Spitzer: Reflections on a Fallen Hero
Spitzer and a hooker. How remarkable. So much to lose. So much hubris. A DWI, maybe. Cruising down the Taconic at 80 mph with no seat belt, sure. But hookers and electronic trails of evidence? Doesn't seem possible.
I was one of those who danced in the streets, literally, when Eliot won. Here, the Empire State, the great state of New York would replace the Nembutal governorship of George Pataki with a real hero. Brilliant, brave and, yes, principled. I have not had that sense of pride in an election since Bill Clinton won in '92 or Teddy in '94 or Shumer in '98. I believed in Spitzer and resented those who thought his administration was too ambitious and mean-spirited. Albany is run by thugs and B-level, local politicos, I imagined. Eliot will whip them all into shape.
I don't know what made me sicker: the image of Silda Spitzer at her husband's side, the thought of Spitzer's children or the image of Assemblyman James Tedisco, Republican hatchet man for this event and minority leader, talking to Chris Matthews. "We're in stagnation mode," Tedisco told Matthews. "We have to move this government forward and we cannot do that with this individual here." Is Tedisco referring to that same New York State legislature that the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU's legal think tank, ranked dead last in its report released in 2004? The one that Brennan's legal scholars called "the most dysfunctional in the country"? The one that earned that distinction while Tedisco was seated in the chamber and Spitzer was still Attorney General? The New York Assembly is in stagnation mode because of Spitzer's indiscretions? From the looks of it, news of Spitzer's downfall has acted like a form of crack cocaine in energizing the hopeless cabal of fools who run Albany. Tedisco should call me and I can recommend an acting coach he should work with. The guy is unbelievably awful and awfully unbelievable.
People ramble on about what it means. Another sex scandal. Acre upon acre of bullshit about legalizing prostitution and the male animal's burden of a higher sex drive. What garbage. Every woman I know today is like a man in nearly every way. Ambition, self-appraisal and, yes, sex drive. Men go to prostitutes as human beings, not men. The same forces that push individuals into rehabs for drugs and alcohol and into bankruptcy court for gambling or spending addictions is what propels many men into a tryst with a hooker. The need is for "negative excitement." To do something bad, naughty. Put on a Rolling Stones album, pull down the shades and light up that joint. I'm Client Number 9, now. But my friends call me Eliot.
Prostitution should never be legal. Ever. Selling your body is not the worst thing in the world, but men who pay for sex help complete a battery that is, without question, an emotionally unhealthy one. Every prostitute is someone's daughter. Spitzer has three of his own.
I share with you one thing I will take from this. Pay close attention to a candidate's running mate. Scrutinize him as carefully as you do Number One. David Patterson is the Governor of New York now. And most New Yorkers, regardless of age, education or income, don't even know who he is.
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Mr. Baldwin,
I think that your argument against legalization of prostitution needs a little work. Whether or not someone has a daughter has not a thing to do with anything in that regard. Every Prostitute and every John is someone's child. So what? It is not so easy to tell whom is exploiting whom and this:
---------quote
Prostitution should never be legal. Ever. Selling your body is not the worst thing in the world, but men who pay for sex help complete a battery that is, without question, an emotionally unhealthy one. Every prostitute is someone's daughter. Spitzer has three of his own.
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Is really lame. You assert that prostitution in and of itself is emotionally unhealthy. Yet you make no foundation to that argument you just assert it.
You might think that perhaps making something illegal and churches holding it to be immoral might have something to do with all the emotional distress.
FYI - religions have been using people's sex drive to to make them feel guilty and so better control them for many thousands of years. The anti-sex bible thumpers are behind these laws in the USA, while in many European nations that are our mother countries, it is legal, regulated, and taxed.
Nations where such religions were never strong (Japan is an example) and have legal prostitution do not have all the negative emotional issues associated with it either.
Oh! FYI, sons sometimes work as prostitutes too, , ,
Also, while I was sympathetic to you in your recent very public unpleasantness with your ex over your daughter, , ,all due respect, , , no offense intended at all, , , I honestly don't think you are the ideal person to be making this argument because of that. You are pretty far from the public perception of a good parent, regardless of whether you are one or not.
We assume Spitzer prosecuted people because he had a strong sense of right and wrong.
Maybe, instead, his crime-busting career was a power / ego trip all along--and the prostitute habit was just more of the same.
Thank you for mentioning Spitzer's teenaged daughters as victims of Spitzer's narcissism. Too many posters here have called prostitution a "victimless crime." I hope Spitzer's wife is getting a good medical checkup. A married man cavorting with prostitutes and offering to pay more for "dangerous sex" is a horrendous betray of his wife.
Alec,
The list of sex offenders is long. Roosevelt, JFK, Hoover,Cli
Spitzer is only the tip of the iceberg. The solution is simple
The leaders need to be scrutinized before they think about scrutinizing
the mass. Hence every senator, governor, etc...need to be bugged
and videotaped 24-7. This is the only way to hold these animals in check.
If they clame to have such integrity and high morales then they should not
mind being tracked 24-7. As for prostitution, as long as we have weakling
of human beings roaming the earth, there will never be an end to it.
spitz did it to himself. and not only that, but he just created the plausable solution: giuliani '10
Alec Baldwin is now a real man. He has looked deeply into his daughter's and his Mom's eyes and realized why men were put on this earth. He has realized you can't have them all, you can't win all the fights and "success" has nothing to do with excess and everything to do with balance, with knowing when to say know and deal with your compulsions. So many guys never even consider that state, the point in life when you learn how to love, how to feel about things and not to take yourself too seriously.
Now he just needs to visit his friend Pope Noell from EH in Nicaraqua and check out teaching actor to the kids at www.unaesc
I like your comments. What a mensch!
The only thing that might have been better for Spitzer to do to his children is to and leave them an angry message blaming them and his wife for making him be a jerk right Alex?
"Every woman I know today is like a man in nearly every way. Ambition, self-appraisal and, yes, sex drive."
I'm sure my sex drive would increase to equal that of yours, Alec... if you were to know me, too.
Alec, I don't want a man who is dumb enough to pay $4000 to a NY hooker to govern anything!
i think it's called the "thantos syndrome" -
creator/destroyer. all great artists have it.
human barometer is set at a certain level -
when it rises high, the bottom also falls low.
it is the mystery of the human spirit.
rationality serves as no guide.
ayn rand is the whore of babylon.
OH PLEEEEEEEEEZE, this is so pathetically common ... an aging guy with no doubt diminishing 'capacity' without the aid of pharmaceuticals or an enterprising (in this case) female to help him fantasize that he's still got 'it" and with the money or access to it to pay for it. OLD AS THE HILLS and about as surprising.
That there is a back alley "club" of affluent equally fading has-beens to share locker stories with is equally 'SHOCKING' .
As for the idiotic endless coverage, the only thing I can figure is that with the overabundance of BAD NEWS (economy, foreclosures, war etc., etc., etc.) ,and the PRIMARY LULL and creeping CANDIDATE FATIGUE is that a little SARDONIC, "CELEBRITY" COMIC RELIEF was called for.
It isn't as though Spitzer is as old as that Marshall guy who hooked up with Anna Nicole Smith or the old kazillionaire in PA who keeps marrying 20-year olds. I thought he was in his late 40s....and I would guess that most men (if I can generalize from the only one I know in the biblical sense) are at pretty much their full capacity at Spitzer's age. Of course, psychological sexual age might be a totally different matter.
As an investor, I loved what Spitzer did for us. While the Bush SEC let the financial corporations run wild, Spitzer went out of his way to get some accountability into the system. Yet with all his effort, Paulson is just now saying that perhaps we need some regulation. This response once the economy of average person has collapsed as well as the value of most of their assets, in essence their standard of living, including the dollar.
The reason Spitzer was so effective, he was already one of *them* and the hatred of him simply magnified when he was taking people within this milieu to task. Now Wall Street is celebrating because they know they can unabashedly rip off the consumer and small investor again.
It is a shame and I do not agree with what he did. No one would have cared if he did not take principled views against the very people he grew up with, many of whom are guilty of far worse.
Once this blows over I would love it if be became the up to date version of Nader against the financial institutions. The reason this is so important now is that many trillions of dollars in retirement benefits including 401ks, Social Security as well as inheritances of the baby boomers are already in the cross hairs of sharks and thieves that always seem to persist within many of the financial services companies of our day.
Hey Alec -- two questions:
1. How much school and health care funding would you be willing to cut to pay for the cost of keeping all those hookers and johns in prison?
This is no joke. In California we are cutting and health care funding while the prison budget grows out of control.
2. Exactly what kinds of emotional harm to women do you believe warrant a prison sentence?
For example, suppose a man says mean things about his ex-wife to the media.
Should that be a crime too?
What's the name of the great acting coach?
Stanislavski? Strasberg?
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