Eliot Spitzer explains himself
It reminds me of the scene in Stephenson's Diamond Age in which a neo-Victorian recounts, "Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none."
"I'm not going to make excuses," he replied evenly. "Let me ask you a question: Is there a difference between politicians and anybody else? Or is it that the lives of politicians are so very public?"Lunch in the Park with Eliot (via Kottke)"There is a difference, Mr. Spitzer. You were elected to a position of public trust."
"That's right," he conceded. "It's why I resigned without delay. Some said I could try to ride it out. But I didn't see it that way. What I did was heinous and wrong..."
"You knew the risks. Either you felt you were above the law or you had some kind of death wish."
His response was that neither was the case. "It's a story that has been repeated since our earliest days as a species. It's both obvious and not susceptible to an answer," he insisted. "Nonetheless, we are led down a certain path. It wasn't hubris or a death wish--but frailty, temptation, and common miscalculation."
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If this wasn't a puff piece for Spitzer, and the emotion expressed genuine, he comes across as someone who thoroughly understands the ramifications of the decisions he made. An intelligent guy who truly appreciates the hoist-upon-his-own-petard expression. I think he wound up compartmentalizing so much of his life that it is almost more akin to split personalities than just hypocrisy.
But still, his dark pleasure was diddling prostitutes mixed with a public pleasure of stopping prostitution. So, you make your own bed. It's just unusual to come across a ruined politician who so clearly gets it. The part where he embraces that his obituary, his legacy, will now be the governor that betrayed the public trust, I think is what sells that.
What happened to Spitzer was a tragedy in the truest sense of the word. Too bad for him, and too bad for all of us.
did his "campaigning against prostitution" hurt the women caught up in it? Did he even check?
Poor guy, his story really gets me thinking about the nature of humans in general. It seems as though people are prone to condemn the vices they are most susceptible to and while on the surface it may seem contradictory and hypocritical, it really makes sense. Most people don't consider moral issues from an objective standpoint and so it naturally follows that all moral issues, particularly the ones we feel most strongly about, are derived from our subjective experiences. In the same way a former drug addict might condemn all forms of recreational drug use, so would a person who frequently solicits prostitutes condemn the unsavory practice. I feel this is especially true of famous people or any people who are forced to live their lives under the careful scrutiny of others-- stripping away privacy does strange things to a person's behavior and creating compartmentalized, contradictory selves is one way of dealing with that kind of pressure.
or maybe he just has weak/bad character.
Sounds more like a sociopath to me. Do you think his conscience would have forced him to come out with all this if he hadn't been caught?
They guy knew what he was doing and did it anyway. He shows no real remorse or concern or sympathy for the many peripheral peoples lives who were ruined or disrupted by his thoughtless, selfish acts.
I still don't hear him taking any REAL responsibility for his acts. He attributes it to 'a story that has been repeated since our earliest days as a species. It's both obvious and not susceptible to an answer.' Well guess what. You are a sociopath if you do these things with no regard for the well being of others.
Selfish and narrow minded.
Does this not sound like Spitzer?
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
Imagine the horror if no politician pursued legislation or policy that trampled on one of his vices?
And unless you've got robots in office, they're all going to have secret vices...few humans are saints.
If he'd gone to jail, I might feel a bit of sympathy for him. But he didn't, unlike other people he prosecuted for doing the same thing.
Now he wants to apologize and get his job back? Not if I have anything to say about it.
Spitzer is no different than many other politicians who seem to feel it is acceptable to pass and enforce laws for other people but to be exempt from them himself. As much as some of you might feel sorry for him on a personal level, I have little sympathy for him. He's ruined countless lives by arresting and prosecuting the very women he was seeing. As I see it, consensual prostitution ought not to even be a crime.
That senator from Louisiana is another good example, Vitter. That guy patronized prostitutes and it ended up ruining their lives and taking the life of the woman who ran the agency he used. Yet he was never charged with any crime and still holds his Senate seat. Disgusting.
I'd like to see Spitzer address this woman's questions: http://www.realprincessdiaries.com/2009/04/dear-mr-spitzer/
The answer the man gave about his therapy is very telling.
This article does nothing to make Spitzer's indiscretions any less ridiculous or any less of a betrayal to his constituents.
I have a close relative who works for a US government 3-letter agency. My relative was directly involved in the Spitzer investigation. The following is, from memory, the information that was related directly to me by someone who had complete access to the entire freak show:
"We had him, we had everything, pictures and recordings and 100% guaranteed conviction. Justice called us and said it was time to back off, all the information would go to Justice, we were to clean out everything we had. The agent on the case said what, it's our bust, and his boss says no, this comes from the top, back off, Justice wants to talk to him, you're done. Next day Spitzer calls the press and confesses everything, we call Justice, what the hell did you do, let him fall on his sword, they say no, we don't know what is wrong with this guy, we offered him a deal, he's crazy, he didn't tell us he would go to the press."
I'm guessing the "deal" he was offered had something to do with the election. But that part's just my guess.
Why are we then surprised when we learn of the misbehavior of our elected officials? Honestly, given the personal cost of obtaining it, what kind of a person do you think seeks out high political office? I believe there are some politicians who want to live a life of service to the common good, but I also believe such people are few and far between. I once read an SF story (so long ago the title escapes me) that illustrates the point: it featured a society where members of government were chosen by lottery, because no one wanted to be ruled by people who sought political power.
@#10- I'm not sure he considered himself to be exempt. There's no reason he couldn't have considered patronizing prostitutes to be morally and legally wrong, but still do it anyhow.
"I'm not going to make excuses," he replied evenly. "Let me ask you a question: Is there a difference between politicians and anybody else? Or is it that the lives of politicians are so very public?"
What an arrogant douchebag, I don't get why so many people are still defending him. It's bad enough that he's a religiously inspired hardliner who thinks it's his business to regulate what people do in their bedrooms and who thinks that the human cost of driving prostitutes into illegality is irrelevant. But on top of that, he is a terrible hypocrite who is immensely turned on by sex with prostitutes, a fetish which he dismisses as - quote - "temptation, and common miscalculation" (the latter part undoubtedly only because he was caught).
Temptation is when you overindulge on ice cream. Spending extended periods of time in the presence of someone who gets paid to act as if they like having sex with you, while at the same time professing the illegality and immorality of it, doesn't really fit my definition of that word.
"I don't get why so many people are still defending him."
Personally, I'd not say there's a defense, but I can certainly see explanations more nuanced than "Him big bad man".
Have you never had a strong drive that your reason or ethical code told you was morally very, very wrong? Did you never indulge? Never? Not once?
I believe that people really develop and adjust their ethical codes based on their community groups - we are raised in families that believe certain things, as we grow, we take part in communities of friends and professionals who believe certain other things. A common example might be coworkers who take pens or stamps occasionally for personal use from company supplies - everyone does it, so you start to consider that an acceptable thing to do. Politicians often engage in behavior that seems incredible to many of us - but I think that for a lot of them, it starts to seem not so bad, because they are all doing it.
I'm not arguing that people shouldn't scrutinize and question the morals of their communities. Or even that what Spitzer did was OK/not so bad. But, I do think it's a lot harder to think of something as bad if everyone around you believes it's fine, without changing your grouping.
And, frankly, we tend to stay in groupings we feel comfortable with - I'm not going to go hang out with right-wingers just to see if I start to change my attitudes towards killing doctors an women, for example. Human behavior - and ethics is a part of that - is never as easy as we make it out to be.
I wonder how similar this mindset is to that in the recently-released movie Outrage, about closeted gay Republicans who publicly fight against their own rights and interests?
I wonder how many of those self righteously condemning Spitzer are cheating on their wives? Oh no! No no no... We are pure, THEY are the hypocrites. Those dirty politicians.
Maybe that's one of the functions these morality plays serve?
You say 'politicians' as though they are different than the rest of us. There's a reason Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.'
Am I correct in understanding that there are some commenters here who believe that there is no difference between committing adultery and criminalizing prostitution while frequenting prostitutes? Seriously?
By all means, let's wallow in Victorian morals, and forget that Spitzer was on AIG's tail when this all went down.
Hypocrisy is the toll that vice pays to virtue.
What, no-one here heard of cognitive dissonance? Something we have in some form or another?
I don't see visiting a prostitute as particularly heinous. Sure, it's a betrayal of his wife, but of his electorate? I don't see that.
He did prosecute prostitutes, as advocated by the people who elected him. While I see the disconnect there -- is it realistic to prosecute others for crimes you yourself have also committed -- I don't see horribleness. In one, he is acting as an individual, in the other as a public servant. Just like I expect my Representative to represent my views not her own, I would expect Spitzer to focus on the crimes important to his community. And not base his decisions on his own predilections.
My theory is that the deal was in connection with the mortgage scams he was the pursuing, and the disagreement between the Feds and the state about deregulation. He promised not to publicize, and to immediately resign & slink into obscurity. They promised not to prosecute him for what was obviously a well documented "crime."
-It reminds me of the scene in Stephenson's Diamond Age in which a neo-Victorian
oh my god hahahaha cory doctorow sucks
Candidates become politicians, not by holding fast to ideals but by compromising them. The very political process in this country is one of Compromise. Couple that concept with the feeling of power: power over people's live, the nation's and state's resources and the flow of those resources, and you get a very heady mix. So many politicians, celebrities and corporate leaders view themselves as above the rest of us in society at large, that it might be tempting to classify all of them as sociopaths, but I am not sure that would be accurate. Weak-willed might be more appropriate for most of them. What a waste to attain one's goal in professional life only to lose it through horrible and preventable choices.
"it sounds like he had divided his life into two pieces, the values he believed in and the things that he was compelled by."
How very American.
Lots of people have secret vices and moral lapses. But most of them don't send other people to prison for having the same interests.
#29: Exactly!
Politicians who admit to having smoked pot in the past label their drug use as "youthful indiscretion," and yet they label youths doing the same thing in the present as "felons." Seems to me that submitting people to anal rape for behavior you excuse in yourself sinks below mere hypocrisy.
@29- Most of us aren't in a position to send people to prison for their vices at all.
"I've never punched anyone in the nose"
"You were born without arms."
"Yeah, but even if I had arms..."
@ Cicada #31:
But most habitual law-breakers would not SEEK such a position. I doubt there are many crackheads that aspire to run the DEA. Or if they do it's because they're on crack. OK, bad example.
@ Thalia, Spitzer betrayed the NY state electorate because his crimes directly placed his integrity in the hands of a criminal syndicate. He was at the very least open to blackmail: who knows what other kinds of pressure he could have been placed under, and what the results might have been? For a politician to compromise him- or herself thusly is a betrayal of one of their "prime directives," which would be roughly "don't do anything that would impair your job for which the voters originally 'hired' you."
You. Can. Take that. To. The bank. Haha, so long Spitz!
#15 rotundo, congratulations on being so hilariously incredibly wrong that it's almost comical!
Spitzer didn't go after prostitution rings in a moral panic; he went after prostitution rings because they were big business for organized crime. He was trying to destroy the mob, not enforcing morality.
That said, yes, he made a huge mistake in engaging in risky behavior like this. The country is really at a loss here too. Prior to this scandal becoming public, he was one of the highest profile pols in the country going after organized crime and corporate corruption. There are other pols who can claim to be tough on organized crime, but I can't think of anyone else who has his level of credibility on going after corporate corruption.
Spitzer's supposed violation of the public trust would have never came to light, if he hadn't pointed out GWB interferance in several States eforcing State laws, if enforced, could have help avert today's financial disater. There is no reason why visiting a prostitute should impair an elected officials ability to do their job in serving the public trust/good. The moral ambiguity of the public is what get's in the way. GWB's violation of the public trust has done more harm than Spitzer's. Both are now out of the bigger picture, but the corpress never investigated into or reported on the allegations againsn't Bush, to any deree close as they did Spitzer. Oh that's right sex sells, and you don't report what the public doesn't want to read, even if it's something the public should be reading.
I had figured Spitzer sought the services of a prostitute, for the reasons people have always used the services of a prostitute, because they where getting what they desired from their partner, or they don'y have a partner. Prostitution is one more vice that needs to legalized and regulated for the safety of all.
@32- I believe there was a crackhead who aspired to, and did, run Washington DC. And who got reelected after it was known, for that matter.
If I had to guess, the fellow has two entirely different motivational sets-- one public, one private. Jekyll and Hyde might be a bit extreme, but gives the general idea of someone who has two strong and conflicting desires-- "I want to be a crusader for moral and ethical justice" and "I wanna screw a bunch of prostitutes". Since humans have no particular ability or requirement to make their desires fit one logical pattern, he can have both.
@jphilby
"it sounds like he had divided his life into two pieces, the values he believed in and the things that he was compelled by."
"How very American."
Try 'how very human'.
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In unrelated news, BoingBoing could really use a threaded commenting system.
well, we used to have memories.
Fuck Eliot Spitzer.
It wasn't that a politician is more scrutinized, it's that he GLEEFULLY prosecuted others for things that he was doing that (is ONE of things that) makes him a reprehensible piece of shit. He would gladly have prosecuted political enemies for the same conduct if he could have proven it. He doesn't deserve another letter of ink in a major publication, except to denounce him as a powerhungry blowhard.
People seem to forget that this is not some "Joe" off the street, but an elected official with the power to do things. Because of that, he has to be held to a higher standard. I understand that politicians are human, but they have a responsibility to the people who put them in office. I do not feel sorry for him in the least.
ahh, republicans!
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/24/south.carolina.governor/index.html