Editorial: Why? ‘We got nothing better to do’
EDITORIALS June 10, 2012 6:32PM
Arthur Rachel, with Mob ties, arrives at Dirsken Federal Courthouse,Tuesday, January 17 2011. | John H. White~Chicago Sun-Times.
Updated: July 12, 2012 6:05AM
So much for the fantasy of wisdom and transformation in old age.
Last week, a 74-year-old serial mob thief got more than eight years in prison, presumably his last stint behind bars.
Arthur “The Genius” Rachel already has spent decades in prison. But, he argued at his sentencing, he had managed to go the last 17 without an arrest.
What then, a federal judge asked, possessed Rachel and his two aging criminal pals to return to a life of crime?
“It’s the way we are,” Rachel explained with a straight face.
“We were bored. We got nothing better to do.”
So much for blissfully whiling away your golden years.
We all like to think we’ll grow as we age, shedding bad habits and learning from our mistakes.
More likely, Paul Simon got it right when he sang in “The Boxer”: “After changes upon changes we are more or less the same.”
