Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York, has resigned amid stories of prostitution and money-laundering. MSNBC and Charlie Rose both featured celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a former teacher of Spitzer's at Harvard Law School. On both shows, other than calling Spitzer a "hypocrite," Dershowitz generally defended the governor.
What is curious is the defense he used, and it's the same defense that various people trotted out during the Clinton sex scandal: "In Europe, this wouldn't even make the back pages of the newspaper." What we're supposed to get from this is that Europe has no hypocrisy about sex, accepts that it is a private matter that doesn't affect a politician's ability to discharge his duties.
Certainly, the United States has a complicated relationship with sex. The media bombards us with millions of sexually-tinged images, to which we respond by buying the products or watching the shows (or rewinding our TiVos). At the same time, we're shocked to discover that one in four teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease (which means there's a 58% chance that at least one of Governor Spitzer's daughters has an STD, but never mind).
We target the images at the most impressionable minds, hoping to build consumer brand loyalty for 50 years, but we think that it doesn't necessarily convey the idea that sex is desirable, without repercussions, sexy. That those are incompatible beliefs stops no one from responding with outrage whenever anyone suggests curtailing some of these messages (and I'm not advocating censorship; if the nation acted as a community, it would stamp out a good portion through "pocketbook votes").
Let's leave aside for the moment whether Europe's openness about sex is superior to our conflicted "hypocrisy." I'm not sure if a Jewish man could become a governor of a major state in most countries in Europe, let alone an Indian in Louisiana. So Europe may have their own cultural hurdles to jump over.
The issue is that the U.S. does have these strictures about sexual conduct. Maybe the president of France can have a publicly-known mistress, but the president of the U.S. can't. That may or may not be right or fair, Mr. Dershowitz, but it's the rules of this playing field. Spitzer didn't just climb off the boat, get elected, then hire a high-priced call girl ("I didn't know you shouldn't do that here"). He is an American, he knows how the electorate would feel about his behavior, and he went ahead anyway.
And the idea that he thought with a part of his body not found in his cranium. Maybe you get away with that if you have one drunken romp, maybe, but it doesn't hold up when you create elaborate schemes involving money moving between accounts, fake names, and slipping your security detail. Then you're just playing a game, and Eliot Spitzer lost.
What is curious is the defense he used, and it's the same defense that various people trotted out during the Clinton sex scandal: "In Europe, this wouldn't even make the back pages of the newspaper." What we're supposed to get from this is that Europe has no hypocrisy about sex, accepts that it is a private matter that doesn't affect a politician's ability to discharge his duties.
Certainly, the United States has a complicated relationship with sex. The media bombards us with millions of sexually-tinged images, to which we respond by buying the products or watching the shows (or rewinding our TiVos). At the same time, we're shocked to discover that one in four teenaged girls has a sexually transmitted disease (which means there's a 58% chance that at least one of Governor Spitzer's daughters has an STD, but never mind).
We target the images at the most impressionable minds, hoping to build consumer brand loyalty for 50 years, but we think that it doesn't necessarily convey the idea that sex is desirable, without repercussions, sexy. That those are incompatible beliefs stops no one from responding with outrage whenever anyone suggests curtailing some of these messages (and I'm not advocating censorship; if the nation acted as a community, it would stamp out a good portion through "pocketbook votes").
Let's leave aside for the moment whether Europe's openness about sex is superior to our conflicted "hypocrisy." I'm not sure if a Jewish man could become a governor of a major state in most countries in Europe, let alone an Indian in Louisiana. So Europe may have their own cultural hurdles to jump over.
The issue is that the U.S. does have these strictures about sexual conduct. Maybe the president of France can have a publicly-known mistress, but the president of the U.S. can't. That may or may not be right or fair, Mr. Dershowitz, but it's the rules of this playing field. Spitzer didn't just climb off the boat, get elected, then hire a high-priced call girl ("I didn't know you shouldn't do that here"). He is an American, he knows how the electorate would feel about his behavior, and he went ahead anyway.
And the idea that he thought with a part of his body not found in his cranium. Maybe you get away with that if you have one drunken romp, maybe, but it doesn't hold up when you create elaborate schemes involving money moving between accounts, fake names, and slipping your security detail. Then you're just playing a game, and Eliot Spitzer lost.
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