You, like me, have probably been sitting stupefied in front of your television, asking yourself "Could there possibly be a more vile human being than Eliot Spitzer?" The imagination fails at the thought--we are not constructed to grapple with such an enormity, any more than we can really grasp the near-infinite spans of space that reach away from us, towards eternity, in every direction.
But there is such an evil stalking the earth right now, and if you can't imagine it, you can see it on the Today show:
The bizarre thing is that she's talking as if Eliot Spitzer was just a wounded little boy looking for love in all the wrong places. He was paying strangers to have sex with him. You may get a lot of things out of this, but you cannot find an adequate replacement for your spouse's waning love and respect in someone whose affections are billed at an hourly rate.
Wouldn't it be easier to identify why some men *don't* cheat?
"Could there possibly be a more vile human being than Eliot Spitzer?"
Whoah, Megan, aren't you going a bit overboard? Hypocritical? Check. Sad? Check. Narcisistic? Check. Jerk? Check. But those adjectives apply to a good fraction of the human race.
Spitzer didn't commit war crimes or genocide. He didn't even murder or rape anybody, at least so far as we know. In short, there are an awful lot of ways he could be a much more vile human being that he appears to be. Get a grip.
I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged. It's surprising how relevant it is some 50 years after it was first published. One of the minor points (among the far too many minor points) is Hank Rearden speculating that he'd feel just as dirty after visiting a brothel as he did after sleeping with his wife. To Rearden, sex was a vile urge to be suppressed. It was something his wife put up with; something she submitted to; not something she enjoyed. To Rearden, her willingness to sacrifice herself to his desires made her holy at the same time it degraded him. So, he avoided sex with her for as long as possible and speculated he wouldn't feel any worse about himself if he'd spent his energies with prostitutes.
Perhaps Spitzer has the same attitude.
You're stupefied because you are watching the moronic news channels....If they don't insult you more than my (ex) Governor, you are the one who needs a change of venue.
You may get a lot of things out of this, but you cannot find an adequate replacement for your spouse's waning love and respect in someone whose affections are billed at an hourly rate.
OK, so does the male method of compensating for a bad love life (paying hookers) make more or less sense than the female method (eating quarts of ice cream while watching An Affair to Remember)?
As I mentioned on my own site this morning:
Heidi Fleiss was on Howard Stern's show many years ago, and he asked her, "Why would celebrities like Billy Idol & Charlie Sheen be your clients? Can’t they get their share of hot women?"
She said, "You have to understand: they weren’t paying for women to come home with them; they were paying the women to leave after they were done."
The mind of a madam, for what THAT'S worth.
Well, maybe an inadequate substitute is better than no substitute at all?
Oh, and just for the record, Pol Pot, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Francisco Franco, ... just maybe the hyperbole got away from you, Megan?
but you cannot find an adequate replacement for your spouse's waning love and respect in someone whose affections are billed at an hourly rate.
Other than your divorce lawyer, you mean?
"Could there possibly be a more vile human being than Eliot Spitzer?"
Goodness, we're getting a bit overwrought, aren't we? He got a little tail, paid for it, after prosecuting others for doing the same thing. Stupid, of course. Hypocritical, sure. Sleazy, you bet. But, in and of itself, not a real big deal, it seems to me. Indefinite couch patrol would seem an appropriate punishment.
For vile, I would give you Bill Clinton. Not only did he score all the hypocrisy points of Spitzer, but he threw in sexual harassment to boot (after shepherding anti-sexual harassment legislation through Congress). We're sneaking up on vile, although we're still not there yet. To get there, we need someone to sell pardons to convicted felons (Marc Rich, for example) for contributions to Presidential libraries. Now we're getting into vile country. Betraying the wife is the wife's problem; betraying my country is my problem.
Now I don't hold any brief for Spitzer, nor bear any particular animus towards Clinton, but I think it's useful to maintain perspective.
Lie still, dear, and think of the Empire State.
Only a women would question why the husband of such a "loving" spouse would cheat. I'd bet a year's salary that he did it because he couldn't get what he needed at home. And I don't even like Spitzer. He's an arrogant jerk.
Has there been ONE politician caught in a sex scandal that said, "Yes, I did it, and I don't think it was morally wrong" ?
That person would get my vote. Man up and stand behind your actions or get the hell out of office.
I'd bet a year's salary that he did it because he couldn't get what he needed at home.
Rumor has it that Spitzer preferred what we'll politely call Greek Style. Chances are his wife, like most women, considers the Hershey Highway to be designed for one purpose and one purpose only, and therefore was unwilling to satisfy his interests.
"You, like me, have probably been sitting stupefied in front of your television, asking yourself "Could there possibly be a more vile human being than Eliot Spitzer?" The imagination fails at the thought--we are not constructed to grapple with such an enormity, any more than we can really grasp the near-infinite spans of space that reach away from us, towards eternity, in every direction."
Oh, I don't know.. how about Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin.... Generally I think they had Spitzer whipped in the vileness stakes.
Vile? Come on, now. I saw a story about consensual (if extramarital) sex between two grownups, and in the vast range of human sexual activity, from hardcore pornography to rock star groupie sex to anonymous gay blowjobs in public bathrooms, I don't see why Spitzer should get special attention from the Moral Rectitude Police.
Also, having sex with someone else is often an excellent replacement for the emptiness of a dead marriage, or people wouldn't do it on such a regular basis. Whether it's free and you call it an affair or whether it costs you $4,300 an hour doesn't make much difference to me.
Uh, Megan, isn't that sexual moralizing sickeningly and hypocritically sanctimonious to you?
It was a free-market transaction between consenting adults. They both benefited from the transaction. Wealth, prosperity, and well-being were created.
Isn't that all that matters?
Or is Hank Reardon's sick repulsion and repulsiveness (with holier-than-thou cloaking) the actual, hidden, filthy, closeted, unacknowledged truth about Libertarianism?
"But you cannot find an adequate replacement for your spouse's waning love and respect in someone whose affections are billed at an hourly rate."
Even if he were getting what he needed at home, he's a long-married man, let him have some additional excitement. Let him go to Nevada and (legally) pay for some excitement a couple of times a year, letting his wife know what he's doing. Sure, it will outrage social conservatives, but who cares. And to any woman (I am one, educated, professional, attractive and fully monogamous.), this Nevada scenario or what Spitzer did is far better than an affair.
I'm just wondering; "what does a $7000/hour prostitute give you that a $1000/hour prostitute won't?"
Not that I know the first thing about the matter or anything. Just curious since the topic came up.
Is the $7000 prostitute that much better looking, say? Does she coo in French? What?
Someone told me that the expense is related to assuring she's disease free. Although I don't think that'd up the expense that high. Maybe Dr. Laura is right, if for the wrong reason. Maybe afterward it's standard for this place that the prostitute tries to treat the John's emotional issues. Or maybe she fixes his dishwasher or something.
A more serious guess is that she's that expensive largely for the sake of being that expensive. The ability to spend huge amounts of money for common items or services is appealing to some rich people. It's like how some will spend big bucks for some imported bottled water. It becomes a sign of glamour, wealth, and exclusivity. If this club's women were a bit less expensive there'd be less snootiness in it. I know that might sound weird, but I know a rich woman who wouldn't buy a certain antique because "it wasn't expensive enough." Likewise I have a relative who knew some high-class hookers.
Note: I'm hoping again that I can cutback from this blog.
Well, not to pile on, but the answer to your question is yes.
My simple view:
1) Paying for sex isn't wrong.
2) Cheating on one's spouse is very wrong, but it's not a public concern.
3) Spying on citizens to make sure their private behavior is socially acceptable is very wrong and the public should be against it.
----
The government shouldn't have been spying on Eliot Spitzer (or anyone else) for personal matters. It's just sickens me that people are ok with this. However if his wife suspected something, she has the right to hire a private investigator. She also has the right to file for divorce and get favorable terms if she can prove his adultery. But the government spying on citizens to make sure their personal behavior is socially acceptable is a BAD idea. It's not like he embezzled money from State coffers or anything.
Wow, I never knew you were so hard on adultery, Megan. I must have missed your righteous condemnations of David Vitter...
(crickets)
Oh, right. There are none.
A, I wasn't blogging here, or much of anywhere, when the Vitter scandal broke, and B, I don't think it's righteous moralizing to say that blaming the wife when her husband is caught in a highly publicized prostitution bust is kind of disgusting.
Except, Nelson, that's not what the FBI was doing. Spitzer's banks noticed he was making suspicious cash withdrawals and deposits. The banks notified the IRS which passed the case along to the FBI. It looked like Spitzer was trying to hide something illegal, like embezzling money from State coffers or bribery. So, the focus of the Feds' "spying" was not to uncover Spitzer's private behavior. It was to determine whether or not he was using public office for personal gain.
So, the question becomes, should the Feds have ignored their discovery of a type of illegal activity they did not intend to find? My take is that law enforcement officers should enforce the laws that are on the books -- not just the ones they agree with. (Maybe that will give the public cause to pressure the legislature to remove from the books laws that shouldn't be on the books.) Given Spitzer's penchant for prosecuting crimes that were NOT on the books, I'm not going to worry too much about his getting in trouble for activities that were clearly illegal.
Hard to make an intelligent comment without seeing a transcript of the TV program that is being referred to. But the question "why do men cheat?" is kind of a no-brainer, isn't it?
Men cheat because human beings are naturally polygynous, monogamy is an artifact of modern civilisation, and males have been programmed by several *million* years of evolution to want to have sex with every fertile female that they see. The more interesting question would be why some of us don't cheat.
Having said all that, I hasten to add that, just because some behaviour pattern is 'natural,' doesn't necessarily mean that civilised society ought to condone it.
It was a free-market transaction between consenting adults. They both benefited from the transaction. Wealth, prosperity, and well-being were created. Isn't that all that matters?
No, rule of law is what matters, since without it, you don't have a sound basis for contract enforcement and thus can't improve wealth, prosperity, and well-being without fostering a lot of sub-environments that actively work to destroy it.
Spitzer gave the distinct impression of being engaged in one kind of illegal financial activity and was found to be involved in another kind of illegal activity, and that an activity he had previously grandstanded against. Problem with that? Then change the law. Meanwhile, he is in the process of discovering that seeds do, in fact, produce plants.
john w.'s comment reminds me (and to be clear, I'm not implying he's endorsing it) of a double standard frequently comes up when politicians are caught in sex scandals. For some reason, many people consider it no big deal when a successful man cheats on his wife.
This standard doesn't seem to apply to females. While some make excuses for female infidelity, nobody would ever say it's not a big deal if someone's wife cheats - even those inclined to blame the husband would say that there's something seriously wrong with the relationship. Nobody would say something like PK's comment that he should "go to Nevada and (legally) pay for some excitement a couple of times a year, letting his wife know what he's doing" if it was his wife out looking for sex with a stranger.
Nor would you see similar excuses being made for a less well-to-do male, in whose case the reaction would normally be that he's a loser and his spouse would be best off leaving him (an assesment that I can't say that I'd disagree with often), especially if he were spending money to facilitate the affair. The idea that your average married male, unlike more successful members of his gender, should be enjoying nookie on the side seems to be almost universally rejected.
Apologies--I misremembered the date of the Vitter thing. I should have checked better.
It was a free-market transaction between consenting adults. They both benefited from the transaction. Wealth, prosperity, and well-being were created. Isn't that all that matters?
-- anony_mouse: No, rule of law is what matters
No real disagreement here on the legal issue. It's Megan's Reardonian holier-than-thou moralizing that I was responding to.