Driving back yesterday from the direction of his stomping grounds, and listening to the radio, then scanning the first newspaper stories, I learned all I wanted to know and then some about Eliot Spitzer’s very public fall from grace. Man is born to sin, but this one guy really, really stepped in it. He should be fully prosecuted, which I assume is going to happen. I’m not planning to vote for the guy; nor will I ever be asked to. I’m done with that story now.
But apparently nobody else is, and with the GOP nomination settled and the Pennsylvania primary six weeks off (nobody’s paying much attention to poor Mississippi today), the national political gossip mill will keep going on this one full-time, more’s the pity.
There have been two times recently when this guy’s been in the news, and both times I’ve wondered why it was my business. The first was his proposal for his state to issue licenses to illegals. Now this. As a resident of South Carolina, I feel no particular responsibility for the governors of other states. (And perhaps now is a good time to express appreciation for the fact that our governor is a good, solid family man, whatever else I may say about him.) The NYT and WSJ are making a huge deal of this for such staid publications, but remember that for them, this is local. For the WashPost too, for that matter.
Anyway, before this devolves into a grumpy lecture about how we should talk about real news instead of this stuff, I’ll share with you the proximate cause of my harrumphing. I was out of the office briefly today and heard NPR’s Peter Sagal — as a self-appointed expert on vice — and another guy talking about the subject on a level not far above a couple of sniggering schoolboys. (Sample: "John F. Kennedy was a horndog of extraordinary proportion.")
Maybe I should stick to Morning Edition. That’s generally quite respectable.
Bear with me. I’ve been sick for four days while traveling, and finally called my doctor to see about getting an antibiotic (a sinus infection, I think). Maybe when the meds kick in I’ll cheer up and think a man going to so much trouble to destroy his family and career is funny. Right now I think it’s very sad.
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Wife devastated. Children exposed to the vilest nastiest stories and the sniggering about their father. A family perfectly ruined.
All this NOT because soemone was a “horndog.” All these little terms and pet names we have for things do is neutralize and minimize the evil involved. Spitzer didn’t “step in anything” and he wasn’t a horndog. He is an evil man who put self gratification above honor, duty and love and family. He deserves whatever bad things result from that.
I noticed that his very hurt wife joined him on the podium yesterday. I expect that very soon we’ll hear he’s gone off to rehab somewhere and that his wife will stand by her “man.” What a sad day this is. David
Spitzer is an egomaniacal bully who should never have been elected governor, much less state attorney general. As New York’s AG he pursued headlines in impugning the integrity of folks whom he never charged. Here’s a partial list of his misdeeds.
In his 2006 gubernatorial campaign he promised “to bring new dawn of ethical responsibility to state politics,” yet with less than a year in office the state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo issued a report accusing the governor’s staff of using the State Police for political purposes, i.e., “to keep special records of Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno’s whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City and to recreate records if they did not exist.” See details of those charges here. Bruno is a Republican, Spitzer a Democrat. But this ain’t about politics in my mind, it’s about respect, power, and the rule of law.
It is good to see thugs vanquished, however it happens.
This is all so familiar. Spitzer should resign, as should this guy. From Wiki:
In early July 2007, (David) Vitter’s phone number was included in a published list of phone records of Pamela Martin and Associates, a company owned and run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, also known as the “D.C. Madam”, which is accused by the U.S. government of being a prostitution service. Hustler magazine identified the phone number and contacted Vitter’s office to ask about his connection to Palfrey.[89] The following day, Vitter issued a written statement:
This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible. Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there – with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.[90]
The statement containing Vitter’s apology said his telephone number was included in phone records dating from his days as a member of the House of Representatives.[3] Phone records show that Vitter’s number was called by Palfrey’s service five times, the first on October 12, 1999, and the last on February 27, 2001.[91] Two calls were placed while House roll call votes were in progress.[92]
As background, several news outlets reported that in May 1999, Vitter replaced Congressman Bob Livingston after Livingston resigned due to an adultery scandal.[1][93][43] Vitter said about Livingston’s decision to resign, “It’s obviously a tremendous loss for the state. I think Livingston’s stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess”, referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal of President Bill Clinton.[94] In 2000, his wife, Wendy Vitter, commenting on the same scandal, said, “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he [Vitter] does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me,” referring to the incident of Lorena Bobbitt severing the penis of her husband and to Clinton’s wife, Hillary Clinton.[93]
Why does the media give the Spitzer story 50 times more coverage than it gave to David Vitter???
Spitzer is no more morally reprehensible than Vitter, yet Vitter continues to serve, while NY Republicans are threatening to impeach Spitzer.
Why do we hold Democrats to a much higher standard of conduct than we hold Republicans???
What Spitzer did in New York was illegal. If he was in Nevada it would be legal.
If he was in Israel, England, Canada, France, Mexico, Denmark etc. it would legal.
If he bet on a horse race in New York it would be legal. If he bet on a horse race in South Carolina it would illegal.
You better know the laws of the USA!
Why do we hold Democrats to a much higher standard of conduct than we hold Republicans???
-Jack
Jack, as a Democrat I certainly hold members of my party to a high standard. The fact that the media spends more time on Democratic scandals than on those of the GOP, even though there are far more GOP scandals, speaks volumes about who pays the bills for big-media. As for Spitzer, I have no problem with his being exposed for the jerk that he is. Vitter should likewise go for behavior that is essentially identical in every major respect to Spitzer’s.
In ten years of using these “services” someone close to him had to know about it. Cops, his protection detail, close friends, and maybe even his wife had to have some clue as to what was going on. No one, well, except for Bill Clinton, is that slick. I mean, how do you all think he got so good at prosecuting prostitution rings? Maybe its because he had “first hand” experience into how they operated. (No pun intended)
Oh, and to all the people that call him evil, I say to you, hypocrites! Which is more evil, Internet porno or prostitution? The former are for those who have less money, but is no less evil then the latter. Which is more evil, prostitution or sex out of wedlock? There is no difference in the eyes of the Father. His sin is no different then yours.
Mike, you say Spitzer should not have been elected governor; it’s worth remembering that he was, though, and with 69% of the vote, a record in New York State. Though unquestionably he veered over the line on some occasions in his pursuit of white-collar crime (one of many striking similarities to another popular NY’er, Rudy G), clearly the people of NY felt that Spitzer was going after people who were victimizing everyday Americans, the average-Joe-and-Jane investor.
In the long run, Mike, allowing Wall Street shenanigans to run amok is counterproductive to our capitalist economy, in which investors have to have confidence that the game is not rigged.
I think in the end what’s undermined support for Spitzer even on the liberal side of the fence is not so much the prostitution per se (which shouldn’t even be illegal) but the sheer extravagance—what, something like $80,000 in all, they’re saying now? That makes liberals think of Spitzer in the same class with other excesses of a few over-the-top Late-American-Empire-era CEO’s, so they’re happy to toss him overboard.
Brad you’re just upset that it was the NY governor and not the SC governor.
Spitzer has resigned. And good riddance. But what about Republican Senators Larry Craig (bathroom tap dance) and David Vitter (call girl scandal)? Do we live in a country with double standards? Sure seems like it.
Yes, we do, Bud. And why is it (not always, but often) someone who has made much hay out of ‘moral’ positions?
Phillip —
Even considering the source, I think you’ll agree that this makes my point.
So how did the IRS and others latch on to Spitzer? This post has a good summary with links on the events leading to Spitzer’s downfall: his bank followed the law in alerting the feds.
Okay, I gotta get some sleep, but this update from Iowahawk, motorhead blogger supreme, is important:
There’s more…
Mike, the Objectivist website’s arguments against Spitzer’s prosecution of Merrill Lynch are, as one might expect from them, a bunch of hooey. And it’s a surprisingly whiny position for Ayn Rand devotees to take.
Now I’ll grant that, even as Spitzer himself acknowledged in his Time mag profile of 2002, the Martin Act by which he pursued Merrill Lynch was “generous to prosecutors.” (Kind of a Patriot Act against fraudsters.)
The website dismisses what ML was doing as mere “free-wheeling capitalism” and engaging in mere “hype,” when the reality is that the company was engaged in outright deception, not just promoting companies’s stocks who were giving them investment business (healthy or not) but also downgrading those or not promoting those that were not. They were essentially lying to heartland investors while insiders were in on the scam. Spitzer did not merely criminalize “hype.”
But the most laughable thing about the argument is, as I say, the whiny-ness of it all. In this wonderful free-wheeling capitalism which they celebrate so greatly, the Obj. website has to acknowledge that government is but one actor in the drama. Sure, you can cheat, lie, do whatever you’d like to try to make some more bucks (and fulfill your Randian–not randy, Eliot—destiny), but you should be ready to drop some millions in fines if caught.
Last I heard, Merrill Lynch is still in business. They paid millions in fines. Boo-hoo. They make and lose millions every day in the market. You want to play tackle football, don’t cry when you get a boo-boo or get your uniform mussed.
None of this is to condone or excuse any aspect of what Spitzer’s just done. But to extend our condemnation of his actions to incorporate a revisionist history of some of the corporate excesses of the late 90’s/early 00’s is clearly overreaching.
Vindication is sweet. I see that Spitzers’ wife has dutifully done the obligatory “stand by my man” shtick. It has also been reported that she was advising her evil husband not to step down until the very last.
In the end, I wonder what she’s really standing by her man for? Power? Position? Prestige? I don’t understand people who think like she does, but I would seriously like to know if she has any idea how this makes her look. Is there any dignity left anywhere? Is it really this difficult for people to recognize when they reach the point at which they should just slink away and make themselves disappear? At some point, doesn’t decency demand that a person just acknowledge wrong and humbly repent? David
Phillip –
Spitzer was quite selective — careful — in the targets he chose: they had to have money and he had to be able to construct a scenario arguing that what they did was wrong, even if there were reasonable alternatives that what they did was normal and to be expected. Most importantly, he had to target enterprises which he calculated would find that the cost of defending against his charges was greater — in terms of public relations and legal costs — than what he proposed as a settlement, a form of legal extortion. He probably even told them that.
John Fund and Daniel Henninger discuss different aspects of this in today’s Wall Street Journal.
What I find careless in your response is the insinuation that it’s okay to attack / sue enterprises that have money because they have money, without regard to the merits of the case. Look at the threat Spitzer made to Whitehead. After careful analysis I have to conclude that as typical, that such intimidating behavior was part of Sptizer’s typical modus operandi, and that we’ll learn more of such prosecutorial misbehavior as others start kicking the guy now that he’s powerless.
Where Spitzer’s behavior differs in my mind from that of a Guliani or a Morgenthau is that the latter two seemed to better prioritize their offices’ priorities in going after truly bad guys, whether business folks or organized crime folks.
…sniggering?…is it not snickering?….as in ..”i was snickering my ass off when i found out sen. david vitter paid prostitutes while he walked around in diapers”…and then of course the same diaper clad vitter received a standing ovation from the family value, law and order crowd with R’s behind their name…
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