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Of all the commentary on the death last week of Ken Lay, the New York Post most effectively communicated the emerging Zeitgeist around the ex-chairman of Enron's demise. "Cheato Lay is dead? Check the Coffin," demanded Gotham's most exuberant daily record.
Great headline, and it captured perfectly the notion that for a scoundrel the calibre of Lay, that was one remarkably well-timed heart attack. And really, who didn't believe him capable of such a scam?
A quick perusal of the stream of blog headlines announcing Lay's death found they were united in one thing: a remarkable lack of compassion for the man. "Rot in hell," was a very popular headline (well, at least for the blogs that didn't involve expletives, which were a distinct minority). Some went further, however. "Hey, Ken Lay! Send my regards to Zarqawi!" suggested one blogger. Another asserted Lay's death was his best idea yet: "IN A BURST OF GOOD TASTE, KEN LAY DIES," wrote the insta-scribe.
Tough crowd there in blogger-ville. Another online pundit wondered why Skilling also didn't off himself (the blogger, of course, held to the widespread theory that Lay's heart attack was faked and that Kenny Boy killed himself rather than face time in jail). Yet another site lamented the fact that America would now forever be denied the closure that only seeing Ken in jail could have provided. "Any therapeutic benefits of seeing Ken Lay in prison [have been] lost to the [American people]," wrote the blogger, bitterly.
The spontaneous national outpouring of bile and hate, however, was just the beginning. In the days following the reported death, explanations about the well-timed event were explored, plugged with speculation, and then constructed into elaborate and wacko conspiracy theories. You'll have to admit that it was likely Lay was in on all those secret meetings Dick Cheney held at the White House during the preparation of the U.S. Energy Task Force report back in 2000. With Lay getting ready to pack his bags for a stay in the big house, presumably he had little left to lose — what was to stop him from singing like a canary about those meetings? What more motivation would the Administration need to knock him off?
Or maybe, as was another suggestion, Ken bought a body on the black market and is now hanging out in ol' Dick's garage. That is, Lay and Cheney are still good friends, Ken just went to ground to stay out of jail and is now in hiding, perhaps in that "undetermined" location Cheney spent so much time at in the month's after 9/11. It's within the realm of possibility, isn't it? Of course, there was also the classical take on his death, suggested by one blogger who floated the idea that Ken was killed by the Freemasons because he was getting ready to reveal secrets about the Illuminati and the New World Order. The heart attack — you guessed it — was instigated by the same people who tried to cover up the UFO crash at Roswell. (It wouldn't be a conspiracy without UFOs and Roswell, would it?)
There were some more lighthearted takes on the event. One blogger lamented the fact that no more would Dave Cummings, the world's oldest porn star, have such a remarkable look-alike residing here on earth. For those not familiar with Dave Cummings, a quick trip to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia explains that he was born in Sarasota Springs, Calif., on March 13, 1940, and has both a bachelor of science degree in economics and a masters in public administration. He also spent 25 years in the U.S. Army before retiring from that organization with the rank of lieutenant-colonel and then launching a porn career during which he has made over 200 films. And he looked like Ken Lay. Who knew?
Well, now you do, for better or worse. But that's the kind of stuff you can learn in blogger-ville.
Interestingly enough, Wikipedia, which is updated by thousands of volunteer users (and provided the background on Cummings), actually became part of the Lay story. A story in USA Today reported that when news of Lay's heart attack broke, Wikipedians battled over the wording in the entry for Ken and the "take" that would be presented in the online encyclopedia.
This gets us to a warning for corporate managers: Don't get on the wrong side of online community insta-pundits, bloggers and Wikipedians — they're writing the public consciousness minute-by-minute and you'll find any story that gets picked up in that community is going to run faster than you can ever hope to keep up — and then it's out there forever. Just ask Ken Lay.
A new website, KenLayLives.com (not the blog, KenLayLives.blogspot.com), is selling T-shirts suggesting he's still with us. According to the site they're popular items: 12,000 units sold the day after Lay's heart attack. In just 48 hours, Lay ascended from mere symbol of late '90s corporate malfeasance to coronation in that most exclusive of pantheons, the immortal temple of Elvis and Tupac, where only public figures assumed to have faked their death reside.
RIP Ken. That is, if you're not in Dick Cheney's garage.
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