It’s still true: Alabamians are “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”

One must understand the audience to whom Mr. Archibald writes his Birmingham News OpEds.

They’re the same ones who found hometown favorite criminal Richard Scrushy – monikered as “America’s First Oblivious CEO” – “Not Guilty” of violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, who to date, remains the solitary individual ever charged with its violation. Alice Martin, then Federal Prosecutor for the Northern District of Alabama, who failed to obtain a guilty verdict in the case, could have moved the trial to New York City – home of Wall Street – or “in Washington, D.C., or in New York City where pecuniary intricacies are understood,” but rather chose Birmingham, Alabama as the trial venue. John C. Coffee, professor of securities law at Columbia Law School, accurately said of the case, that “much of the information was over their heads” and jurors were “sick of trying to understand evidence that was beyond them.”

This remark – right, or wrong (but mostly right) – remains true for Alabama:
Citizens in the state are “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”

In context of course, historically, one should recognize

A True Tale of a Good Man Gone Bad… Gone Good

A Jail Guard’s Tale of His Journey to Inmate

June 3, 2012, 4:26 pm, By COREY KILGANNON

Gary Heyward, once a Rikers Island guard, in Harlem selling copies of his book recounting his experiences. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

Gary Heyward stood on 125th Street in Harlem, not far from the Apollo Theater, wearing a jumpsuit that was half blue and half orange.

Mr. Heyward, 44, had this odd-looking uniform specially made — part prison guard, part inmate — to illustrate that at Rikers Island, where he worked as a corrections officer from 1997 to 2006, he went from cop to criminal.

“One day you’re taking the count and the next day you’re in the count,” he said, referring to the jails’ regular head counts of inmates.

This abrupt transition is precisely the angle of his new book, a self-published paperback called “Corruption Officer: Perpetrator With a Badge.”

It is a raunchy tell-all and a critical portrayal of Rikers Island, where