Client #9

  • Posted by smijer
  • March 11, 2008

You know Elliot Spitzer is kind of a folk hero on the left. There was no reason, prior to yesterday, that he couldn’t have aspired to the White House, rather than the Big House.

Now, I personally think that prositution should be handled differently by our society than it is. It’s an evil, and it is degrading both to women and men. But it isn’t going away, and it is a consensual arrangement - at least in most cases and by the simplist construction of the word “consensual”. So, I think it should be legal & regulated with an eye toward protecting the workers from unnecessary physical or health-related harm, and toward protecting the public health.

But it isn’t.

I also think that Larry Craig shouldn’t have had to resort to a sham marriage and the degradation of toe-tapping in the men’s restroom. I think that homosexual partnership should be legal, recognized fully by the state, and should be free of taboo.

But it isn’t.

So, both people broke the law of the land - the law they were elected to write and enforce. Sorry - but you don’t get to keep your job under those circumstances. If you don’t resign on your own, you should be fired. Not so much to “punish” you - you’ve probably been punished enough - and I do feel sympathy for you. But the rule of law is too important to let anyone be allowed to ride above it.

Sorry.

Goodbye.

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March 11th, 2008
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Comment Number:
1
Written by:
Charlie Talbert
Posted on:
March 11, 2008 at 12:36 pm

You’ve hit the main issues, but another one I see is the disconnect of many politicians who want to identify with the common folk, but who then pay $400 for a haircut and, in Spitzer’s case, $4,000+ for a single liaison. The country would be a lot better off if we had careful shoppers in public office.

Comment Number:
2
Written by:
Buck
Posted on:
March 12, 2008 at 7:48 am

I am a little surprised.

Do you think Clinton should have been fired? Not for Monica of course but because of perjury and the law of the land.

From what I have read Spitzer was a class A asshole and I believe he was just set up and knocked down by his many enemies.

Granted, he walked into the trap and I don’t give him a pass.

The hypocrisy is what sickens me the most. If the guy is going to run with prostitutes then he should have made it a lifelong mission to do what he could do to make prostituion legal.

The fact that he would have gladly torn down anybody who was doing exactly what he was doing makes what he did more inexcusable.

Live by the sword, die by it.

Comment Number:
3
Written by:
smijer
Posted on:
March 12, 2008 at 8:37 am

Buck, I think he should have resigned. And, short of resigning - yes, I think he should have been fired. That’s not to say that the “partisan witch hunt” (I got to use that wonderfully hackneyed phrase) that led up to the testimony in which he perjured himself was in any way justified, or that the people in Congress who spent those millions of dollars on Ken Starr, trying to find a way to overturn a legitimate election through those disgusting techniques can in any way be excused. But given that he broke the law - and it’s pretty clear he did - he should have resigned or been fired.

Comment Number:
4
Written by:
smijer
Posted on:
March 12, 2008 at 8:37 am

Oh yeah - yesterday, in conversation, I got to say of Spitzer that he was “hoisted by his own petard”. It’s the first time I’ve ever gotten to use that phrase in ordinary conversation. What a thrill.

Comment Number:
5
Written by:
Buck
Posted on:
March 12, 2008 at 10:04 am

Buck, I think he should have resigned.

Wow. I believed that too.

But over the years I have lost a lot of respect for the rule of law and the way the law is selectively applied.

And in this society it is hard not to break the law when so many things are against the law.

And I really am not a big fan of the fact that the government can just nose around in any of your private business.

But that is the way the world works and everybody has to understand that privacy is a complete myth.

Comment Number:
6
Written by:
RW
Posted on:
March 12, 2008 at 10:56 pm

I don’t have as much sympathy for the privacy of folks who run for jobs in the public sector as I do us regular Joes in the private sector. If someone else is paying for their mortgage, food & transportation via tax dollars, then what they do while supposedly “doing the work for the American people” is open for debate.