Hypocrites With Guns And Badges
I’ve been stewing, on and off, about this remark by Mistress Matisse on the Elliot Spitzer scandal:
I’m amused, in a rather cynical way, how much more outraged people who aren’t sex workers have been over the Eliot Spitzer issue than those of us who are. I’m hearing a lot about the hypocrisy!
Yeah, that’s true. But that’s the way the game is played, you know? I don’t expect any different from a politician and an officer of the court.
I won’t flatter myself that Matisse had my particular outrage in mind when she wrote that. But I realized that I do expect — or more precisely, demand, since only a fool would expect it — a better standard of behavior from people whose political power, when abused, lets them destroy lives.
Upon reflection, it’s Spitzer’s habit of prosecuting people for selling the same illicit services he himself was enjoying as a buyer that strikes me as evidence of a substantial and public evil, out of all proportion to whatever hypocrisy may be present when Joe Citizen takes a day off from his wife to let Matisse smack his balls with a stick.
Although I don’t often discuss or encourage the discussion of politics on this blog, it would be wrong to conclude that I’m not interested in political power, and its abuses. And it’s important to remember that prosecutors, in particular, are invested with enormous discretion to pick and choose which crimes they will prosecute.
Spitzer’s enjoyment of prostitution I do not hold against him. But to me it proves, conclusively, that he does not consider prostitution to be a social evil of any great importance. Which proves, in turn, that when he exercised his discretion to prosecute people in the flesh trades, he was doing so purely for political convenience and advantage. He put people in jail who did not, by his own moral compass, need to go there, and he did it to advance his career.
That is hypocrisy, sure. But it’s not the hypocrisy I’m condemning, not directly. What I condemn is locking people up for your personal convenience. “Sorry, chaps, nothing personal, it’s not that I disagree with anything you did, it’s just that I’m on the fast track to the Governor’s mansion, and it will be easier for me to get there if you suffer. So, suffer, peons!”
That, I consider evil. Joe Citizen cheating on his wife? He’s just being a schmuck. There’s a big difference, and it has something to do with the fact that Joe Citizen doesn’t have cops and prison guards with guns to do his dirty work for him.
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Well said, Bacchus. Its such a nice change from the “prostitution is sinful” bunch that I get to argue with everyday.
I agree whole heartedly. I don’t begrudge anyone a paid roll in the hay, but it is wrong on ten different levels when the customer and prosecutioner are one in the same.
I think it is hysterical that his life has hit the skids, while the lady in the equation is enjoying lucrative endorsement opportunities because of this.
Just one more reason I believe that anyone who wants the job of a politician has already committed crimes against the people, or is planning to. Anyone who wants the job should automatically be disqualified.
Brian: I have often heard, “great leaders don’t accept leadership, instead, they have it thrust upon them against their will”
or you know…something along those lines.
But to me it proves, conclusively, that he does not consider prostitution to be a social evil of any great importance.
Would it change your opinion if you knew that he hated himself for doing it, or that he thought he was wrong to do it but couldn’t stop? To me it doesn’t prove anything except what his behavior was; there’s no evidence whether he felt guilty, or believed he was sinning and would be damned to hell.
Best analysis I’ve seen of the whole Spitzer disaster.
OTOH, he’s no longer IN power, so I guess disaster is exactly the wrong word.
I do not pretend to know the contents of Spitzer’s clearly conflicted mind. However, people often do things that are against their moral compasses, and even get off on it. So, Spitzer’s actions do not necessarily mean that he had no moral qualms about prostitution. He’s still a hypocrite either way, (for prosecuting & publicly condemning people for crimes he doesn’t think are wrong, or for willingly participating in something he thinks is wrong while publicly decrying it)
Sukey, I tend to hold people responsible for their actions, not their intentions. By their works shall ye know them. What Spitzer did tells us what his values are, where the rubber actually meets the soft pink skin. What he thinks his values ought to be isn’t something that matters very much to me.
This jackbooted thug getting “hoist on his own petard” is the real story. But I still keep wondering what wacked-out trip he was into that required paying 5-grand an hour (or even two) to cover the ‘damages’ (as a former consort to a former … umm, high-dollar courtesan with “special” clientele, I never saw the tab get anywhere near there even for the most outre requests). In my book, nothing short of “snuff the hooker” or some combination of livestock and small children would ever warrant that price tag, even for the most power-driven of hypocrites
SteveT: Maybe she had to dress up in his wifes clothing…
There’s something a little sad, disconnected and myopic about ALL the commentary I’ve read about the Spitzer affaire since I got back in the country two days ago. The left blogs were embarrassed and quiet. The sex-positive folks talked about the man’s (very real) sexual hypocrisy. And the MSM focused on his difficult personality. Missing in all of this is the salient fact that this was a political assassination.
Eliot Spitzer was busted for ONE reason: because he was an implacable foe of corporate abuse and corruption, and he weas hell-bent the very day he was busted on calling attention the the nearly HALF-TRILLION dollars in bailouts fed to giant investors by the Bushies while hundreds of thousands of ordinary folks like us lose their homes.
Priorities, gang, priorities. Our government has been seized by super-wealthy hooligans for the last 7 years. It’s a big deal. Your kids and maybe your grandkids will understand it was a big deal. The sex stuff is a detail.
Bill, are you a little jet-lagged?
Let’s not forget that Spitzer was moving money around to cover his tracks and still have cash for the lady. That’s what blew his cover, and it was illegal, and he KNEW it was illegal.
As for the conspiracy theory that he was nabbed to keep him from nailing the robber barons who’ve done so well under Bush & Cheney, it’s a cute dog, but it won’t hunt. Sure, those guys cheered when they got the news. But Federal prosecutors didn’t go on a partisan hunt to bring him down; automatic reporting from his bank got the ball rolling, triggered by frequent large transfers that nowadays are considered possible signs of terrorism or racketeering.
If he’d worked out a cleverer payment plan, he’d still be governor.
Bill has a point… but it goes back longer than the seven years that he sites. Neil Bush (One of George Herbert Walker Bush’s OTHER sons), back in the ’80’s, was a member of the board of directors of Silverado Savings and Loan when it’s collapse cost American taxpayers a billion dollars. The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado’s failure and determined that Bush had engaged in numerous “breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest.” Bush settled out of court for a mere $50,000…
Somehow the American “sheeple” have been sold a reverse Robin Hood policy (of welfare for the super-wealthy), at the expense of the backs of the middle class taxpayers, who don’t have the advantages of the tax loopholes and shelters that corporate lobbyists have had built into the system for their own benefit.
As usual, the salacious details of the sex scandal have taken the media’s attention away from a much more important problem. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to the fact that the Fed is merely printing up money to pay the $504,865,000,000.00 (…about $200,000 per MINUTE …half a billion per day!) that the war in the Middle East is currently costing. The American taxpayer must pay this back, plus the astronomical accruing interest!
The resulting inflation will sooner or later make the cost of gasoline and bread enormously high for the average person, and only the super-wealthy will be able to afford a comfortable lifestyle. Military-industrial complex corporations (like Cheney’s Halliburton), making obscene profits off of this war, will soon become so powerful that they will threaten our own government (not unlike the Medellin Cartel which threatened Columbia), just as President Eisenhower warned in his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation. For you youngsters, the context can be found here:
http://en.wikip...mplex
Reports are coming back from the Mid-East that corporate secretaries are given brand new SUV’s to drive around the parking lot (They can’t leave the work compounds for safety reasons), and when the oil filters need changing, the company merely sets fire to the vehicle and orders another new one, claiming it in the paperwork as a casualty-of-war…
This most recent sex scandal is a mere diversion.