"There is no such crime as a crime of thought; there are only crimes of action. I am not bound to believe them right in order to take their case, and you are not bound to believe them right in order to find them not guilty." - Clarence Darrow.Parody and satire have a long and noble tradition as literary clubs with which to ridicule ideas and institutions; of bearing open the euphemisms that cloak hypocrisy. However, when satire arises from a satirist's personal struggle with ideas and institutions with which he has sympathy, satire grows into more than a useful tool. It becomes a self-examining work of art.
Set in the very near future, Richard Dooling's Brain Storm approaches this level of satire. Lawyers, computer culture, and neurobiology are all mocked in the same novel. Joe Watson is a brilliant high-tech lawyer employed by a staid and large St. Louis law firm. Watson is a master of using the latest search engines to research the subtleties of copyright law in service of video game companies that steal game themes from one another. Despite Watson's six-figure salary, his young family's voracious upper middle-class appetites are keeping him from accumulating enough capital to eventually earn "real" money.
The novel turns when Watson is appointed by the court to represent James Whitlow ("wit low"), a bigot accused not only of murder but a hate crime when he kills a deaf African-American caught in bed with Whitlow's wife. When a twang of lawyerly conscience and the lure of a real case with real consequences prevent him from pleading out his pro bono client, Watson's embarrassed firm finds an ostensible reason to release him and his family abandons him.
The novel's first theme focuses on the question of whether punishing "hate" crimes differently constitutes punishment for thought crimes. Isn't hate of some sort ubiquitous? Do not hate crimes outlaw a state of mind? Is punishing differently for the state of mind associated with a hate crime analogous to punishing premeditated crimes more severely than crimes of negligence or crimes of passion? Does hate crime legislation provide even more job security for law enforcement officials? In the words of Myrna Schwiech, a pug of a lawyer who makes a career of defending society's dregs:
"To unsophisticated locals, the crime is a crime, but if you ask the right questions ... lo and behold, out of the mists of human depravity, a hate crime appears. These guys [the FBI] know employment when they see it. ... Hate could mean more business for them than crack cocaine. After all, hate is everywhere, and it's free!"
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