Senator Charles Grassley: 'AIG Execs Should Resign or Commit Suicide'

The public rage over the bonuses awarded to AIG executives, paid for with public bailout money, has heated up in recent days. While orchestrated by the Obama administration, the outrage is widespread and bi-partisan.

Feelings are running to high, that Republican Senator Charles Grassley had a unique suggestion for AIG executives.

"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed. But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide."

Later, Senator Charles Grassley's office clarified Grassley's statement to mean that he was not suggesting that the AIG executives kill themselves in the literal sense. Even in modern Japan, business executives who blunder as thoroughly as the people who ran AIG in the ground rarely engage in the ancient practice of seppeku, a solemn ceremony in which a person commits suicide by cutting open his stomach with a wakizashi or short sword.

Honorable suicide does have a long tradition in a variety of cultures. Seppeku in Japan is the suicide mode people are most familiar with, considering American experience with Japanese combatants as recently as World War II. But honorable suicide was also a custom in Ancient Rome. In the face of defeat or disgrace, Roman patricians would either plunge a sword into their chests or, if they had time, draw a hot bath, lay in it, and cut their veins open to slowly die of exsanquination.