 | Obama Statement on Wright | |
| CA & OH Polls: McCain Beats Both Dems In Ohio | |
| The Pastor, Obama and McCain | |
| McCain: Al Qaeda Might Try To Tip Election | |
| The Irony Of Michigan |
| In Fiscal War, AWOL Candidates | |
| Waiting Out Lame Duck Bush | |
| Walker's Debt Fight | |
| Booster Socialism in the Desert | |
| Ferraro Should Have Known Better |
| Eliot Spitzer's "Emperor's Club" | |
| Paterson: The Anti-Steamroller | |
| Resigned to Reality | |
| Spitzer Should've Faced Cameras Alone | |
| The Dream Ticket Won't Happen |
|
March 15, 2008
To Hell with the Fallen Hero
By Richard ReevesNEW YORK -- How intellectual, how literate, how urbane is Manhattan? Well, where else can you find people at lunch speaking Latin?
"Tutela valui," you hear from table after table, cradling your pastrami sandwich as you move to a seat in the back of the deli. That means "fair value," at least according to a close look at a fetching photograph of a tattoo above the expensive promised land of Ashley Alexandra Dupre -- a feature of the 15-page "special" section in one of our leading literary journals, the New York Post.
As you may already know, that is the more or less real name of our city's newest icon. Her working name is "Kristen," and she is the prostitute who did, and did in, our former governor, Eliot Spitzer. They say the price for two hours was $4,500, plus expenses.
"The Steamroller," as the talented Mr. Spitzer sometimes described himself, was steamrolled by a 22-year-old runaway from the Jersey shore. Presumably you know a good deal about this, but if you don't, "Kristen," or Ashley, will soon be appearing on a television set near your bed. She may be on "American Idol," too, pursuing her ambition to be a pop singer.
She is, if you will forgive me, now a hot property. Ah, celebrity! Ah, capitalism! Ashley short-cut her career while short-circuiting the governor's.
Spitzer, up to a point, now inscribed in Latin, was a credit to the judgment and fairness of New Yorkers. He was overwhelmingly elected as attorney general and then governor by an electorate that knew he was one nasty guy, declaring war on bad men everywhere, crooks and legislators alike, a mean and relentless bully with police power -- a steamroller if you happened to get in his way.
He was also a Harvard lawyer, smart as hell (we thought) and had a lovely wife (a Harvard lawyer herself) and three charming daughters. And he was rich, his family having bought and sold generous chunks of this enchanted isle. Did I forget to say he was obviously nuts, using my bank to move around $80,000 or so in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he has been hooked on hookers for a number of years? He may have met some of them on the job, because his claims to prosecutorial fame were based on tracking down alleged thieves on Wall Street and prostitution rings that thrived on serving such men.
No one, as least no one I've met or talked to, has the slightest sympathy for our former golden boy. Fair value. He got what he deserved, the self-righteous .... well, you know the word that comes next. People do, of course, feel sorry, genuinely sorry, for his family. It is trite to ask how could he do this to them.
Well, that is what many politicians and the powerful do to the people around them, beginning with family and staff. There is something wrong with folks who need the cheers of the mob, and many of them, the most pathetic, need that adulation because they are incapable of appreciating or being fulfilled by the satisfactions of normal life. I wanted to talk to Freud about this, but his "Away" message was on.
Spitzer, after a while, will do just fine. He is still smart and still rich. Those who know them believe his wife will leave him as soon as she is satisfied that the girls can handle separation on top of everything else press and public will pile on them. The crime the governor committed is not "victimless," as many liberals would have it. The obvious victims of his behavior are his family.
And if there are obvious lessons to this mess, they are these:
Never stop wondering and asking why people want power and what they are likely to do with it. You may think the press is too tough on political figures. I would say we are not tough enough.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Every man, every woman has weaknesses and frustrations, some almost unbearable. But whatever the way of the world, there are real advantages to being decent, being nice to other people.
Perhaps it's a small thing in the larger scheme, but Eliot Spitzer was not a nice guy. There were a lot of people waiting to be the second to kick him on the way down. Now they have their chance, and now he will learn how the other half lives.
