It was a snowy Saturday and Glen and I were having breakfast at O'Brien's, deep in our usual discussion of whether the Irish sausages are the big, black ones, or the skinny reddish ones. Certainly not a life altering decision.
Then, out of the blue yonder, another question, either initiated by my brother or me to move conversation along: Do oligarchs consider themselves oligarchs, or merely well-heeled business people with a keen interest in government?
It was a fairly philosophical turn, a metaphorical miss-match for sure. Most everyone knows the Irish sausages are big and black and oligarchs are, well, probably not quite like the character on this month's cover of The Ukrainian Observer.
At the UO we exaggerate for effect, romance the product, so to speak. Our intent is not to upset the kumquat cart, merely to prick with humor or tickle with irony. Our ability to stay in this fair land is dependent, to a great degree, on steady-she-goes on the balance beam.
So, our oligarch is pretty much of a bumpkin, an over-sized greedy brute in gold chains and with a bodyguard entourage. One would suspect, from our caricature, that somewhere down the line inbreeding was possible.
I can't really picture one of Ukraine's refined oligarchs huddled over a Monopoly Board shouting, "Mine, all mine", such as the cover envisions. But who exactly are our oligarchs?
The U.S. administration, at least for a while, fell in puppy love with Russia's Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the imprisoned oligarch, believing him to be the future of Democracy. But he's away in the slammer awaiting trial on more charges than I have on my Visa card.
Thus, the oligarch business in Russia, unlike in Ukraine, appears to be in a downward spiral. They've got Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky in exile, and other so-called oligarchs hunkered down like pups being house broke with a newspaper.
The entire debate -- if there is one -- would never have entered our minds had not the rumor been floating around that an English-language publication in Kyiv had decreed to its staff that no longer would the words OLIGARCH and MAFIA be used on its pages.
That was, of course, his right. I once worked for a tourism-minded publisher in Florida who banned the use of the words alligator, snake and shark in his newspaper. However, for this Kyiv publication, it does beg the question: “Why?”
In Ukraine, to misquote Abe Lincoln, "God must have loved oligarchs (instead of the proverbial "poor people") because he made so many of them." When there is a traffic jam in Kyiv, it is usually four Mercedes 600s reaching the intersection at the same time.
In fact, the term oligarch is so over-used it has come to stand for any soul who has accumulated a super biz portfolio, rides in fancy cars, and has the apparent God-given right for his driver to ignore traffic signals.
Oh, and this is important, he usually has a seat in the Rada or holds down a high government post.
While ambling along this path, I also note that the term Mafia is over-used. No longer does it stand for Costa Nostra Italian gangsters but the bad guys can have names like Smith and Jones and Igor and Dima. They can come from Toledo or Odessa.Elvis' long-time pals were called the "Memphis Mafia," a term of near endearment. In Ukraine, Oligarch became the name of an exclusive and very expensive magazine purchased by, we suspect, oligarchs. What next? The Oligarch Pizza Parlor.
For a while, various Italian American groups were up in arms over the negative use of Mafia and Italian names in gangster movies, particularly the popular 1960s TV series "The Untouchables." They wrote letters to network executives, and held rallies.
I remember the Tampa Tribune's John Frascas, an Italian and Pulitzer Prize winner, chasing this young reporter around the newsroom shouting, "There is no Mafia. There is no Mafia." I had used the term Mafia when describing the Trafficante brothers.
But today, I don't think anyone really cares.
One almost expects Mattel to come out with a Ken doll with a burr cut, shark skin shoes, black turtleneck, Armani blazer and accompanied by beefy bodyguards. Oligarch and Mafia have been trivialized such that if they were a brand they would be in common usage, like Xerox, Kleenex or Weedeater.
But, there is no getting around it, oligarch tends historically to be a pejorative term. A very short-time acquaintance of mine, a labor organizer in El Salvador, had this to say on the topic: "When landowners become oligarchs, peasants become revolutionaries."
Obviously it wasn't the best definition for survival. Before the year was out (1981), the poor fellow was killed by a right-wing Salvadorian death squad, allegedly with ties to what was then the oligarch-dominated Arena Party.
But I am getting too serious here. Those days, of course, are long, long gone. The Kyiv publication has pronounced it so. Mafia and oligarch are merely ghost words of yesteryear.
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