A Victim Of A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?
Decades ago at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, it is said, a customer responded to a drunken rant by poet Delmore Schwartz: “You’re paranoid†to which Schwartz replied: “Even paranoids have enemies.â€
Could even Gov. Spitzer have enemies? GOP crank-plotter Roger Stone hints he’s behind the Spitzer mud and suggests there’s more to come. Further, as the Washington Post reports, Gov. Spitzer had been the target of FBI surveillance weeks before he was discovered to be Customer #9. For those of you with a bizarre sense of humor about these things check out Jim Dwyer's Spitzer reminisce with of all people Dickie Morris. Read also Scott Horton's review of the Dept. of Injustice's conduct.
Is the aura of power so intoxicating that those who smell it's perfume feel invulnerable? Have you read through the indictment and affidavits? It's a little alarming the ways in which customer #9 tried to manipulate payments to prostitutes because it shows a sense that he's invulnerable. Did Mr. Spitzer think no one could ever try to trap him? Did Mr. Spitzer forget the vilification visited upon Alan Hevesi for (in my view) Hevesi's innocent steps to protect his sick wife?
Many other powerful men have engaged in sexual liaisons they’d perhaps have preferred to have not reported on the front page of the New York Times: Presidents John Kennedy & Bill Clinton, Civil Rights leaders Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin, Senator Larry Craig. In my view, it’s worth thinking about why people (It seems to be only a guy thing -- why?) do things which damage them profoundly and why we react so strongly against them when they do.
I find myself agreeing with Nora Ephron's Huff Post : it feels inevitable that Gov. Spitzer will resign, but I wish he wouldn't. The acts he's accused of are common, trivial to governing. There's no there, there.
Even customers of high-priced prostitution rings have enemies.
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Eliot Spitzer
There are several issues tied up here. Let me try to untie them.
Submitted by Daniel Millstone on 12 March 2008 - 10:36am.
1)Mr. Spitzer was in many ways an excellent Governor and his departure, predicted for Wednesday morning is a sad event, as I see it. He's not the "worst sort of slime" in my book for all of the wrong things he's done. Mr. Spitzer's tactical problem seems to have been that he didn't believe that his enemies were after him.
2) Mr. Spitzer hypocrisy on the subject of prostitution is galling; his patronage of prostitutes which took place over years was reckless and irresponsible. While he may have betrayed his family's trust, he certainly betrayed mine.
3) You can be both a victim of a conspiracy and a wrong-doer at the same time. JFK's & MLK's extra-marital affairs subjected them to political pressures from the FBI. Bayard Rustin was forced from a key position because of an arrest in the course of sexual adventure. The first left congressional candidate I worked for gave up electoral politics having been caught in a vice sting.
4) Even though they know they are targets, otherwise good leaders take sexual risks they shouldn't. Again, this seems to be a guy thing. The women political and social leaders I've known haven't (so far as I know) taken sexual risks.
5)We're constantly called upon to be "shocked, shocked" (like Louis in Casablanca) by the behavior of our leaders. I think we need to understand this very long and well established weakness in these guys and stop running lines from old movies. Driving otherwise good leaders from office on grounds like these is a bad idea. Indeed driving otherwise bad leaders from office on these grounds is bad too. Can you imagine the loneliness and desperation which drove Senator Craig to tap his toe and waggle his fingers in an airport men's room?
So are you paranoid if you
So are you paranoid if you are breaking the law, cheating on your wife, abusing the public trust, hypocritically attacking people who are guilty of your same crimes, and still think people are after you?
If this is a right-wing conspiracy, then for the first time in my life, I'm with the right-wing. You lose your moral high ground if you can't condemn slimy activity when it is licking you in the face.
Spitzer is the worst sort of slime. Even if his crimes are "common," they are still crimes. You are only giving the right-wing scandal-masters power by defending Spitzer.