From Pine View Farm

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:

When he’s not hosting Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, NPR’s weekly news quiz show, Peter Sagal is likely at a casino, a swingers club or visiting a porn-movie set. All investigative research, of course, for his recent book, The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them).

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:

While I cannot deny the glee I feel that a holier-than-thou Democrat who is supporting Hillary Clinton has been hoist on his own petard, I cannot in good conscience say that Spitzer should resign, while Vitter, whose seat would be filled with a Democrat if he quit, should not. I am not a hypocrite when it comes to hypocrisy.

Share

Comments are closed.