Friday, March 14, 2008

A rambling rant and some considered observations

Wow, Eliot Spitzer, I did not see that coming. How did you think that was gonna go unnoticed? Eighty G's going to shady places by a high placed public official. You made yr name as the Attorney General of New York by going after financial malfeasance on the NYSE, and somehow you thought that no one would notice all the money you were paying escorts'r'us. Who beat the crap out of you with the stupid stick?
So, besides the utter stupidity of this move, I'm supremely curious how this whole thing happened. At what point during his storied carrier did Eliot Spitzer start frequenting courtesans? Was it after he got married or before? Did he feel wracked with guilt? How did this affect the way he went after law breakers? I don't want to simplify the psychology here, but was it this guilt at his own culpability in an anarchic kind of lifestyle that was behind his status as a 'steamroller'? I'm just very curious about how he led this double life that's obviously been going on for a long time. You don't just hire a 4 thousand dollar painted woman on a whim. You work up to that slowly over time and destruction.
Now I'm certainly not one to moralize, and I won't other than to say that it's just a shame. Eliot Spitzer was one of the few people in positions of power that really wanted to hold the business community accountable for all their greedy, money-grubbing insanity, and now he's gone because he was a complete dipshit. It's just a shame.
I am also clearly not a very good judge of character. I saw Spitzer on Charlie Rose several years ago and thought to myself, "this is a very sharp and well put together individual". When I heard that he had used some less than scrupulous tactics against political opponents, I thought "these romours must be overblown, Eliot Spitzer isn't that kind of guy." Now it turns out that he was stepping out on his wife with a woman of the painted veils, which doesn't actually say anything about all the rest. I just did not see that one coming.
It also occurred to me when I heard that Samatha Power had to quit the Obama campaign that this was another case of idiocy. Now, Samatha Power is a Pulitzer Prize winning Harvard professor and former journalist, how could she possibly have thought that anything she might say to a journalist could ever be off the record. Even I know that's not going to happen, and I'm arguably not too smart about these things. Again this is a shame. Samantha Power is really insightful and seems to understand foriegn relations in a very meaningful way, but she is now out of the Obama inner circle and any chance of being in his White House should such a thing happen. I'm a little bummed about this, but whatever.
It just goes to show you how easy it is to say or do something dumb when everything you do and say is watched and recorded.

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