This post has been a long time coming. I came up with the title after the wave of RICO indictments in August. At that point, it looked as if John Eastman would never shut up but then he did. He kept a low profile until last week, then started talking again, so I could finally use this Steinbeck-Kazan-Dean inspired post title.

During Eastman’s silence, I wondered if he’d learned the first rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. Instead, he pulled out a shovel on 60 Minutes and renewed digging much to Scott Pelley’s delight. I stopped watching 60 Minutes regularly because of the Lara Logan mishigas, so I’m pleased that Pelley still sounds like Dan Rather.

Eastman reiterated the arguments that landed him in a deep dark legal hole. You know what they say about such holes, they lead to nowhere as in this Los Lobos song:

Eastman spent most of the interview whining. He claims to be a martyr persecuted by Trump’s enemies. I  know a pardon ploy when I see one. According to Cassidy Hutchinson, Eastman asked to be put on the pardon list, which was as long as a CVS receipt. The pardon never came, and it wouldn’t help Eastman with his current legal woes in any event. Georgia justice, baby.

Ordinarily, gotcha questions are not my jam but I make an exception for seditionists and insurrectionists:

Eastman claimed in a speech on Jan. 6, 2021, that voting machines were rigged in Georgia. He told the Georgia legislature that thousands of convicts and dead voters somehow submitted ballots to sway the election in Joe Biden’s favor. The state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who voted for Trump, found the claims to be false.

 

“You said 2,500 convicts, the investigation found four. You said 10,000 dead voters, the investigation found four,” said Pelley, who then took off his glasses to plunge in the dagger: “It doesn’t seem like you knew what you were talking about.

Back to the first rule of holes. Pelley’s thrust is the equivalent of  grabbing Eastman’s shovel and whacking him upside the head with it. It resulted in additional whining from the coup plotter:

“I think we are quickly turning into a country where there’s the pro-government party, or the Uni party, one might euphemistically call it,” he said. “And folks that are concerned about the direction our country is going, the MAGA movement, the tea party movement before that if you will and the folks in those government offices tend to be on the one side of that dispute rather than the other.”

In a word: Projection. The MAGA maggots are the ones befouling the body politic with their rancid rhetoric. If they return to power, they’re plotting vengeance against those who disagree with them.

Eastman is also in deep shit back home in California. The preliminary findings in his disbarment case were bad news for the bespectacled coup plotter as they focused on the facts, not on Eastman’s fantasies.  Shorter Adrastos: Eastman was found culpable of ethics violations. So much for Eastman’s claim that he merely offered the Indicted Impeached Insult Comedian “bold advice.” I’d call it bad and illegal advice.

My gratuitous advice to Eastman is to follow the example of Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis and cop a plea before the plea bargain train leaves the station.

Back to the punny post title. But first a lobby card:

On the surface, East Of Eden has nothing to do with John Eastman’s legal woes BUT in the movie Raymond Massey’s character is in denial about everything. He fails to understand that James Dean was a budding superstar who blew him off the screen in their first scene together. Just kidding.

Massey’s character is really in denial about his own family and their place in the world. That  sums up John Eastman’s dilemma. The mere fact that he sought a pardon is an indication that he knows he did something wrong, the rest is pure denial.

Cue Sam Clemens DBA Mark Twain:

Denial and projection are a toxic combination. They’ve caught up with John Eastman. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. #sarcasm.

The last word goes to Peter Gabriel and Sinead O’Connor: