Spitzer (Updated) 0
No, I’m not going to comment on Elliot Spitzer’s problems. (He’s not the first, won’t be the last, but at least it wasn’t in a restroom with a strange guy or a Senate page.)
Today, though, I listened to yesterday’s Talk of the Nation (I love my mp3 player), which had an excellent episode on “Why do rich smart powerful people do such stupid things”?
It’s worth a listen, particularly the segment with Peter Sagal. From the website:
Sagal wanted to get a perspective on the indulgences of others and report back to the rest of us.
In light of Monday’s surprising allegations that New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer was involved in a prosecution ring, Sagal weighs in on the correlation between power and vice.
“It goes back in history that powerful people get to break sexual rules,” Sagal says — those in power are “immune from the sexual rules that bind down the poor rest of us.”
Addendum, Later That Same Evening:
I said I wasn’t going to comment on Spitzer directly.
But am going to point you to Jon Swift, who comments incisively and lengthily (and, when you consider what those two words mean, to combine them in one essay is, actually, a heck of an accomplishment):
Excerpt:
