Why they maybe don’t like you, Jeff

According to recent accounts in the Detroit Free Press, besieged attorney Geoffrey Fieger doesn’t think he’s very popular in Michigan.

Strike that.

The Jeff didn’t say it.

His lawyer made the claim in arguing that The Jeff’s trial on charges of illegally contributing to fellow Democrat John Edwards’ 2004 vice presidential campaign should be moved out of Detroit. According to surveys, the lawyer said, Michiganders don’t think much of The Jeff.

Hard to believe.

That is, hard to believe The Jeff believes it. Why, he once tried to run for governor, so he must think people like him, right?

Well, I’m one Michigander with an opinion about the Actor From Southfield.

Words like “arrogant,” “self-righteous,” “spiteful” and “bully” race to mind.

Let me see, there was the time quite a few years ago when I learned from a Washtenaw County prosecutor that The Jeff was judge-shopping in that county in hopes of beating a drunk-driving rap.

I passed the tip on to a Free Press cops reporter, who researched the claim and found it to be true. The reporter prepared an article and placed a call to The Jeff, asking for comment. The Jeff in turn placed a call to Free Press editors and there was a conversation. I don’t know what was said. The story didn’t run.

A few years later, I was drafted to work on a story about The Jeff when he was defending Dr. Death, aka Jack Kevorkian. Into that article, I managed to insert a few paragraphs belatedly reporting on The Jeff’s legal gambits in the Washtenaw drunk driving case.

Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, before I went out on strike (1995) at the Free Press, I was assigned to work on the Kevorkian story. I wound up visiting The Jeff in his office and listening as he and a law partner shouted angrily at me. What a tirade. What did I do to make them so angry?

Asked questions.

I hoped that was and end of my dealings with The Jeff. Enough of Dr. Death and his mouthpiece pal with the University of Michigan diploma in dramatic arts.

But then I came back from the strike and was assigned to a bureau in Royal Oak. Dr. Death’s prime hunting ground. In the early days when Kevorkian was being hounded by the Oakland County prosecutor and before he was finally convicted of murder and sent to prison, I wound up again having to write about the Actor. I found in the Free Press electronic library a story by another reporter quoting The Jeff saying his notorious client had aided not dozens but literally hundreds of people in killing themselves. That comment came from The Jeff himself and there was no correction over the story. I reasoned that it must be correct; if not, The Jeff would have complained. I put the “helped hundreds” quote in my story.

The next day, I found a voice mail from The Jeff. It helps me understand why people might not like the millionaire mouthpiece. He berated me and denied saying his own words, the ones printed in the Free Press months earlier without correction.

Some people might have been offended at the names he called me. Those are probably the people who turn up in the poll as not liking The Jeff. I was amused. I decided to have some fun. I wrote a letter that I intended to mail to The Jeff. I used a ploy I learned from none other than Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, who once wrote a letter to someone who irritated him. This was all reported verbatim in the Free Press by my friend Hugh McDiarmid Jr. Brooks told the guy that “some asshole” had written him, Brooks, a dopey letter and signed his, the asshole sender’s, name to it.

I didn’t use quite Brooks’ language. I thought I was very tactful. I made the mistake of showing my letter to my editor. “Don’t send it!” he ordered.

I filed it away, but a couple days ago, while cleaning, I found it. And then I read the story about The Jeff’s popularity problem.

Here’s the letter I didn’t send to The Jeff. Ten years late, I’m hoping it might help him understand why some people, though of course certainly not all, might not like him.

March 13, 1998Dear Mr. Fieger:

I found a voice mail message today from somebody purporting to be “Jeff Fieger.” The caller said:

“Joel, Jeff Fieger. You are either incompetent or malevolent, because I just saw your article in the paper today and I never said he helped hundreds of people. I have a feeling you’re probably malevolent, but you may be incompetent.”

The caller apparently was unaware of your comments quoted in the August 14, 1997 Detroit Free Press: “He’s helped hundreds of people die.”

If you should discover the identity of the caller, would you be so kind as to correct him? I will do the same.

Thanks very much.

Yours truly,

Joel Thurtell

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com