Richard Scrushy: Freedom Fighter - September, 2004

On Mr. Scrushy’s website, besides the expected defiant blather and musings about truth from a man who seems to have a history of misunderstanding the concept, there is a statement that not only seems odd at first glance, but it goes way beyond the curious musings of a man who’s house of mirrors is falling down around him. The statement is not only objectionable, it is disgusting.

In the biography section of his site, it says: “Born in 1952 in Selma, Alabama, a town known as the birthplace of the civil-rights movement, Richard Scrushy is now fighting for his own rights and freedoms in the face of false allegations.”

1. The first part of the statement, that he’s from Selma, “known as the birthplace of the civil-rights movement,” is just kind of strange. First of all, although there were a number of events that marked important moments in the movement (e.g. the bus boycott in Montgomery, desegregation in Birmingham and Little Rock, the march on Washington, and the Selma to Montgomery march for the right to vote) civil rights was a movement that broke out in many places and in many ways, and for one man to proudly claim that he is from it’s “birthplace” is ludicrous. But it is even more strange for a white guy from Selma, Alabama to make this kind of claim, and to highlight this heritage. I am pretty sure (but I will make exhaustive checks to verify) that neither Richard Scrushy nor his family were there, that day, on Edmund Pettus bridge.
    
2. But it is the second part of this statement that elevates this comment from the silly ramblings of a narcissist to the level of outrageous and an offense to decency. The statement “Richard Scrushy is now fighting for his own rights and freedoms,” attempts to link his legal problems with an on-going movement that changed the face of the world. By making this reference, he is connecting his lifestyle of greed and excess to courageous people that literally died for real freedoms. Even if it were to turn out that Mr. Scrushy was innocent, or at least if his lawyers are able to get him off of these charges, his problems will never ever come close to the people and the struggle he is trying to affiliate himself with, to the people and situation he is trying to use and exploit for his own purposes, like he has done so many times throughout his life.
    
3. Part of Mr. Scrushy’s pre-trial strategy is to make rather blatant overtures to the local community, in an effort to influence the potential jury pool. Birmingham, Alabama is 74% black or African-American. Some of the things he has done, for this purpose, are:  a) He has begun attending an African-American church (that also sponsors his TV show). Going to church is not new, for Scrushy, he has a mostly white one in his own neighborhood, that he has attended, and that he gave a lot of money to. But being on trial, in Birmingham, is new; b) He has pandered to the civil rights movement on his web site, as discussed above; and c) he has hired an African American lawyer, Donald Watkins, with a local reputation of helping corrupt officials get off. He is often listed or referred to, in statements from Scrushy, as his “lead” attorney, but so far, most of legal maneuvering and motion-filing has been done by his other attorneys, Thomas Sjoblom, Abbe Lowell and Scott Balber; and at this time, it is only when he wants to make a defiant statement or comment on the “biased” press, do we hear from Watkins. We will see if these roles will shift when the case is argued in front of the (presumably) mostly African-American jury. In short, you can draw your own conclusions, but Watkins is the face that has been put on the defense.
    
4. And this all becomes even harder to take, Richard Scrushy’s new role as a neo-freedom rider, when the record of HealthSouth is considered. There has not been a single African-American VP or higher-up executive officer, during Scrushy’s tenure at the company he never missed an opportunity to remind us that he built it from the ground up. This almost reverse affirmative-action would be rather  hard to do in a city that is 74% African-American. And now he becomes a man of diversity? Faced with prison. Faced with reality. Faced with finally being forced to appreciate his own true worth, I think it is a little late for him to try on a conscious.