Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, March 10, 2008

Spitzin' Mad

Honestly, I just rolled my eyes in disgust at the Spitzer news this morning. This is all bullshit white male ego as far as I'm concerned, and it's a real setback for who knows how many progressive causes and a squandering of hard work and sacrifice by good honest people who trusted him to be an adult in a position of responsibility with all that this entails in the real world. If you are a person of the dem-left and you do crap that is blackmailable (even if, in the abstract, it possibly shouldn't be) then you need to step aside for people who aren't. Nobody is indispensable and the price you pay for public service in the context of partisan politics and global media is that you don't get to pull idiotic crap like this.

Josh Marshall sums up my own reaction:
I must confess that I never cease to be amazed by stuff like this. We don't know the precise details yet of this 'prostitution ring involvement' on the part of the Gov. Spitzer (D). But how exactly is it that someone who makes it his business to bust the chops of big wall street titans uses prostitutes? TPM HQ is in Chelsea. And I'm expecting the streets to be deluged at any moment now by joyously rioting stock brokers coming up from Wall Street. We do know that financial industry honchos all have big 'security' offices and have tons of PIs who work for them. I'm frankly shocked they didn't smoke him out before this.

My worry is that they did "smoke him out before this" and cheerfully made him pay who knows how in terms of governance.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

New York will have its first black governor if Spitzer resigns which will play hard against Hillary (who has the Spitzer nod, I believe).

Dale Carrico said...

Yes, and blind too. It's a silver lining that Paterson is so widely respected. Not the firebrand Spitzer was -- but that was working out less well than one might have hoped anyway. I hadn't thought yet about the Clinton and Obama fallout... Interesting.

jimf said...

Well, I bought the McGreevey book, for rather transparent reasons
(having nothing to do with the fact that I happen to live in
New Jersey ;-> ), but I'll probably pass on the Spitzer book
(despite the fact that I work in New York).

My God, what he did with his face at that press conference --
it's on all the front pages this morning. F-F-f-face face
c-c-crime. Facecrime.

I think I'll go Google up Golan Cipel, see what he's up to
these days. ;->

VDT said...

Hello Dale,

The Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal has reignited debate about the politics of prostitution. In light of your advocacy for a democratized politics of autonomy where autonomy is lodged in the legible public scene of consent, I wonder which of the following stances towards prostitution do you advocate:

1. Abolition
2. Regulation
3. Legalization
4. Decriminalization