opening the door to a small room that had recently been equipped with a weight bench and some free weights. It was barely ten feet from the command center where the security officers worked, and she quickly led the way in. Suddenly, before she could utter a cry, the judge grabbed her, holding her head with one hand and lifting her up to crush her mouth against his. With his other hand he yanked up her blouse and bra, then tried to force his way into her skirt, tearing at her panty hose.”
Hollandsworth goes on: “It became a predictable cycle: After several months of model behavior, the judge would suddenly make a move. Pin her against a wall. Grope her through her clothes. Tell her that he wanted to give her oral sex and have her return the favor. The following day he’d apologize, promising with a shrug that it would not happen again.”
McBroom shared her story with Kent’s secretary Donna Wilkerson. Wilkerson’s response, “Me too.” McBroom filed a complaint in 2007. A year later Kent was indicted on three counts of aggravated sexual abuse. In 2009, a federal grand jury added three additional counts including another count of aggravated sexual abuse as well as abusive sexual contact and obstruction of justice.
As rumors circulated that there were some six other women ready and willing to testify against Kent, he entered a plea bargain, pleading guilty to the one count of obstruction of justice for lying to the court about his abuse. He also had to issue a statement acknowledging that he had “non-consensual sexual contact” with McBroom and Wilkerson. He was sentenced to 33 months in prison.
Kent’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, appealed to the court that his client suffered from “depression, alcoholism, diabetes and bipolar disease.” He asked that rather than resign, he be allowed to claim disability. That would allow him to collect his $169k salary for the rest of his life. One response came from the Houston Chronicle editorial writers “Cry us a river. Judge Kent’s predicament leaves us completely unmoved. He put himself there and deserves the ultimate constitutional penalty for misconduct by a federal judge—impeachment by Congress.”
After that appeal was denied, Kent submitted his resignation, dated one year from the date it was submitted. It is that forward-looking resignation, one that would allow Kent to collect his salary for a year while in jail, that prompted impeachment proceedings in Congress.
CNN covered the proceeding before the House Judiciary Committee. DeGuerin issued this statement via email: “”Judge Kent and I refuse to be part of the circus. All sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Kent were dismissed in court. The highly exaggerated, yet salacious and scandalous testimony of his former personal secretary and his former case manager is irrelevant to the grounds for impeachment and served no purpose other than to allow a few politicians to posture publicly.”
Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas offered a different view: “Judge Kent receives $465 of his taxpayer-funded salary every day he remains in office. We are here today to put an end to Judge Kent’s abuse of authority and exploitation of American taxpayers.”
Kathy McBroom and Donna Wilkerson sat side-by-side and testified before the committee. The result was that the committee voted unanimously to send four articles of impeachment to the full house. The proceedings were chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff, who would later fill the same role for the Trump I impeachment. Two of those articles referred to Kent’s abuse of the two women, the other two concerned his false statements and obstruction of justice. Three of the articles were approved unanimously while the fourth received one “present” vote.
Schiff brought the articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. On June 25, 2009, Senate representatives went to the facility where Kent was being held to serve a summons to appear at the trial. Instead, they got a new resignation letter, this one to take effect June 30. The House then passed a resolution asking the Senate to end the proceedings, which they did.
Meanwhile, the deposed judge was finding that in jail he was no longer King Kent. Kent had unsuccessfully appealed to have his sentence reconsidered, arguing that as a prisoner and ex-judge, he suffered inhumane conditions akin to torture in correctional facilities in Florida and elsewhere. In 2010, Kent filed a petition for a rehearing, arguing that he had been unjustly shunted into solitary confinement, forced to hear the screams of another inmate being raped and ordered by a ‘cruel’ sergeant in the Florida prison system to do calisthenics in the nude. The petition was denied. (Chron.com)
Kent served 29 months of his 33-month sentence. He was released in July of 2011 and was confined to his vacation home in West Texas for the remainder of his sentence. Little information about Kent is available after that, but apparently he led a quiet life in his West Texas home.
Following the Kent case, the Galveston bench was eliminated. Both McBroom and Wilerson got similar jobs at the federal courthouse in Houston.
The story surrounding the 1986 impeachment of U.S District Court Judge Harry Claiborne reads like a Hollywood script. There’s a judge stashing hundred dollar bills in a Las Vegas casino vault, a brothel owner turned state’s witness and an ethically-challenged FBI agent.
Here’s the cast of characters:
Harry Claiborne
Harry Claiborne was born in McRae, Ark., the son of a cotton farmer. His dad, Arthur Smith Claiborne once saved an immigrant farmer from a lynching by shooting the KKK stalker with buckshot. Harry apparently learned something from his father as while in the Army during World War II he was punished for opposing the internment of Japanese-Americans in camps.
Claiborne with Carol Burnett while he was representing her in a divorce proceeding.
Following his wartime service, Claiborne settled in Las Vegas. He established a private law practice there and became known for his high-profile clients. He represented Judy Garland and Carol Burnett in their divorce cases and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin in casino licensing matters. That’s in addition to a mobster or two. He was known for his antics, like bringing a giant file full of documents into the court before a case, documents that were blank pieces of paper.
Claiborne rose through the judicial ranks in Las Vegas and spent a term as a representative in the Nevada legislature. In 1978 he was appointed U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Nevada by President Jimmy Carter.
Joe Conforte
Joe Conforte is best known as the owner of the Mustang Ranch, possibly the world’s most famous brothel.
He got his start in Oakland, Calif., as a cab driver. In addition to collecting the meter fare he started matching up passengers with street walkers, and of course taking a cut. He set up his first whorehouse in Oakland where he served an exclusively Asian clientele. Seems he knew there were no Asian police officers in Oakland so this way he was sure to not get snagged by a plainclothesman.
In 1955 he moved to Nevada and set up in some trailers. He expanded from there and by 1967 he was buying out a competitor who owned the Mustang Ranch. Along the way he married Sally Burgess, who was to become the madame at the “ranch.” Conforte was known for not only paying off local officials but also entertaining them at his properties.
The Reno Gazette Journal (Sept. 23, 1990) said of Conforte, “(his) shady dealings have always haunted his efforts to present a benevolent, easy-going image. Conforte wants the world to think of him as a free-market Dionysus, the Greek god of revelry, and he’s worked hard and laid out some serious cash to get the point across.”
As an employer he was not quite so benevolent as the Gazette Journal continues, “The women will tell you in private that the Mustang Ranch is a prison under Conforte. The girls work three-week stints, and then can leave the house for no more than 45 minutes at the end of their 12-hour shift. They furnish their own room, and it’s up to them to pay rent and keep it clean.”
Joseph Yablonski
The self-proclaimed “King of Sting.” Yablonsky was the head of the FBI office in Las Vegas from 1980-1983.
A native of Newark, N.J., Yablonsky started his career at the FBI in 1952 and worked in Albuquerque, New York, MIami and Cincinnati before coming to Las Vegas. In his 2019 obituary in the Las Vegas Review Journal he is described as “well-spoken and outspoken, frequently insisting that the local media fostered anti-law enforcement and anti-government sentiments in Nevada, hindering his office’s investigations. In 1982, he refused to speak in front of a Rotary Club audience until a Las Vegas Sun reporter was forced to leave.
“But his cigar-chewing, rough-around-the-edges persona worked in his favor while working undercover with career criminals. He once joked to a Review-Journal reporter, ‘you wouldn’t buy a used car from me.’”
And these three came together…
In 1977, Conforte was arrested and charged with 10 counts of income tax evasion. He faced five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. When his appeal was denied he flew the coup, heading to Brazil.
From his exile Conforte let it be known that he was willing to sing about the bribes he paid local officials and judges. That was music to Yablonsky’s ears. The FBI agent offered the whorehouse entrepreneur millions of dollars in tax breaks and a reduced sentence for testimony against Claiborne. Based on the info from Conforte, Claiborne was charged with bribery, fraud and tax evasion.
Conforte returned from three years in exile in Brazil to testify at Clairborne’s trial. The AP report from the trial notes: “brothel owner Joe Conforte said he paid Claiborne $30,000 to derail a voter fraud investigation involving prostitutes at his Mustang Ranch bordello and gave him $55,000 more to get a tax evasion conviction dropped.” In addition, “Claiborne’s attorneys won a ruling forbidding the government to introduce evidence that the judge consorted with prostitutes employed by Conforte from 1972 until his appointment to the federal bench in 1978.”
The trial was declared a mistrial as the jury remained deadlocked. Conforte was widely believed to have perjured himself, in one instance claiming he was in the country when he was not. A second trial was held on the tax evasion charge only, a charge that wasn’t dependent on Conforte’s testimony. Claiborne was found guilty of not reporting $107,000 in income on his 1979 and 1980 tax filings. He was given a two year sentence.
When Clairborne refused to resign his judgeship and continued to collect his salary, the case was brought up in the House of Representatives. He was charged with four articles of impeachment. Three related to the failure to report income on his taxes and the other was a result of his conviction in court. The House approved the articles of impeachment unanimously by roll call vote.
When the impeachment articles came up for a Senate trial that body set up a 12-member committee and decided that testimony would be presented only to this committee rather than the full Senate. (Both Mitch McConnell and Al Gore were members of this impeachment committee.) This rule change was later cited as unconstitutional by Claiborne supporters.
Claiborne insisted he was innocent and that tax preparers were responsible for the omission. He claimed he was the victim of overzealous and ambitious federal agents. “They have been pursuing me like a pack of wolves would pursue a sick caribou.” Claiborne’s attorney Oscar Goodman was quoted by Gannett New Service (Sept. 17, 1986): “Federal investigators resorted to ‘rude, crude’ tactics of intimidation and burglary to put Nevada federal Judge Harry Claiborne in jail.” Goodman would later become mayor of Las Vegas.
Claiborne (right) with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman
Claiborne was convicted by a large bipartisan majority on three of the four articles. The article that referred to his trial conviction did not get the necessary two-third votes. The senators were concerned about a precedent. If they were to convict someone because of a court conviction, would it mean that they would have to acquit an impeached individual who had been found innocent by a court?
As he was headed off to jail, Journal Gazette reporter Ken Miller (May 15, 1986) asked:
“If he could do it over, would Claiborne do things differently.
“If he would have kept quiet rather than excoriating a group of Las Vegas Strike force prosecutors as ‘rotten bastards’ and ‘crooks and liars.’
“If he would have severed any relationship with Mustang Ranch brothel owner Joe Conforte, who almost single-handedly delivered the Claiborne indictment.
“If he would have kept his money more to himself, not cashing huge checks in casinos and not leaving a shoe box full of $100 bills for years in a Las Vegas Glitter Gulch casino vault.
“If he would have been more discreet than strolling into a Reno auto dealership and scrawling out a five-figure check for a flashy sports car for a girlfriend.
“If he would have shut up instead of roasting the U.S. Justice Department’s presence in Nevada and accusing the federal government of trying to ruin the state.”
Claiborne served 17 months of his two-year prison sentence. In 1987 he was allowed to practice law again by the Nevada Supreme Court, themselves suspicious of the feds actions in the Claiborne case. By 2004 he was suffering from cancer, heart disease and the beginnings of Alzheimer’s. He shot himself in his Las Vegas home while his fourth wife, Norma Ries, and his 22-year-old grandson watched TV in the next room.
In 1990 the IRS padlocked the Mustang Ranch and put it on the auction block with the proceeds to go to paying Conforte’s tax bills. But they apparently ended up selling it to a shell company for Conforte who continued to operate it from Brazil. In November 1995, he was indicted in absentia for thirty-three violations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The U.S. was never able to have him extradited from Brazil.
The only Cabinet member ever to be impeached was Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of War. William W. Belknapp was impeached for corruption in 1876, a corruption that was closely intertwined with his marital affairs.
Belknapp was a Civil War hero. He was a major in the Iowa Voluntary Infantry. During his active duty he participated in the Battle of Shiloh where he had his horse shot out from under him He served under General William Tecumseh Sherman in the Battle of Atlanta and joined Sherman’s march to the sea. It was Sherman who recommended Belknapp to Grant for the Secretary of War position.
Belknapp had married Cora LeRoy in 1854, but she passed away in 1862. Seven years later he married Carita S. Tomlinson of Kentucky. In Fall of an Iowa Hero, L Edward Purcell describes the Belknapps’ lifestyle at the time. “Belknapp and Carita set up housekeeping in a fashionable home in Washington, where they entertained on a grand scale. The sumptuous furnishings of the house, including imported carpets, expensive furniture and the finest crystal and china, provided the setting for lavish dinner parties. The Belknapps were among the foremost Washington socialites, treating their guests with the best food and vintages.”
Sherman himself would later link this to Belknapp’s impeachment. He told a newspaper reporter in 1876, “Of course I do not know the cause of this demoralization, but having lived in Washington during his tenure of office, I can form a pretty good idea of it. In my opinion his downfall is due more to the vicious organization of Washington society than anything else. I refer to the ridiculous extravagance of those who move in the first social circles at the Capitol. Very few of the Cabinet officers are able to live within their salaries.” (Salt Lake Tribune, March 5, 1876)
Here’s how the Belknapps supplemented that salary. Belknapp had established rules at the department that “sutlers,” appointed by him, would control all of the purchases at military forts in the West. This generally resulted in soldiers, many of them immigrants, paying much higher prices for things like boots. It also resulted in sales of guns to Native Americans, something that General George Custer resentfully testified about before a House committee investigating expenditures at the War Department.
Carita Belknapp made contact with a contractor in New York named Caleb Marsh, who was the husband of one of her friends. She suggested that Marsh apply to be the sutler for Fort Sill, which was in the Native American territory that would later become Oklahoma. She would use her influence to assure that her husband gave Marsh the post. There was, however, already a sutler at Fort Sill, John S. Evans. No problem. Marsh and Evans worked out a deal. Evans would be allowed to continue to manage the trading post and in return would pay Marsh $12,000 a year in quarterly payments. Marsh, in turn, would send half of that Carita’s way.
Carita only received one payment before dying of tuberculosis after childbirth. Purcell describes what happened after that, based on Marsh’s later testimony before the House committee. “When Marsh came to Washington for the funeral, he was drawn aside by her (Carita’s) sister Puss, then a widow caring for Belknapp’s son. Puss artlessly informed Marsh she knew about the money due Carita and said it would go now to the child in her care, When Marsh agreed to continue payments, Puss suggested the money go directly to Secretary Belknapp. From 1871 to 1976, Marsh gave Belknapp more than $20,000, all of it from Evans payoff money.”
Three years later, Amanda Tomlinson Bower (Puss), became the third Mrs Belknapp. More than 100 years later a story in the Washington Post would suggest: “Puss Belknap’s gowns, emeralds and coral-beaded parasols were infamous in Washington, attracting attention and speculation that led to investigation into her husband’s department.” (First Ladies Amid the Fray)
The investigation in the House was led by Hiester Clymer, a Democratic congressman who had been Belknapp’s roommate at Princeton. Upon hearing that Marsh would be testifying before Clymer’s Committee on Expenditures in the War Department, he booked a meeting with Grant and offered his resignation. Writing for HistoryNet, John Kostner, chronicles Grant’s summary of that meeting: “He burst into tears and took hold of my hand.…I understood that he was expecting an investigation that he could avoid by resigning; that the facts, if exposed, would not damage him so much as his wife. He spoke of his dead wife, too. I told him that he had a great many friends and that they would help him out, but he said it was impossible; that he had shouldered all the blame and would be ruined. He insisted it would save me and the government a great deal of trouble if his resignation was accepted.…So I wrote him a letter accepting the resignation.”
The resignation did not stop the impeachment. In fact, it was unanimous in the committee.
When the impeachment trial came before the Senate, Belknapp’s defense took the position that the Senate had no jurisdiction because Belknapp was no longer in office. The whole trial followed closely what we would see at Trump’s insurrection trial. The Senate first voted on whether it was appropriate to proceed with the trial and that was approved by a vote of 37-29. The vote to convict was 35-25 in favor, not enough for the required two-thirds majority. Twenty-three of the senators who voted against conviction said they thought he was guilty but voted they the way they did because they didn’t think it was constitutional to hold the trial after Belknapp resigned. (They must have been Mitch McConnell’s ancestors.)
Belknapp suffered some lean years immediately after his impeachment but eventually established a private law practice. Amanda, aka Puss, packed up her daughters and moved to Paris.
off the leash 