Cool Hand Tom

After what seemed like an absence of several months, the antics of Jailbird Tom Noe are back on the front page. As I read the print version of the story yesterday, the sheer absurdity of it all made me laugh. I couldn’t help but picture a Shawshank Redemption-type scene in which Noe is telling the warden that he’ll never tell anyone about the money he helped him to launder, and the warden violently erupts and sentences Noe to a month in “the hole.” I can also hear Morgan Freeman’s voice – not talking about Ol’ Andy Defresne this time, but rather Ol’ Tommy Noe: “His first night in the joint, Ol’ Tom Noe cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound.”

Noe has a great quote in the article: “I've got to talk fast. I'm getting moved. They told me they counted my points wrong in Texas. I'm not supposed to be here and I'm being put in the hole.” Maybe “the Texans” (read: George W. Bush and Administration) were using the same counting system that Noe himself used when he was playing around with rare coins and Bureau of Workmen’s Compensation money. Another plausible explanation is that Tom made up “the hole” story so he wouldn’t have to put up with Bernadette for the next several months. I’ve never been incarcerated, so I may be wrong, but my impression is that “the hole” is for those prisoners who misbehave, not victims of bureaucratic screw-ups. That being said, perhaps Tom was caught with a shiv that he crafted out of melted rare coins...

What I really love about this whole situation is the subtle game of politics that Bernadette “Didn’t Have a Clue What My Husband Was Up To” Noe is playing. Though she lives in Florida, in a seaside mansion courtesy of my tax money and the Ohio Bureau of Workmen’s Comp, she comes running to The Blade – the very media outlet that was the catalyst of Tom’s downfall – when she thinks her hubby is being treated unfairly by the Federal Prison system. Perhaps she’s trying to make Tom seem like a sympathetic figure so that Ohio forgets his past transgressions – “You’re not such a bad guy, Tom… after all, you spent some time in the hole!” She claims that Noe's alleged visit to solitary confinement is "a development that is upsetting her and her children," though I'd think that the fact that he so grandly earned a prison stay in the first place would be pretty damn upsetting (considering that they "had no clue what he was up to"). Bernadette needs to come to grips with the fact that he’s not shacked up at a high-priced spa, and that the Noe Supper Club has been replaced by the Noe Shower Club. Better not drop the soap, Tom…