Michael Ramirez Essay: Whack Job

From America's Premier Editorial Cartoonist

Godfather IV

Michael Ramirez, August 27, 2023

“Leave the gun, take the cannoli” is one of the most memorable lines in movie history. It comes from Francis Ford Coppola’s masterful epic mobster tale, The Godfather, chronicling the Corleone family.

Peter Clemenza, a “capo” or captain of Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, is assigned to execute his protégé, Paulie Gatto, who has been implicated in the attempted assassination of the Don, and has betrayed the family.

The scene begins with Clemenza leaving his house. Just before he gets into his car, his wife reminds him to pick up a cannoli for dessert. He gets into a waiting car with Paulie and another mob soldier, Rocco Lampone, who remains seated in the back seat. They drive around for a while under the pretense of looking for places for mob soldiers to stay. Clemenza asks Paulie to pull over in a deserted section of the road next to a field so that he can relieve himself. While Clemenza is doing his business, Rocco is doing his. He shoots Paulie in the back of the head. As Clemenza walks back to the car, he casually says, “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”

It is a horrifying juxtaposition of ordinary life, picking up dessert and the routine murder and mayhem surrounding a mob family.

It reminds us of life and the hierarchy in the current Russian government. Vladimir Putin is the Godfather, routinely and ruthlessly eliminating his opponents. They have been imprisoned, shot, thrown out of buildings, poisoned, “committed suicide,” and died in other mysterious circumstances.

The list of Putin misdeeds could easily fill a Mario Puzo novel.

In 2006, in London, Putin opponent, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with Polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded that Russian agents had killed him.

Russian agents attempted to kill former Russian military intelligence officer and double agent Sergei Skripal with a Russian nerve agent called Novichok in Salisbury. While Sergei, his daughter, and one of the police investigators were hospitalized and survived this incident, two other Brits, seven miles away, were accidentally poisoned. The disposed perfume bottle the agents used to spray the door knob was carelessly disposed of, which bystanders retrieved from a trash can and shared. One died.

Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was flown to Berlin, where they identified the nerve agent as Novichok. Navalny survived but was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison on spurious charges on his return to Moscow. They recently sentenced him to an additional 19 years for extremism in one of Russia’s worst prisons.

Investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on human rights abuses, was killed outside her apartment in 2006.

Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot four times in the back by an unknown assailant in 2015. It was reported that he had been followed by FSB agents for almost a year before his assassination.

FSB agent Vadim Krasikov was convicted of killing Zelimkhan Khangoshivili in Berlin for fighting against Russia in the second Chechen War. A German court found that the FSB had provided him with a fake I.D., fake passport, meticulous plans, and resources to carry out the murder.

After using his networks and publicly criticizing Putin, Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch, one-time Kremlin insider, and Putin protégé fled to London in 2000.

In 2005, He accused Putin of being a gangster and told the BBC he was working to overthrow Putin’s administration.

There were two reported assassination plots on Berezovsky: one in 2003 and one in 2007.

In 2013, he was found in a locked bedroom with a ligature around his neck. While it was originally determined a suicide, a German pathologist testified that the circular strangulation mark was inconsistent with a hanging, which is usually V-shaped. The UK coroner ruled it could not be determined absolutely if it was a suicide.

Berezovsky’s aide and a Putin critic, Nikolai Glushkov, was found dead of strangulation in his London home five years later.

This list doesn’t include the oppression and imprisonment of numerous Russian citizens, the forced abduction and relocation of Ukrainian children, the “forcible disappearance” of people, and others that are just missing.

There are far too many to list here.

It doesn’t include the 9,444 civilian deaths and 16,940 civilian injuries from his “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, or the 190,000 Ukrainian military casualties, including 70,000 dead… Or the estimated 300,000 Russian military casualties, including 120,000 dead… all at the behest of Vladimir Putin.

The latest “mysterious” death involves Putin’s capo and Wagner Chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin’s Embraer Legacy 600 just happened to fall out of the sky with a wing detached. This is the same plane that survived an almost head-on midair collision with a Boeing 737, 37,000 feet above Brazil.

The former Putin confidante questioned Russia’s senior military leadership and accused them of sacrificing and firing on his Wagner mercenaries. Then he publicly criticized Putin, referring to him as a granddad or “dedushka,” stating, “How can we win when dedushka is a moron.”

On June 23, Prigozhin led a military rebellion and marched towards Moscow. He abandoned the effort, but his fate was sealed. Two months later, Prigozhin is dead.

U.S. Intelligence suspects a bomb may have blown up Prigozhin’s jet. Perhaps it was the appropriate ending for someone many called Putin’s “monster.”

The real monster continues to reign over his “family” in the Kremlin.

To Putin, death is just a way to consolidate his power, to settle a score, to intimidate his opponents, and to silence his critics. It is part of his daily routine… as unremarkable as picking up a cannoli.

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Previous Essays:

• Whack Job

• Unplanned

• Sacrificing Kids

• Mountain of Debt

• Just Say Aye

• Hunting for Answers…more essays at michaelpramirez.com

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