Profiles in Chutzpah 

• John Kilbourn

The Chutzpah Society was so impressed with Mr. Brass’ work that it created an award in his name, The Ed Brass Brass Prize, which, according to Elmer J. Gallworthy, “will honor that individual who in the face of his client’s overwhelming guilt, is not merely content to provide his client with the best defense money can buy, but is also determined to leave onlookers speechless with baseless assertions of his client’s innocence, purity, gentility, nobility, courage and unsurpassed virtue.”

In announcing the award, Mr. Gallworthy paid tribute to Mr. Brass’ willingness to say or do anything to get his client off the hook. “I thought I was pretty good at unmitigated gall, but my friend Ed Brass really surpassed me in the cheek department. It took all the brass in Ed’s being to ask Attorney General Shurtleff to fix the length of Killpack’s driving suspension. But for sheer cheek, effrontery, undiluted chutzpah or whatever you want to call it, nothing can match Ed’s remarks after drunken driver Killpack finally saw the writing on the wall and copped a plea.

“Let me read you what Ed Brass said about his client in the Deseret News: ‘Having his name drug through the mud was difficult.’ Incidentally, Ed has chutzpah, but he’s usually not ungrammatical. Maybe that quote was transcribed by one of the Deseret News’ new citizen reporters. KUTV 2 and The Salt Lake Tribune quoted Ed as saying, ‘It was pretty tough to be dragged through the mud the way he has the last year.’

“In any event, this is a great example of the tried and true Mud Maneuver, in which you fling mud to obfuscate an uncomfortable reality, in this case the fact that his client was out there endangering the public by having a few too many adult beverages and then getting behind the wheel. I sure didn’t notice Sheldon Killpack being dragged, or even drug, through the mud by anybody. If there’s any mud on him, it’s because he fell in it all on his lonesome. Ed’s use of the Mud Maneuver is pretty brilliant, I’d say. Even more brilliant, or brillianter, is how Ed performs the rare Double Mud Maneuver, throwing and dragging at the same time. Before you know it, the malefactor has become the victim.”

Mr. Gallworthy paused and seemed to shake his head in wondering admiration. “You know, the Double Mud Maneuver would have been enough to establish the Ed Brass Brass Prize as a permanent fixture in the annual Chutzpah Society achievement awards. But then someone showed me the KUTV clip of Ed praising his client and, in the process, elevating the poor dragged-through-the-mud victim to the status of sinned-against saint. ‘He’s a pretty courageous guy,’ Ed says of Sheldon. Even better was the quotation in the Deseret News: ‘I’ve never seen someone handle a situation like this better,’ Ed is quoted as saying. ‘He’s a real gentleman.’ Don’t you just love that?

“I don’t know about you, but Ed’s encomiums put Sheldon’s actions in a whole new light. It was pretty courageous to challenge the Word of Wisdom and dare the wrath of the General Authorities. It was pretty courageous to get stumble-bum drunk. It was pretty courageous to drive a motor vehicle when you’re looped. And when the cop inquired about the aroma of alcohol emanating from interior of Killpack’s SUV, Sheldon, ever the courageous gentleman, gave all the credit to his passenger.

“There’s more! Everyone would agree that it was pretty courageous of Sheldon to refuse a breathalyzer. Who knows whose mouth might have been slobbering all over the breathing tube? Finally, the average Joe might question the cojones of someone who tried to weasel out of fessing up and taking his medicine. But we at the Chutzpah Society think Sheldon is a pretty courageous guy. You might even say he has balls of brass.”

Meanwhile, Ed Brass, the recipient of this year’s Ed Brass Brass Prize, is not resting on his laurels. He has vowed to stay on the case until the last globule of mud has been washed from the gentlemanly visage of his pretty courageous client.