Comments (0) Best Political Sideshow - 2008
Maricopa County's attempt to prosecute New Times
Fuzzy hair, bulbous nose, comically pompous, attorney Dennis Wilenchik had all the makings of a clown even before he pulled out ethical stops and went after New Times. As Sheriff Joe Arpaio's well-paid attorney on the taxpayers' dime, Wilenchik had learned from the harlequin-supreme. Nobody sports a bulbous red nose and a potbelly, while acting the fool, better than ol' Joke.
Even before Wilenchik put his big clown shoe in his own mouth in the New Times case and a judge put her stiletto up his ass, it was as if Joe were conducting clown college and Dennis was star student. Wilenchik went after Joe foe Dan Saban with the vengeance of Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, trying to get him fired from his job, bringing up Arpaio's smear campaign against Saban to practically anybody who'd listen. (It was right out of Arpaio's playbook.) Denny was all about extra-legal activities only tangentially related to his defense against a slander lawsuit Saban filed against the sheriff because of the bogus smear. That Wilenchik won that suit on technicalities must have emboldened him to take up his buffoonish mentor's cause against the alternative newspaper-thorn in the sheriff's backside.
We can just imagine him popping his suspenders with glee when ringmaster Andy Thomas asked him to enter the bit tent and attempt to tame New Times. The problem here was that County Attorney Thomas was asking Wilenchik to go into the lion's cage with whip and chair, and he was but a pitiful clown, prone to clown-like antics — such as trying to influence the presiding judge over the New Times case and ordering the arrests of the paper's owners for writing a story a story about abusive grand jury subpoenas he'd issued from a grand jury that didn't actually exist.
The capper was that the subpoenas demanded not only NT journalists' notes and communications regarding Arpaio, but the Internet-viewing habits of readers who'd clicked on the paper's coverage of the withered law-clown. All perfectly fine in the funny-haired world in which he and Arpaio reside, but unwise when handling big cats. He was reprimanded by the judge, and fired as special prosecutor by his beloved ringmaster — after public opinion took a big bite out of both their bozo asses. Raar! The result is that Wilenchik and Thomas are under investigation by the Arizona Bar Association, and we hope that these scary scaramouches get a good legal whacking. Now that would be funny.
