Poor Mojo's Newswire

Bad Monkeys inhabits the same literary space as the drug-fueled paranoia of Philip K. Dick, owing a particular debt to Minority Report. In that story, the protagonist is a detective in a division of the police department that investigates what are called "pre-cog" crimes, arresting perpetrators before they have a chance to act on their impulses. In Ruff's universe, it's not a matter of seeing the future as much as handicapping it, singling out bad seeds and eradicating them. It's not about justice; it's about, as one the Bad Monkeys operatives puts it, "fighting evil in all its forms." Bad Monkeys is an intriguing exploration of moral relativism set in a plot so labyrinthine that it could have sprung from the mind of Borges if he wrote screenplays for Michael Bay. Often the lines between heroes and villains are blurred, and the organization, which is ostensibly fighting for good, engages in surveillance so ubiquitous and undetectable that Alberto Gonzales would be green with envy. And, there is never any explanation as to who charges the Bad Monkeys with their tasks or gave them a license to kill. It's a shadow organization whose umbra gets murkier the longer Jane works for them.

The main problem is this: we were prepared to overlook the failings (in fact, possibly criminal behaviour) of Walcott because of his massive genius, yet Padel, also a genius, is being crucified for forwarding on a few notes by email—is this a case of misogyny? Historically and sociologically speaking, I’d normally say Yes. And given the sputtering and glee of her critics, it seems rather likely.

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But something to keep in mind here is that both poets resigned because of APPEARANCES of impropriety. No one actually forced them to. We can debate endlessly whether what they did was wrong or worthy of discussion in the context of the election, but THEY knew the appearances were likely to damage the OxProPo position itself. They realized that their own critical errors in judgement from the past (recent or relatively distant) had precluded them from holding a position that can’t sustain the scabs and scars that would come with their election.

The Elected Officials Misconduct Forfeiture Act would prevent the former governor from collecting his advance, the Chicago Sun Times reports. If the governor is convicted, he must "forfeit any monetary rights derived from any book, movie, television, radio program, or Internet depiction or detailing of the crime for which he or she was convicted."