Put Your Makeup On. Fix Your Hair Up Pretty. And Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City

Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold
But with you forever I'll stay
We're goin out where the sand's turnin to gold
Put on your stockins baby, `cause the night's getting cold
And maybe everything dies, baby, that's a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back

Now, I been lookin for a job, but it's hard to find
Down here it's just winners and losers and don't
Get caught on the wrong side of that line
Well, I'm tired of comin out on the losin end
So, honey, last night I met this guy and I'm gonna
Do a little favor for him

…from Atlantic City by Bruce Springsteen, Freehold

     American Hustle?  I think not.  This film has Jersey Hustle as it rises from the boards in Atlantic City, loiters in the lobby of Convention Hall, and hangs out on the corners of Camden.  Despite a constellation of stars, a cornucopia of glitz, and a gaggle of Diane Von Furstenburg wrap dresses, the movie is at its heart one that poses what we in education like to call an "essential question":  Can we still like/support/vote for a politician who skims a bit off the top for himself while letting the remainder go to benefit the people of New Jersey?

     Can somebody just a little bit crooked be a public servant?  It's a Jersey question for the ages as we consider the type of guys we want pontificating under that golden dome in Trenton or shaking hands on our town's Facebook homepage.
Since 1582, the term quid pro quo has meant "something for something."  You know, "you do for me, I'll do for you."  It's a dilemma - a problem whose solution causes another problem.  We can give our politicos "a taste," as Silvio Dante might say,  without corrupting a nice, clean deal for the state's benefit.  This theory very far is not far from Steven Covey's plan for each of us to build an emotional bank account except that it's a bit greener and comes with a condo in Boca (wherever that is.)  It is the basis of the corporate system which, increasingly, we are told should be the model for our public  servants.
For me, the most interesting character in American Hustle was Mayor Carmine Polito (really, far too easy a name for a politician,) a front for real Camden Mayor Angelo Errichetti who was arrested in 1978 in the Abscam (Abdul-Scam) debacle that caught up some congressmen, locals, and  even a U.S. senator.  The movie story plays him a bit sympathetically and lets him off easier in the end than real life did.  This character played by Jeremy Renner of The Hurt Locker, makes us confront our state's ambivalence about getting the bad guys who are really "our guys."  Remember Bill Musto in Union City?  My family loved that guy.
     The central ideas of this smart movie are varied, but this is the one that I related to.  In New Jersey, we often expect the extended hand to be fill with cash, not camaraderie. That's how it works.  Skim, but don't let your peeps sit for too long on the GW Bridge.  Maybe that's the unspoken rule that was broken last week.  Take a little bit for yourself, but don't take sides against the family.

Keep reading and writing,

Maureen