What!??!

Did something happen with Elliot Spitzer recently!???!

"Ruth" opens with, "So New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned because the FBI discovered he was sleeping with expensive call girls. America, predictably, went crazy."

No, "madam", America did not go crazy because the governor slept with a call girl. America is rightly pissed that the chief executor of New York state law:
1. violated his oath of office and the public trust by breaking the very laws he swore to uphold.
2. made himself vulnerable to blackmail.
3. is very possibly guilt of selectively/unfairly applying the powers of his office in return for favors.

But don't feel bad. I wouldn't expect a whore to understand that. After all, the totality of your existence is muddled in the grey, tepid soup of Machiavellian equivocation.

Of course, all across America even honest men are saying angrily to their spouses, "Oh, so you take the word of a former pimp over mine?"

And, as much as their wives, _this time they have a point_.

If being rich and powerful means you can't follow your vows of matrimony, may I forever remain poor and anonymous.

On the flip side, if the actions of a man who was, by all accounts, a world class (censored, but rhymes with sick) makes a woman doubt whether _her_ husband and father of _her_ children is keeping it in his pants, maybe it's time she took a look at her own world view.

This guy is reprehensible; why can't he stick to embezzling like the Delay, Cunningham etc?

I'm not rich. And I'm powerful only in my own mind. But I'm close to 35 and I've never, ever paid for sex.* And it wasn't just because I was broke for most of my life!

*Unless, of course, you consider shelling out a over a hundred bucks for dinner and drinks and listening to "conversation" all night as "payment." :)

Um, I'm sorry, where's Duke Cunningham at right now? Oh, that's right, in jail.

Maybe Spitzer can share a cell with him if he's convicted of his felony.

Which leads, of course, to the discussion of Tom "I haven't even _been_ in the House for two years, people!" Delay. Went to court, got found not guilty--it's called a "presumption of innocence" in case you haven't read the Constitution lately. If you want to live in a country with "presumption of guilt" I'd recommend France--I hear they've got decent prisons.

However, even if Mr. Delay, a person whom I have no love for, was found guilty, the fact remains he's never directly prosecuted someone for the same crimes he's allegedly committed. Spitzer has. Sorry, but the Governor should be getting informed he'll have to get used to the name "Ellie" rather than "Elliott" simply because that's what he's done to others--and the law applies to all.

If you take the services of a prostitiute, you should always include your wife...

Very rude, Mr. Spitzer, very self-centered.

They have a point? Really? I'm not sure I follow the logic here. If you marry someone like Spitzer, then this is what you get. If you didn't, why would this incident reflect poorly on your husband? Because he's a man?

Please.

What's "someone like" Spitzer? Someone with money and power? I bet the manager of your local McDonald's thinks he has money and power.

So is the important part of the question the "money and power" or the "he"?

Because to me, someone like Spitzer is an individual who abuses power to the end of self-empowerment. Now that he's no longer the media's darling, I find it amazing the number of articles that have been written about what an ultra-Type A a** he was.

On the other hand, if your implication is that, "Well, men do this..." while women just inherently don't, then pardon me if I'm flying the BS flag. As a person whose seen spouses running a prostitution ring while their soldiers were away in Iraq, pardon me if don't get you a ladder so you can hop off your high horse there.

Immature, immoral, etc. people cheat. Just like stupidity is not limited by the level of estrogen to testosterone or vice versa in your body, proclivity to extramarital dalliances knows no gender line. People are people (thank you, Depeche Mode) and we all have desires. The difference between folks like "Spitzer" and someone like, say, Bill Gates (rich, male, powerful and, as far as we know, faithful) is that the latter, at some point, learned self-control while the former apparently always believed it was all about him.

I still don't understand why Spitzer was paying money to get laid.
The State of New York was paying him a handsome salary to screw people.

I'm from California. Never actually been to New York, to be honest. But even I know, from 3000 miles away, that Spitzer was willing to knife a lot of people on his way to the top.

That's the kind of guy I'm talking about. Over the years this guy has stretched the law to prosecute politically vulnerable targets. He doesn't have any empathy. All his interactions with other people are about what they can do for him.

My last girlfriend cheated on me. Tell me, does that mean men should be suspicious of you?

My last girlfriend cheated on me. Tell me, does that mean men should be suspicious of you?

If they're reading articles describing people like me and how we all do it, then yeah, they should.

But I think that's Eric and I's point, Karol, is that you should no more be suspicious of your boyfriend after reading an article about cheating men than I should be suspicious of my wife after seeing real-world instances where spouses have totally screwed over their husbands.

Sorry, at some level Mrs. Spitzer had to realize that her husband was a arrogant, back-stabbing bastard. The tragedy of her situation is that she probably never, ever thought he would betray her and ruin her life due to his shortcomings. It is for that reason I have great sympathy for her and her daughters.

What James said, unless, of course, you're married to an arrogant SOB who uses other people's scalps to pave his road to success. Then, yeah, you should be worried. Rich and powerful is okay. There's lots of rich and powerful gusy you don't hear about because they don't do this kind of thing. And a cheater doesn't have to be rich and powerful, or even attractive. He just has to be willing to hurt you in pursuit of his own pleasure.

My best friend from high school married a gal who was like that. She had her "in" people and her "out" people. If you were one of her "in" people she'd treat you like royalty. But the "out" people? They just existed to be used - she saw no point in being honest or patient or show them any consideration at all. I guess for him the attraction was kind of like having a pet tiger - you know it's dangerous but you never think it'll turn on you.

Of course, eventually he became an "out" person and only sees his kids when she needs a babysitter. We all saw that coming while they were still dating. Just like Mrs. Spitzer's friends probably all saw this coming.

Me, I'm looking for someone nice. If we're dating and you're mean to the waitress just because you're in a bad mood and there's nothing she can do about it - sayoonara.

James, am I too far in the past for you? Ok. Christopher J Ward, although not elected, was certainly high up the NRC food chain. Robbing from each other, how awful!
PS, that's not to say that Spitzer isn't a reprehensible SOB; in that way, we are on the same page =:-0

Bryan,

Eh, I just don't feel like matching dirty R's and dirty D's--Mercutio's last words pretty much sums up my feelings at the moment.

Isn't it always the way, the more responsibility one has, the bigger chance and temptation to abuse it. Thinking back to one of your other posts (the law applies to us all), if you steal 100 dollars from a shop at gunpoint, is it more forgiveable if you steal a million using a keyboard/ bank transfer? IMO no, and they should get two years jail time, followed by one hour per ten dollars stolen (rounded up to the nearest day). That'd make 14 more years for the keyboard guy, but I would add another 3 years for the firearm too.