Thomas Ravenel Heads to Prison

You got to love the Post and Courier getting the exclusive interview from Thomas Ravenel just weeks before he reports to the "big house".

While I don't condone cocaine use and loath drug dealers and crackheads, I think the judicial system is broken. Sending Thomas Ravenel to prison makes about as much sense as sending Barry Bonds to the Hall of Fame.

But sending a first time drug offender to prison makes even less sense when you consider that the same system continually fails to protect us from repeat violent offenders who rape, murder and prey on our children and neighbors with guns and knives, people who really should be locked up without parole.

On a lighter note during the next ten months Thomas and his supporters can find valuable insight into prison life by reading "Who Moved My Soap" by Andy Borowitz

Andy's book subtitled "The CEO's Guide to Surving in Prison" is of course a parody of the best selling "Who Moved My Cheese" so here's a brief excerpt:

Chapter One: Put Your Hands in the Air and Step Away from the Desk
If you're a convicted CEO who's heading to prison for the first time, let me just say this: You should be totally stoked. A trip to the slammer could be the best career move you ever made, and after a few weeks behind bars, you'll be kicking yourself for not getting convicted sooner.

Surprised? I thought you might be. You've probably bought into the conventional wisdom that a prison sentence is some kind of "punishment," a fate to be avoided at all costs. Well, you won't see me slicing that brand of baloney. If you follow the simple advice in this book, you'll discover what successful CEO convicts everywhere already know: If time is money, then hard time is hard cash.

Thanks to the rising tide of corporate scandals, former CEOs are pouring into America's penitentiaries in record numbers, the biggest migration of white-collar criminals into the penal system since the fall of the Nixon administration.

Within the next five years, one out of four CEOs in the United States will be convicted and sent to jail, while another one out of four will flee the country in a single-engine plane with gold coins and priceless diamonds sewn into his underpants. Still another one out of four will plea-bargain his way into performing community service, such as teaching inner city youths and the elderly how to destroy incriminating documents and create fictitious off-the-books partnerships.

But that still leaves a whole lot of CEOs heading up the river — good news for you, because you'll be far from alone. Once you're in prison, if you look to your right, and then to your left, your chances of recognizing someone from your business school class will be better than 50%, and even better than that if you went to Harvard.

Andy's his chapter dealing with prison slang is a riot, the "Prison Food: Don't Pick Up the Check" Chapter begins with a comparison between prison mess halls and five-star restaurants and includes reviews various prisons, Zagat-style.

This is followed by chapters entitled "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Prisoners", a chapter dealing with "Prison Cell Feng Shui" which includes such commonsense but often-overlooked suggestions as "arrange your bunk so that you face the bars, not away from them". The endless humor makes this book a summer must read while enjoying the Edisto, IOP and Folly beaches. Something Thomas won't be doing this summer.

The ten months will come and go for Thomas Ravenel and he'll be all the rage when he exits prison a changed man and hits the King Street bar scene once again.

Maybe he'll convert to Islam or form a youth basketball league, walk down to the market holding a bible and preach how he learned to "make the time serve you instead of you serving the time" to quote Paris Hilton.

But I really think we would all have been better served had he just been sentenced to pickup trash along the Arthur Ravenel, Jr. bridge for the next ten months.