After I wrote my recent column on Chesebro, I got some questions from readers, including a good one from my friend Ann Banks, that made me realize I had missed something in exploring Chesebro’s political transition.
"The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, what you do--is what you become. Your integrity is your destiny." Heraclitus said it best.
Excellent analysis - In depth psychological studies of these guys will fill volumes someday. I think Dick Cheney (yeah yeah, I know) termed them "Dead Enders".
I would not want to live in that guy's head. He's got to know that he's cosplaying for a bunch of mouth-breathers; that's the kind of thing that robs me of sleep.
But I suppose you're right - some people will do anything to be noticed. Like Sean Lennon (he of John and Yoko) who this week posted this gem on X: "Wokeism is not a religion, it's a full blown cult. I'm starting to realize we have to treat its members as victims of manipulation, indoctrination and abuse".
When the child of the most famous peace-loving hippies of all goes looking for love in all the wrong places, I guess it can happen to anyone.
His new big turn in the road is also good for his self-regard. He is smart enough to provide the evidence for prosecutors they need in return for his getting to walk free. I don't know if they praise him but they probably demonstrably appreciate him. As they should because he's giving them the goods. A dummy might not be able to. On possible dummies turning State's evidence, I had assumed that Michael Cohen was no Newton because of the law school he went to in Lansing, Michigan, that is called Cooley. My prejudice was not appropriate because it appears that Cohen has significant gifts as a narrator and as a phrase-maker, equal to or greater than The Cheese.
For Ms. Kuykendall: I went to an old and well known college in Cambridge, Mass. I was (I once thought ) a standout at the boys prep school I went to, but Harvard was a brutal reality check, and I felt lucky to graduate. Among the 1,222 entering Freshmen there were at least 6-700 super smart guys who could run circles around me. I just attended my 60th reunion and felt the same feeling of invisible mediocrity I felt in college. Thank god for friends and classmates who felt the same way. I suspect Chesebro ran into a similar high, hard wall of excellence when he finished HLS and tried to practice law in Cambridge… a very fast lane. So he sought the easier road, and flattery, and it was seductive.
As to your prejudice: it’s an easy trap to fall into. I fight it too. But look at Lincoln, and Harry Truman, and Henry Ford—all self made men with scanty education… in Lincoln's amazing case, virtually none! Success isn’t always… perhaps ever… measurable by SAT scores and grades in college.
Well, every place is a place, which means there are regular people doing things for regular people. like practicing law, dentistry, and other such stuff. I'm not sure that practicing law in Cambridge is such a fast track but maybe he wasn't suited to the tracks for the regular folks. People perhaps came to talk to him about their problems that arise locally and adjudged him not shrewd. The turn he took in a criminal direction was not entirely shrewd.
My understanding is that Cooley is one of several hundred American law schools where you can definitely get an excellent legal education, but you have to discover which instructors to avoid if possible, and which ones are top-notch, and take for required courses if possible.
Of course, you do have to study- study- study , read the damn cases and think about what does and doesn't make sense to you before hearing the lecture, and expect the first year to be a form of intentional torture, where the (rather counter-productive in my opinion) idea is to "weed people out."
I think that last has gone on so long, and is now so "traditional," there is only a small contingent that have abandoned it for a more welcoming first year atmosphere. So warn anyone you know who's considering law school, that's what they may encounter.
To be fair and of course I am because of being a law professor and all, I know lawyers in Lansing who went to Cooley in those years that Cohen did who are very good local lawyers. Before MSU acquired a law college, it was the only law school in the region so I'm sure plenty of people went there because it was the alternative if they didn't want to leave town. That area still has lots of practicing Cooley lawyers in judgeships and other such service roles. I'm sure many are in successful private practices.
There is something to what you say but I was in a position to know that Cooley had issues. It was a money making operation. The other thing I know is that for years we at MSU played the game of taking in transfers at MSU College of Law from Cooley. The game was that US News looked at first year entering credentials for first year students but not at transfers. Law schools could feast on students with very low entering credentials by taking them as transfers in a second year. Many law schools did that. Cohen's time goes back to well before the presence of an MSU college of law.
This is plausible, and it's consistent with my pet theory, even though I originally came up with it to explain Black guys like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and more recently Tim Scott and, to some extent, white women like Elise Stefanik (who, unlike MTG and Boebert, isn't a simple crackpot). The Democrats are *loaded* with talent. (Some of the leadership probably wish they had less of it!) To stand out in any way you have to be both stellar and savvy. Not so on the GOP side -- and though the GOP is racist and misogynist AF, it has an incentive to look at least a little bit inclusive. So a Black man or a white woman can stand out sooner and rise higher with the Republicans than with the Democrats. (The number of Black women who fall for this temptation is statistically insignificant.)
So, likewise, the unfortunately named Chesebro could rise higher with (much) less on the ball among the Republicans than among the Democrats. The hapless Jeffrey Clark may have reached a similar conclusion: "I'll never have another chance like this!" (You're right, buddy.)
Good point! I think another part of it is that it shields the racists from censure, the can always claim "some of my best friends are black," as racists often do, though they struggle for names.
Looks like he got stuck at Maslow's level 3 "love and belonging needs" and maybe level 4 "esteem needs." He appears to be falling backwards down the chart though, because level 2 "safety needs" seem to be on the horizon. Were he a kid on the street, he would be seeking a leadership position in a gang and possibly on police radar for drug dealing. They are all the same - some just more privileged than others.
Always when I read about an adult who engages in behavior such as cheseboro, I wonder where and how that person gets stuck, in a developmental sense, emotionally and morally. His story is seemingly small town wholesome boy makes good…..however, I sure wonder what life was like around the kitchen table for the 5 yo Kenneth…….
I think you're right about Chesbro. Like a lot people in law school, they never really wanted to be 'that' kind of lawyer. I can't tell you how many people in IT have law degrees and have told me they hated it if they ever tried. The idea was to get the degree in the age of Boomers and Millenials which a BA was at the turn of the 1900s. its just a ticket to the job you don't know you want till you see it....but then you're ready. No point in getting a specialized degree....then you're locked into someone else's career path and if you don't like it you have to start all over again. Not so a JD. Just refresh the resume and you're ready to roll. And yes, it looks like Ken found his niche. Just hope he enjoys his comrades for the next 50 years.
Just so you know, I got a law degree out of pure desperation. I was in a policy body at the Justice Department and we suddenly learned that Reagan had become president. I only had a Ph.D. A person with a degree from from a relatively mediocre law school said to me one time about someone she knew, She is not a lawyer but she's smart. My exit from Reagan Washington and the company of such people became Harvard Law School. Time passed and I became a law professor. As I told somebody about Stormy Daniels, she had to make a living. So did I.
No effort made in good faith goes in vain. I was one of those peons that did the filing and answered the phones. Reagan was a game changer. The year someone shot and missed him, I decided to leave the country and let all those smarter than me figure out the mess. 1981. Have at it.
I was still at DOJ at that point. A friend there got a ride with me home because he could tell me how to get around all of the cops that had shut lots of the city off. I was still immature and kept singing I shot the sheriff, I did not shoot his deputy.
True, I went from graduate school in philosophy to law school, as much to understand the philosophy of law as to ever practice. Then like many people, I used the degree in other ways. It's not unusual at all - Ken C.'s "journey" is what is pretty bizarre!
I think Ken needed to be told how bright he is and needed a secure environment of some sort.. Self esteem and all that. This was likely the path of least resistance.
Nice! Every single step of the explanation is plausible, and we can envision Ken - for whatever reasons - having no one who intervenes to warn him, so he just keeps on until he has maneuvered himself into open-and-shut felonies. God, it is incredible, NO ONE warns him, they encourage him.
Just as you say, he invents madcap pseudo-legally sound schemes that would be graded F if submitted during first year law school, at Harvard or theoretically even at the most conservative colleges, and maybe even bring in some law school counseling sessions, to see if Ken was on drugs or losing his marbles!
Chesebro reminds me of John Webster's line from The Duchess of Malfi: "Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."
small fish in a big pond vs big fish in a small pond - I believe you're correct. It's all about his own remora. And he can understand tRump based on his own need for praise and attention.
Omitted the word "realize" in the first sentence. Corrected.
" ... he came across some “conservatives” and they were really easy to impress." Bingo.
A terrific insight, and kind of explains everything.
“Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future”
Thanks for your illuminating piece - guess he really did become a legend in his own mind.
"The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, what you do--is what you become. Your integrity is your destiny." Heraclitus said it best.
👍 (the like button doesn't function)
"Drooling Assholes" would be a great name for a punk band.
Ew.
😂😂😂
Excellent analysis - In depth psychological studies of these guys will fill volumes someday. I think Dick Cheney (yeah yeah, I know) termed them "Dead Enders".
It's OK. No one ever said Dick Cheney was stupid.
I hear skunks are pretty smart too 🤨
I would not want to live in that guy's head. He's got to know that he's cosplaying for a bunch of mouth-breathers; that's the kind of thing that robs me of sleep.
But I suppose you're right - some people will do anything to be noticed. Like Sean Lennon (he of John and Yoko) who this week posted this gem on X: "Wokeism is not a religion, it's a full blown cult. I'm starting to realize we have to treat its members as victims of manipulation, indoctrination and abuse".
When the child of the most famous peace-loving hippies of all goes looking for love in all the wrong places, I guess it can happen to anyone.
His new big turn in the road is also good for his self-regard. He is smart enough to provide the evidence for prosecutors they need in return for his getting to walk free. I don't know if they praise him but they probably demonstrably appreciate him. As they should because he's giving them the goods. A dummy might not be able to. On possible dummies turning State's evidence, I had assumed that Michael Cohen was no Newton because of the law school he went to in Lansing, Michigan, that is called Cooley. My prejudice was not appropriate because it appears that Cohen has significant gifts as a narrator and as a phrase-maker, equal to or greater than The Cheese.
For Ms. Kuykendall: I went to an old and well known college in Cambridge, Mass. I was (I once thought ) a standout at the boys prep school I went to, but Harvard was a brutal reality check, and I felt lucky to graduate. Among the 1,222 entering Freshmen there were at least 6-700 super smart guys who could run circles around me. I just attended my 60th reunion and felt the same feeling of invisible mediocrity I felt in college. Thank god for friends and classmates who felt the same way. I suspect Chesebro ran into a similar high, hard wall of excellence when he finished HLS and tried to practice law in Cambridge… a very fast lane. So he sought the easier road, and flattery, and it was seductive.
As to your prejudice: it’s an easy trap to fall into. I fight it too. But look at Lincoln, and Harry Truman, and Henry Ford—all self made men with scanty education… in Lincoln's amazing case, virtually none! Success isn’t always… perhaps ever… measurable by SAT scores and grades in college.
Well, every place is a place, which means there are regular people doing things for regular people. like practicing law, dentistry, and other such stuff. I'm not sure that practicing law in Cambridge is such a fast track but maybe he wasn't suited to the tracks for the regular folks. People perhaps came to talk to him about their problems that arise locally and adjudged him not shrewd. The turn he took in a criminal direction was not entirely shrewd.
My understanding is that Cooley is one of several hundred American law schools where you can definitely get an excellent legal education, but you have to discover which instructors to avoid if possible, and which ones are top-notch, and take for required courses if possible.
Of course, you do have to study- study- study , read the damn cases and think about what does and doesn't make sense to you before hearing the lecture, and expect the first year to be a form of intentional torture, where the (rather counter-productive in my opinion) idea is to "weed people out."
I think that last has gone on so long, and is now so "traditional," there is only a small contingent that have abandoned it for a more welcoming first year atmosphere. So warn anyone you know who's considering law school, that's what they may encounter.
To be fair and of course I am because of being a law professor and all, I know lawyers in Lansing who went to Cooley in those years that Cohen did who are very good local lawyers. Before MSU acquired a law college, it was the only law school in the region so I'm sure plenty of people went there because it was the alternative if they didn't want to leave town. That area still has lots of practicing Cooley lawyers in judgeships and other such service roles. I'm sure many are in successful private practices.
There is something to what you say but I was in a position to know that Cooley had issues. It was a money making operation. The other thing I know is that for years we at MSU played the game of taking in transfers at MSU College of Law from Cooley. The game was that US News looked at first year entering credentials for first year students but not at transfers. Law schools could feast on students with very low entering credentials by taking them as transfers in a second year. Many law schools did that. Cohen's time goes back to well before the presence of an MSU college of law.
This is plausible, and it's consistent with my pet theory, even though I originally came up with it to explain Black guys like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and more recently Tim Scott and, to some extent, white women like Elise Stefanik (who, unlike MTG and Boebert, isn't a simple crackpot). The Democrats are *loaded* with talent. (Some of the leadership probably wish they had less of it!) To stand out in any way you have to be both stellar and savvy. Not so on the GOP side -- and though the GOP is racist and misogynist AF, it has an incentive to look at least a little bit inclusive. So a Black man or a white woman can stand out sooner and rise higher with the Republicans than with the Democrats. (The number of Black women who fall for this temptation is statistically insignificant.)
So, likewise, the unfortunately named Chesebro could rise higher with (much) less on the ball among the Republicans than among the Democrats. The hapless Jeffrey Clark may have reached a similar conclusion: "I'll never have another chance like this!" (You're right, buddy.)
Good point! I think another part of it is that it shields the racists from censure, the can always claim "some of my best friends are black," as racists often do, though they struggle for names.
Yep. And homophobes and antisemites do exactly the same thing.
As for black women falling for it, there are these two: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_and_Silk
Like I said -- "statistically insignificant." Diamond seems to have passed 2 1/2 years ago, so now Silk has to be both of them.
Looks like he got stuck at Maslow's level 3 "love and belonging needs" and maybe level 4 "esteem needs." He appears to be falling backwards down the chart though, because level 2 "safety needs" seem to be on the horizon. Were he a kid on the street, he would be seeking a leadership position in a gang and possibly on police radar for drug dealing. They are all the same - some just more privileged than others.
Always when I read about an adult who engages in behavior such as cheseboro, I wonder where and how that person gets stuck, in a developmental sense, emotionally and morally. His story is seemingly small town wholesome boy makes good…..however, I sure wonder what life was like around the kitchen table for the 5 yo Kenneth…….
I think you're right about Chesbro. Like a lot people in law school, they never really wanted to be 'that' kind of lawyer. I can't tell you how many people in IT have law degrees and have told me they hated it if they ever tried. The idea was to get the degree in the age of Boomers and Millenials which a BA was at the turn of the 1900s. its just a ticket to the job you don't know you want till you see it....but then you're ready. No point in getting a specialized degree....then you're locked into someone else's career path and if you don't like it you have to start all over again. Not so a JD. Just refresh the resume and you're ready to roll. And yes, it looks like Ken found his niche. Just hope he enjoys his comrades for the next 50 years.
Just so you know, I got a law degree out of pure desperation. I was in a policy body at the Justice Department and we suddenly learned that Reagan had become president. I only had a Ph.D. A person with a degree from from a relatively mediocre law school said to me one time about someone she knew, She is not a lawyer but she's smart. My exit from Reagan Washington and the company of such people became Harvard Law School. Time passed and I became a law professor. As I told somebody about Stormy Daniels, she had to make a living. So did I.
Absolutely -- and getting paid by the job often turns out to be a better deal than a marriage contract. <g>
There's always some humor somewhere lurking in these tales. Glad you were able to land on your feet .
As opposed to Ms Daniels, who landed on her back or knees? :-)
No effort made in good faith goes in vain. I was one of those peons that did the filing and answered the phones. Reagan was a game changer. The year someone shot and missed him, I decided to leave the country and let all those smarter than me figure out the mess. 1981. Have at it.
I was still at DOJ at that point. A friend there got a ride with me home because he could tell me how to get around all of the cops that had shut lots of the city off. I was still immature and kept singing I shot the sheriff, I did not shoot his deputy.
True, I went from graduate school in philosophy to law school, as much to understand the philosophy of law as to ever practice. Then like many people, I used the degree in other ways. It's not unusual at all - Ken C.'s "journey" is what is pretty bizarre!
I think Ken needed to be told how bright he is and needed a secure environment of some sort.. Self esteem and all that. This was likely the path of least resistance.
Nice! Every single step of the explanation is plausible, and we can envision Ken - for whatever reasons - having no one who intervenes to warn him, so he just keeps on until he has maneuvered himself into open-and-shut felonies. God, it is incredible, NO ONE warns him, they encourage him.
Just as you say, he invents madcap pseudo-legally sound schemes that would be graded F if submitted during first year law school, at Harvard or theoretically even at the most conservative colleges, and maybe even bring in some law school counseling sessions, to see if Ken was on drugs or losing his marbles!
I hope he's happy now. You did a good job on shreading the Cheese.
Chesebro reminds me of John Webster's line from The Duchess of Malfi: "Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."
small fish in a big pond vs big fish in a small pond - I believe you're correct. It's all about his own remora. And he can understand tRump based on his own need for praise and attention.
A freaking plague of remora.