Spitzer: Why Were We Surprised?

Everybody can tell you where he or she was when they first heard about it. When I saw the headline, I thought maybe that somebody at The Onion got ahold of the New York Times front page. Eliot Ness caught with hookers? How could such a thing be possible? It was like Moses being caught with Pharoah's daughter. Wait. That happened too.

The fact is, none of us should have been all that surprised by it, least of all those of us who work in business. Eliot Spitzer has simply demonstrated once again that those who rise to the top of organizations are very often the most demented, conflicted individuals in any group.

Symptoms of powerful and influential people across all professional spectra include, but are not limited to:

• Grandiosity: Often displayed in a cavalier belief that one will not be caught doing the things that other people would be punished for;
• Arrogance: Similar to grandiosity, but with a slightly nastier edge and more deleterious effect on other people;
• Cruelty: Bullies abound in senior management of all business entities, including politics, and nobody was more of a bully at his job than Mr. Spitzer. Dramatic bully behavior almost always goes hand in hand with other crazy pathologies, including the desire to be submissive in non-business situations, the way that masochism often accompanies its more sadistic counterpart;
• Addiction: Booze. Drugs. Work. These people do nothing in moderation once they get hooked on their substance of choice. In Spitzer's case, it was a certain kind of illicit sexual transaction. I'm betting he's been at it since it didn't matter.
• Bifurcated personality: This enables the big dude to prosecute prostitution rings with vigor and a certain moral imperative while at the same time keeping Kristin holding on Line 2.
• Rigidity of Character: Necessary for guys who run military-style organizations, but interestingly coupled with...
• Inconsistency: Says one thing one day then immediately does the exact opposite the next.

The only question that remains for those who work for such people and vote for them when they run is why we continue to be grossed out, shocked and scandalized when the very personality attributes that got them to the top manifest themselves in questionable form.

Comments

[englishprof]

How wonderful it is that our President hasn't done anything like this! If he had, we'd have to think of impeaching him or demanding his resignation.

[Marnie1]

Too right!

Interesting how many of these characteristics apply to Bush and Bill Clinton.

Bush's problem is he has, in addition to the above mentioned pathologies, an almost total lack of the intellegence, abilities and workaholic drive necessary to be "successful".

Bill did and does, and has, perhaps, learned his lesson.

Bush just has a rich powerful granddaddy and daddy. Thus his sociopathologies are propped up by meanness, vengance and lies.

[DaveMacaray]

Let's not overthink this. Important job or not, Gov. Spitzer's reasons for frequenting prostitutes are very likely the same reasons hundreds of thousands (I'm guessing) of other guys frequent prostitutes. That Spitzer had infinitely more to risk than these other guys shouldn't obscure the obvious: he was a married man, a family man, interested in getting laid by someone other than his wife. Period.

[peterg76]

I wasn't surprised, either by the scandal, or the fake media circus deployed to drown out coverage of the Democratic primaries.

[jsinclair]

Hypocrisy doesn't surprise me much, actually. Especially among the dogmatic or doctrinaire.

What does surprise me is $4300 for a couple of hours with this 22 year old woman. I thought call girls were supposed to be gorgeous, and well-spoken. This woman is ...attractive but hardly breathtaking, and speaks about like you'd think a prostitute would for $50/hour. ("I'd say, 'Hey, dude, do you want the sex or not?")

She had sex with him three different days before realizing he was the (high profile) governor of her state.

I see a flock of women giving up on modeling or acting and heading to NY.

[mambomary]

Sorry, Bing baby, but I wasn't the least surprised by the luv gov's alleged antics with a young hooker in D.C. in apparent violation of the, er, Mann Act. Spitzer is a hetereosexual man, and hypocrisy is not uncommon in this society, is it? What's surprising is his stupidity because so many of us thought this Ivy league educated dickhead had more sense than to do the dumb things for which he has prosecuted others.

[BBackSoon]

I was all for and am all for this guy being run out of office because what he did was wrong and downright stupid for someone in his position. I do hate a hypocrite. But I thought it was interesting that I heard on Democracy Now the other night that it seems odd that the FBI and the DOJ pushed this case so hard and so fast. They were after one man and they got him. I have not confirmed any of these facts as stated in the link but it sounds like a Republican hit job to me. Or the fact that he went after the powers that be and they bit him.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/12/spitzer_expected_to_resign_over_prostitution

[jsinclair]

I think the problem was the banking pattern. It looked like money laundering or bribery. The feds -had- to investigate that.

"Be careful how you treat people on the way up. You'll meet them again on the way down."

In his arrogance, Spitzer outsmarted himself (I really don't understand why he'd leave himself vulnerable to the Mann Act, though. Even us non-lawyers, know "across state lines" is a red flag.

I don't think it was wanting to be caught, though. I think it's just decades of feeling smarter than everyone else.

[IncredulousGeezer]

Humbug.

Dime store pop psychology.

Take with a grain of salt anything emanating in this matter from Wall Street and other financial sources.

And, remember the name: Roger Stone.

[jmundstuk]

Agree. Love the word humbug, too.

[ld]

I like this and I've been liking you stuff on HuffPo!! Please keep posting.

I do wonder though - Spitzer, I'm told, prosecuted corporate types. Does that color you view of him and his character?

[Mauiloa]

HuffPost's Pick

Still, the Schadenfreude displayed by Wall Street and the capitalist media is just a little too giddy.

I suspect that now that its public enemy number one is gone, it will be dirty business as usual in The Street's boardrooms.

[Heidfeld]

First of all, can we stop with the "Schadenfreude" nonsense? We get it. You saw the word, looked it up (as all non Germans have) and thought it was cool. But really it is just uber stupid, just like all the other trendy foreign words people cling to as part of the zeitgeist and never speak sotto-voce.

Anyway, it won't just be business as usual in the boardrooms on Wall street. Spitzer's enforcement was making an impact and helping every day investors/citizens. Take it from someone who used to work in the 'business', the guys on the retail end of Wall street are all crooks, and someone needs to keep a close eye on them.

[Mauiloa]

I do love that word, Schadenfreude!

By the way, people use it, you smarmy little twit, because there isn't an English word that conveys the meaning as well.

It's called communication. Try it, Meister WordSchmidt!

[RedWhiteandBrooklyn]

That is the best description of George W. Bush that I have ever read!

[Pdubya]

Oh, and that pesky investigation he had going on for Silverstein.

hmmmmmm.

[patianneb]

With all due respect, i can't see that any of this has anything to do with RISING to the top. I think it has far more to do with the sad but ordinary tale of finding you can NO LONGER RISE to the top as you once did and having access to the fantasy that you still have "it".
This together with some up to the moment pharms . . . and you are still a natural man.
Dull, trite, ordinary, patethic.
The only thing that matters here is what he allowed to happen to his family. What little manhood or semblance of character he might have had, perished...not just because he got caught but because he requested or allowed his wife to stand there in humiliated silence.
He's a creep, and probably always was.

[davedave]

mr spitzer and john mccain have many similarities, hubris being obvious. but spitzer paid for sex and consequently owed no one....well, perhaps his wife and children, but from a voter's perspective he was cleaner than straight talkin' john.

mccain learned that the paper trail from money (keating) was the problem, instead parley influence and relations and skip the paper trail of obvious accountable debt.

vicki ise, rick renzi, falwell, bush kiss; spitzer''s folly was big but personal. mccain is perpetrating a more generalized and dangerous fraud, that he owes no one and thinks for himself.

the truth is that the sociopaths that rise to the top of the pile are, in our system, a necessary evil. we took our government from the greek/british model and try again and again to find a benevolent despot, a good king.

we reacted to bad king george during the american revolution and keep getting worse king george (two w the same last name...)

i think that the model of the most effective and least destructive "shitheel" is the proper one to evaluate our public servants. its about them, not us...

d

[SamThornton]

Zero-sum games such as politics and internal corporate competition often give the advantage to the most rapacious characters involved. Mr. Spitzer, by all accounts, fits the mold. Lack of a conscience partially explains his apparently eager participation in the exploitive business of prostitution.

Mr. Spitzer's reported penchant for unsafe sex practices, detailed in court papers, argues strongly that Mrs. Spitzer should immediately have herself tested for HIV AIDS and other STDs.