Nothing, it may be said, became Rod Rosenstein’s career at the Department of Justice so little as his manner of leaving it—that is to say, in his resignation letter, Rosenstein abandoned the last shred of the professional decency and honor that he had fitfully displayed during his two years as deputy attorney general under Donald Trump, engaging in an ankle-grabbing display of self-abasement that will live in infamy, and presumably get him a job as chief legal counsel for Fox News. Some people, I suppose, were not surprised to hear Donald Trump praised for his “humor and courtesy”, but I was not one of those.
I have in the past given “mixed” reviews to Rod’s career, noting his highs and lows with some bewilderment, but his departure from Justice seemed to liberate poor Rod from all sense of shame (and honor)—“Yes! I love sucking Donald Trump’s cock! God! It feels so good just to say it!”
Both Jennifer “Rod Rosenstein is leaving as a diminished man and shamed lawyer” Rubin and Jonathan “Rod Rosenstein Embodies the Republican Surrender to Trump” Chait have limned Rod’s abysmal exercise in self-abasement in more measured terms, though I can’t say that they have squeezed out the last drop of sycophancy and hypocrisy, for that would take a volume rather than a column, and no mean one at that. But what I find as the cream of the jest is that the National Review, aka “The Totally Not Anti-Trumpers Digest”, found Mr. Rosenstein’s departure entirely unworthy of remark, almost as if they felt Rod's career to be an embarrassment. Best to let sleeping toads lie, eh, NR?
Afterwords
I surprised myself by spelling “sycophancy” correctly right off the bat, so much so that I decided that I needed to know the origin of this rather cacophonous group of letters.1 The results are a bit of a shocker. “Sycophancy” goes back to the ancient Greeks, which I might have guessed if I had tried. It means literally “showing the fig”, a gesture that means literally/figuratively “fuck you”, accomplished by placing the thumb between two fingers while making a fist, “sykon” meaning both “fig” and “vulva”. According to “etymonline.com”, in ancient Greece it was beneath the dignity of prominent men to show their scorn for each other with obscene gestures, but they had underlings who would do the job for them. Now, no one, with the possible exception of Rod Rosenstein, would say that Donald Trump possesses any dignity at all. He’s his own sycophant, making Rod, I guess, a sycophant’s sycophant.
To get back to figs, the gesture persisted into the Middle Ages, as readers of Dante know, for in Canto XXV of the Inferno, Vanni Fucci of Pistoia makes the gesture to God himself and was swarmed by serpents in punishment.
1. “Sycophancy” and “cacophonous” are not at all related. “Cacophony” means “bad sound”, from “kakos” (“bad”) and “phone” (“sound”).
