Get Off Your High Horse March 14
As I said yesterday Spitzer deserves to be kicked out of his job for being a raging hypocrite. Or more particularly (since we tolerate some hypocrites) for doing one of the very things which he built his political reputation upon. However, the moralizing, holier than thou finger waving and faux concern is really starting to piss me off. Given the large percentages of the population who have tried soft drugs, visited prostitutes (something like 1/5) or the huge proportion of the population who has looked at porn the zero tolerance policies enforced at businesses and schools across the nation surely require a vast army of hypocrites to enforce. How many prosecutors, police, teachers and principals in our schools did (or still do) smoke pot? How many of them ruin some kids life instead of giving him a second chance while happilly keeping their own (past?) use secret? How many people who do/did view porn go along with it when their aunt, friend or even internet news posting disapproves of the activity? How many enforce their companies zero tolerance policies when someone is caught browsing questionable material rather than offering them a second chance? Who fails to speak up when a fellow teacher, secretary, attorney, whatever gets fired when drunken pictures of them at a party appear on the internet? I could continue but it would be too easy.
Ohh sure everyone has some excuse about why their behavior doesn’t really count. It was a different era back then, the pot now is weaker. I never looked at internet porn, it was just playboy (did you ever forget and accidently take it to work?). But everyone has a story. No doubt Spitzer told himself what he was doing was different because he made sure to give these girls extra cash. If it really is so different then there is no reason to hide it right? Everyone else would see it wasn’t like these bad things. Maybe you say you have to enforce the rules, that’s what the organization expects. But Spitzer could say the same and ultimately the reason our corporations and institutions have zero tolerance policies is that no one has the balls to say, “hey wait a minute, maybe this stuff isn’t that bad.” I’m not saying you need to admit to all your private peccadillos but don’t be so intimidated by them that you jump on the puritanical band wagon.
Ohh and don’t try to pretend that your real concern in this matter is Spitzer’s children or wife. I mean which do you think is going to be worse for them: Spitzer being accused of patronizing a prostitute or being accused of using a prostitute and losing his job. Hell, if your only concern here was the personal harm to his wife and children then why the fuck are you trying to make their lives worse by kicking Spitzer out of his job?
Spitzer's Sexcapades:
- Spitzer Deserves To (Politically) Hang
- Get Off Your High Horse
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And there are vast armies of hypocrites.
But if you can get an army to crucify Spitzer then that in itself is an army bathing in its own hypocrisy.
Personally I think that we over emphasise such things.
For example it is very much better to have a president who is against racism in public and for it in private than one who is for it everywhere. for that matter it is (very marginally) better to have one that is for it in public and against it in private than for it everywhere. Almost everyone is full of hypocrisy it is just a matter of how they exhibit it.
As to the main issue - I think the police have far better things to do than chasing prostitutes (or minor drug users), and voters SHOULD have more important things to worry about than what their leaders do in their private lives. I also think it is gratuitous to create a situation where one has to drag their wife and children out in a show of solidarity. At the same time I take a very uneducated dislike to the guys - so i can see the appeal of using it as a cynical way of getting rid of him. And I have some (slightly hypocritical) pleasure in the affirmative rights advancement related to having a a blind governor.
I guess I would draw a pretty significant distinction between expressing disapproval for something in public and sending people to prison for doing it or letting woman be abused and hurt because you are too moral to consider legalization. Sure, I don’t care too much about the mostly private affair of whether Spitzer thinks people who use prostitutes are sinners or even critiques other legislators because they use prostitutes. However, I think using the tools of government (law, prosecutions, etc..) to fuck over people’s lives for a benefit you don’t think is sufficient to justify the costs is a fundamental violation of the trust we place in our leaders.
Frankly, I feel there isn’t much of a difference between finding out a leader encouraged the prosecution of people for prostitution offenses while using prostitutes than finding out that the president deliberately sent US troops into some conflict knowing it would be useless but politically advantageous. In both cases we should throw the individual out for failing to live up to our expectations of our leaders.
As far as having a blind governer, it’s surely not a bad thing and his political approach may be a bonus for New York, but I’m not sure if the blind really face the sort of discrimination that he will address. Maybe they do, I genuinely don’t know, but there is a confusing issue of what sort of public perception benefits the blind. On the one hand one of the largest difficulties that blind people and others with disabilities face is the lack of accommodations for them but on the other hand they also face the difficulty of people assuming they are incapable of doing things as a result of their disability. Whether both sides of this balance can be addressed at the same time and what effect a blind Governor will have on them is something I have no idea about.
I do think it’s nifty that a state has a blind Governor now though.
yes you are right that is certainly something one could reasonably want his head for.
Still he did do some good work rating out some rotten big business dealings which have had implications all over the world (good ones) at the same time as helping to send people to prison for ridiculous crimes.
oh well - he will be hung out to dry anyway - and maybe he deserves it, just it doesn’t seem like a fair process.
I would be right there with you in the case of an ordinary citizen but it is quite clear that political figures at this level are NOT subject to the rule of law in the same sense as ordinary citizens and that they benefit from this far more often than the contrary.
It would be one thing if politicians generally followed the law and feared getting caught in the breach like normal people. Then a legally dubious charge or accusation based on political motivations and public outrage would be pretty inexcusable. But a politically-motivated prosecution due to being publically outed at something is pretty much the only type that will ever apply to a guy like this at all. (At least short of truly heinous crimes that were NOT committed through the agency of the state.)
So much as one might idealistically like a ‘rule of law, not of men’, this kind of crap is as close as we’re going to get to fair in the near term. And if it does put some fear in people of being quite such straightforward hypocrites, for a while, it’ll have done a lot of good.
so are we saying we would catch a man for a crime he didn’t commit, or doesn’t deserve to be punished for, because he might be getting away with something else?
It sounds like you think there is a class war going on. But if that is the case this sort of thing is exactly the sort of pathetic amusement that prevents the lower class from getting mobilized in any useful manner this and jerry springer.
I’m not saying that ‘we’ should catch a man for a crime he didn’t commit, or anything like that. What I’m saying is that the system that catches and punishes people for crimes is not run by ‘us’; it does not work the same way for people like Spitzer that it does for ‘ordinary’ people; in particular, it does not operate in accord with the positive law or any other principled system of law or ethics.
And that therefore the two times a day that this sociopolitical stopped watch produces the right outcome pragmatically are not the incidents we should be getting upset over.