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Down Goes Rigas

On the occasion of the sentencing of former Adelphia CEO/Buffalo Sabres owner John Rigas to 15 years in prison on fraud and embezzlement charges, I give you what Lewis Black had to say about the case, on his "Black On Broadway" HBO special:

Father and two sons run Adelphia. It’s a cable company, and they take from the company a billion dollars. A billion. Three people. Three people. Took a billion dollars. A billion. WHAT WERE THEY GONNA DO?! START THEIR OWN SPACE PROGRAM?! “Lets send a monkey to Mars, Dad.” If that weren’t enough, they took 13 million dollars of company money, and used it to build a golf course, in their own back yard. What amazes me, is the people that work for that company and knew that they did it, that they didn’t rise up as one and slay them. I never understood why the people of France chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head. Now I fuckin GET IT.

If Dennis Kozlowski ever gets convicted, remind me to post the "personal ballwasher" routine.

UPDATE: My colleague Ben Kepple informs me that Dennis Kozlowski was, in fact, convicted last Friday, apparently because unlike in his first trial, his lawyers were unable to get a crazy old lady on the jury who would vote to acquit no matter what. The verdict was announced Friday afternoon but I was already halfway to Atlantic City by then, which is why I didn't hear about it.

Anyway, here's that black routine:

I was wondering, what I would do if I had 463 million dollars. Because what these guys did was they just bought stuff. That’s what they did. They acquired things. In order to one-up each other. That’s in part why it got out of control. They bought things. How many things can you buy? How much shit do you need?... And you know what I would’ve done with that money? I would’ve hired a young girl in her early twenties. I would’ve paid her a remarkable salary, I would give her the best pension and benefits money could buy. I’d give her health insurance. And she would be, my personal, ball-washer. You know what, I can sense some of pulling away from me. And all I can tell you, is that I came a long way, just to share a dream with you. There’s nothing sexual about this. I think that if you’re an important person, and you wanna show off to other important people, what would be better, than having a woman walking in front of you rinsing and scrubbing, rinsing and scrubbing. Scrub scrub rinse rinse, scrub scrub rinse rinse. Because I am an important CEO, and my nuts should be clean. And then the other CEOs would gather, and they’d go “Who’s that?” “Who’s that? That my friends, is my very esteemed, personal ball-washer. What did you guys buy? Another car?! AHAHAHAHAHA!"

Posted by Stephen Silver at June 20, 2005 05:49 PM