Crime + Failure to Punish: The Theranos Paradox

Who deserves to serve their debts to society via The Stony Lonesome + who doesn't.

I’m as forgiving as the next guy. Sadly, for Elizabeth Holmes, the next guy also happens to hate her.

“I'm too pretty to go to jail.”

Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, the company whose claim to fame was being busted for the creation, whole cloth, of a machine capable of analyzing all of your earthly ills via an examination of a drop of your blood, was on to something. Not the efficacy of her company, G-d no, but despite the fact that she wasn't, actually, very pretty at all, she was on to how we think about who goes to jail, and why.

“I’m too pretty to go to jail,” said convicted sex offender Debra Lafave.

“I’m too pretty to go to jail,” said the drunk-as-fuck Lauren Cutshaw facing a DUI charge.

“I’m too pretty to go to jail,” said Hend Bustami who, allegedly murdered her mother.

In two of these cases the “legal” system agreed. Bustami’s jury is not even out on her charge as it’s not yet gone to court and Elizabeth Holmes who, while just being sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison for a variety of criminal charges, will not have to start serving her time, if at all, until April 2023. When it’s, very possibly, more convenient for her. And, of course, she is appealing. Because that’s what pretty people do.

[P]ointing out that the system is imbalanced, at this point, proves nothing, says even less, and sways no one as we collectively shrug against a knowing acquiescence to the correct order of things.

Ever the friend of the downtrodden and disenfranchised, confirmed bachelor, professional Negro, and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, in a letter to the court pleading for leniency in the case of Holmes whose company had raised nearly $100 million from investors and was valued at $9 billion, crossed the room and for no good reason at all other than the fact that she’s vegan (?!?!) stated that “I believe that Ms. Holmes has within her a sincere desire to help others, to be of meaningful service, and possesses the capacity to redeem herself.”

Plus, “she’s ‘pretty’ as fuck,” he might have added. And even appended “white” to “pretty” to drive the point home. If it had been Tell the Truth Day.

All of which would have been celebration worthy since any hustle that gets over on the “system” is usually a welcome relief from business as usual. However, this has become business as usual especially when we know, without even looking, what pretty looks like in the Western World and it, for sure, despite Muhammad Ali’s broadsides, doesn’t include people that look like me.

Firstly, that would be, people with penises. If there was a man who beat a sex offense charge on the basis of him being too comely please let me know. But secondly, and here we must return to that old American bête noire, something I hate to do, race.

None of these women present as people of color and if there were ever any beautiful people of color who have avoided jail time on account of being beautiful, again: answers on a postcard please.

However, pointing out that the system is imbalanced, at this point, proves nothing, says even less, and sways no one as we collectively shrug against a knowing acquiescence to the correct order of things. Or some derivation of what Mae West meant when she once said, “you could fall in love with a rich man just as easily as a poor man…but why bother?”

Why bother? Indeed.

I have two friends, both of whom have happened to murder their significant others. Murdered and mutilated the bodies. Both pleaded some version of diminished capacity as drugs were a factor in both cases. Recreational drugs in one, steroids in the other. One of these men went to prison for seven years. The other? His sentence was 25 to life. Both men were objectively handsome men but this is where that bête noire bites: one was white and one was not.

This is not only a statement of fact. This is what they, in the confidence game, would also call “an angle”. It’s the angle that Elizabeth Holmes, with her coterie of Rupert Murdoch, Joe Biden, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger et al, played to the fullest. The fact that the angle gave way to her being sentenced to 11 years and three months at all, is the shocker. But as we said, we’ll believe it when we see the cold, steel gates close behind her carefully tossed hair.

“You don’t actually want to see them go to jail do you?” … The mercy and good will, still obviously evident in both her manner and bearing when asking was reason enough to modulate my response.

But I couldn’t. “Fuck YES I do.”

It also makes me wonder as we trundle by the one year anniversary of the spectacular collapse of OZY MEDIA how that angle will play out as the powers that be adjudge whether or not the CEO Carlos Watson and COO Samir Rao, both men of color, are guilty of what they are being accused, in short: a multimillion dollar Silicon Valley grift that’s been glossed by those in the know as a “media Theranos.”

Seeing, at least Watson, work the counter angle, has been captivating. Because true to the tradition of Black men who couldn’t have bothered being Black when they were trouble free — OJ Simpson, Michael Jackson — suddenly seeking shelter behind their Blackness when trouble strikes? Both craven and timely as it pushes a narrative that the accusations are being leveled not because of organic reasons like that they were actually responsible for what they have been accused, but precisely because they were not “too pretty to go to jail.”

“You don’t actually want to see them go to jail do you?” The question, earnestly delivered, was being asked by a former executive level staffer who suffered under the OZY reign of weird misery enough to write about it for the London Review of Books. The mercy and good will, still obviously evident in both her manner and bearing when asking, was reason enough to modulate my response.

But I couldn’t. “Fuck YES I do.” And then an addendum, “IF they are found guilty.”

Because justice, despite the fact that it is not, should be, ideally, blind. Or at least equally played and selectively sighted as easily for one as another. That is to say, I still believe in the American dream where we not only judge people by the content of their character but also their lack of the same.

Which is how and why Theranos and OZY were always joined in my mind. In fact it is being proved out in the Theranos case in micro as Holmes’ very brown codependent Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani couldn’t have been convicted if they were of the mind to let Holmes free. We are hypocrites but not always so nakedly so, so if Balwani goes, so goes Holmes.

And if Balwani and Holmes go, is it possible that Rao and Watson (not to mention Sam Bankman-Fried, the grifter du jour) don’t? Shouldn’t? Couldn’t? Wouldn’t?

Complicated questions but for me the answers always remain adjacent to my sincere hope, always, that the best man, or woman, wins. By which I mean, the man, or woman, with the best played angle because, about the system, it will finally confirm the worldly wisdom of Scarface’s Tony Montana: “even when I lie, I tell the TRUTH!”

You better believe it. Or not.

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