Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?
 

Spitzer is just another example of what people say and what they do are so vastly different. And what some people will risk to satisfy that primal urge for sex.....Shame he couldn't have just worked it out with his wife though. For that crack in his marriage and by letting himself be publicly vulnerable to his desires, he'll then pay a public price. You can't ever show your weaknesses in politics. They will be exploited by your enemies. I must be getting jaded in my old age or at least more european in my views, because I could just care less.

eayny
 

I *couldn't* care less. But I do feel sorry for his wife.

eayny
 

hey eayny, how do you know that he didn't work it out with his wife? what if this was an arrangement that they agreed to? Maybe there were some sex acts she didn't want to perform with him and gave him permission to look elsewhere.

This doesn't strike me as all that far-fetched a scenario -- it would certainly go some way toward explaining why he had such an apparently hypocritical, can't-catch-me attitude if he wasn't worried about his wife finding out.

On the other hand, though, I don't really care about his wife at all. What I do care about is the monumental political idiocy involved. How can someone like that possibly hire a $5K/hour prostitute and not imagine that it will be made public at some point, utterly destroying everything he's worked for? It shows me that he didn't take being governor has seriously as he claimed to if he couldn't go 4-8 years without this, given the extremely likely political cost.
 

The real story here is going to be the financial improprieties he engaged in to carry out his trysts. Pride goeth before a fall. There but for the grace of god. He who is blameless may throw the first stone. Do you live in a glass house?
 

Two thoughts: At the press conference, his wife certainly didn't look like he had worked it out with her beforehand.

And second, who else thinks that Spitzer got set up? Whether it was introducing him to the hooker(s) in the first place, or launching the investigation that brought him down, was there a partisan motivation at work here?
 

ABC is reporting that, as 11:02 suggested, it wasn't sex but suspicious money transfers that triggered the federal investigation into the New York prostitution ring linked to Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The feds initially thought Spitzer might have been hiding bribes and participating in "structuring," a way of obscuring the true nature of payments. Are they suggesting that the feds only hit upon the "sex ring" (what a phrase!) because of Spitzer?

http://tiny.cc/7KY70
 

Oh, and who leaked Spitzer's name to the NYTimes (it wasn't in the original complaint)?
 

The name he used to register in the hotel is telling. Clever as a Fox, he may have thought of himself. Good thing he got caught. It was sad to hear Alan Dershowitz defend him today on NPR. A.D. is definitely not the kind of college professor I would want my children to be exposed to. Not an example of clear moral standards.

Does this case say anything about the ethics of Harvard graduates and professors? Does Harvard even care about instilling a sense of ethics in the community?

Speaking of ethics, should Professors who teach about ethics and human rights try to live by higher standards than the average Mr. Fox?
 

Perhaps at Harvard there are different moral standards. The true sign of a liberal education...
 

Oh Spitzer was definitely set up! That's clear, I think! He went to extreme measures to hide his actions. But no one forced him to hire a prostitute. He really should have known better. Shows arrogance and a overblown sense of entitlement. And like I said before, a man who has that many enemies and is that public a figure should watch his ps and qs and not pay someone to play with them, not in the USA anyway. With Larry Craig, Spitzer, Clinton, Vitter and all of the other horny indiscrete politicians, I'm really losing my faith in mankind today. I hate that. I hate that it is so commonplace. It's just not shocking any more. Can't two people just marry and work that out with each other? Why does that have to be so rare or difficult? Such a shame. And such a shame again that a politician was so damned dumb, because this energy is best channeled in another direction. It's a waste of time to talk about it.

eayny
 

Very well said, eayny.

- Egret
 

eayny, I was worried about you saying you couldn't care less...I figured you were once again disappointed and world weary. You do care...that's why you're so mad. I felt the same way, and in particular because of the hypocrisy in this case, as in other cases which we have been reminded of in the last 24 hours regularly, if you choose to watch. It's not just a case of a guy hiring a prostitute which is hardly novel, whether I approve of it or not which I don't. Even Bill Clinton was busy being a fair president when he crapped on the oval room office rug...his biggest crime as far as I'm concerned was hurting his family and waggling his finger at me and employing semantics. He wasn't on a crusade against the very thing he was guilty of. It is commonplace but all I need to do is look around me every day and see decent friends and associates and members of my own family who have loved and honored each other for years...they never get any publicity. I'm divorced, as are others I know who have been cheated on in one way or another...pretty much mistakes from the very beginning. Bad choices we made ourselves...nobody's perfect. But if you're looking at public figures, don't forget the Bushes, Srs. and Jrs, the Carters, the Reagans, the Fords for instance, regardless of what your politics might be. I feel badly for Spitzer's family who are suffering because of his extraordinarily bad judgment. Don't let it get you down.

lmpaulsen




To his enemies, this is "schadenfreude" but I see no joy in this
 

Thanks, lmpaulsen. I am a little world weary lately.

eayny