What is wrong with these people? Here's a brilliant thought. If you are a prominent public official, don't have sex with a prostitute. Many would argue it's not a good idea, even if you are not a public official. Hardened types I know, who would not hesitate to say, bludgeon an armed robber to death with a tire iron, so not your squeamish, too nice types, have said, just fuggetaboudit, too much trouble, too dangerous, too many things that can go wrong. Just go out there and find somebody ugly and dumb enough to have sex with you without actual payment. So, even if you don't think it's a morally dubious practice, it still qualifies as probably quite stupid. But if you are the governor of New York? If you have lots of powerful people panting for your blood, because you have put them or their pals in jail and given them a lecture to boot? If you are already married to a perfectly attractive lady? Spitzer is so utterly, profoundly stupid he makes me embarrassed to be a man. At least he's a democrat. He is a democrat, isn't he?
Hasn't it occurred to any of these people that maybe they should just take a cold shower or something? You want to go on some sexual adventure and you can't. So deal with it. Have a drink. A tragedy it ain't. Somebody needs to invent a pill for these guys that will make them less horny, more smart, or perhaps both. Somebody give that man some Prozac.
Or, if you are fixed on the idea of wrongful sex for money, might the idea have strayed into that little pinhead of his to go to the ATM and take out cash? Why charge it to the State of New York, thus hugely, enormously compounding the crime? They send you prison for stuff like that, where your sexual issues really will be issues. And then trying and failing to cover it up in some way that runs afoul various nasty federal statutes. He goes to a whore and gets the FBI involved?! For God's sake man, any idiot can get on Craigs List and find a few dozen ladies posing as several hundred ladies any one of whom would be willing to take care of your needs, without bringing in the FBI. And, and this guy graduated from Princeton, and Harvard Law School.
Well, at least he has spared us the indignity of feeling sorry for him.
. . . Having re-read the story, it's not clear Spitzer used public money. He's still an idiot.
Don't mince words, man. Tell us how you really feel! BWWAAAAHAHAHAHA!
Posted by: fedsocprof | March 10, 2008 at 07:58 PM
IMO not so much an idiot as besotted with power. The guy built his career on shakedowns of businesses and individuals in highly-regulated business sectors where being prosecuted means financial ruin no matter what the verdict. He got away with it for years and expected to run for President. Why would he expect to get in trouble for some peccadillo?
New York and the nation will be better off for his retirement from public life.
Posted by: Jonathan | March 10, 2008 at 09:13 PM
Spitzer made a mistake. That much is clear. I'm sure if you asked him if he wanted to turn back the clock and not order up a hooker, he'd answer "yes". But does this mean he's "stupid"? Only if you misunderstand human behavior so profoundly that you believe intelligent people never make bad decisions.
In fact, there are many reasons a rational person might have made this choice, using simple cost-benefit analysis. First, Spitzer could believed that high-end prostitution is largely unprosecuted, so that the risk of getting caught is vanishingly small. Or there could be a professional norm among politicians that they can get away with hiring the occasional hooker because they will not be caught or punished, even though average Joes might. If either of these premises were true, one could rationally conclude that the benefits of hiring a hooker could be greater than the costs (punishment discounted by very small likelihood of getting caught).
Regardless, I'd still say that Spitzer made a serious error in judgment, which alone may justify his removal from office. But that doesn't make him broadly an "idiot". By that standard, every highly intelligent human in history is an idiot, because everyone makes errors in judgment. In any event, I don't think simplistic moral superiority adds much to the discussion.
Posted by: Dave | March 11, 2008 at 02:24 PM
Sorry dove, but this was not a mistake. A mistake is a math error when balancing one's checkbook. A mistake is running a stop sign that one didn't see.
A mistake is not spending $80k (or whatever) on hookers over a long period of time, including making travel arraingements for them and engaging in a sufficiently large and suspicious series of financial transactions that one's bank alerts the FBI (amusng irony there). That is deliberate misconduct showing a lot of motivation and constituting the sort of idiocy only fairly smart people can manage.
Posted by: krome | March 12, 2008 at 07:30 AM
All one has to do to understand the magnitude of Spitzer's offense is imagine what Spitzer would have done as AG to an elected official who'd been found engaging in such activities, particularly if taking down that individual would have redounded to Spitzer's political credit. He'd be peddling stories of corrupt influence and potential blackmail to the press as he tears into the financial records of the pimps. He'd be hounding family and friends. He'd be pounding his shoe on the table hurling threats. Spitzer's getting far better treatment himself than he'd have meted out.
Posted by: JEM | March 12, 2008 at 11:54 AM