Letters to the Editor
Kansas O'Flaherty
Published Letters: 42 Editor's Choice: 1
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Kansas has brought me so much joy...
[Read the article: Kansas O'Flaherty ... Secret Agent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...well, okay, the Kansas letters column (to which I've anonymously posted since the beginning) has brought me so much joy, I've decided to honor it by taking the name of our much-maligned heroine as my own letters column signature.
Ironically, this makes my pseudonym a pretentious throw-away pop culture reference to something so obscure that only a small number of insiders could ever possibly get it.
In other words, it's the perfect (final?) salute.
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He should resign...
[Read the article: Spitzer to resign Monday night?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...the moment after everyone in Washington DC who has broken infinitely more important laws resigns first.
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When all the noble Democratic crooks resign, who is left to run the country?
[Read the article: Spitzer to resign Monday night?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All the non-noble Republican crooks, of course. No thanks.
The Republicans can have David Vitter. We'll keep Spitzer. Now we're even.
I'd rather have the crook who gets most of the stuff right than the crook who gets most of the stuff wrong so wrong, he's part of the team who thinks nothing of killing innocents for corporate profits.
If you think it's a moral failing that I can't get worked up about Spitzer's paying a fortune for a prostitute, then blame it on the Republicans for having set the bar so low.
At least he's not having sex in public, like Craig and Allen, or engaging in weird kink like Vitter, or chasing boys like Foley, or... I mean, really, the list just goes on.
Thousands for a high-class call girl? Stupid, yes, but because the main danger was blackmail. That danger no longer exists, so I just don't care.
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@AlecsMom
[Read the article: Report: Spitzer caught on federal wiretap]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You also seem to miss the basic fact that enjoying sex and having sex with strangers for money are two totally different things. At least I hope you know that. One is fun, the other is dehumanizing and exploitative.
You really can't conceive of a world where some people who have sex with strangers for money enjoy their jobs? Because I can. Especially the ones who get thousands of dollars each time they do.
And dehumanizing and exploitative -- isn't that called "work"?
Do I think a woman who chooses to make many thousands of times what a McDonald's worker does an hour is suffering more than the fast food fryer? Do I think a woman who is voluntarily being appreciated for her natural and cultivated gifts is dehumanized more than a cubicle-dwelling wage slave? That someone who's making a mint for providing sex is being exploited over the one who's paying the fortune for the sex? No.
And plenty of places across the world do just fine regulating sex work. It's always been with us and it always will. What's more humane -- criminalizing sex work and thereby guaranteeing an abusive environment for some or regulating it so that the people who need help will get it?
The answer isn't to assume that everyone shares your views or morals or whatever, the answer is to de-criminalize the oldest, simplest, most personal and private commercial transaction that two people can make whenever it has always been with us and always will. Work is work. Women shouldn't be made to suffer just because they're in this particular sort of work, whether it's their first choice or their last.
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@AlecsMom
[Read the article: Report: Spitzer caught on federal wiretap]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Far from not seeing some prostitutes as victims, I endorse regulation instead of criminalization to stop their further victimization as best we can. Will that solve all the problems? Let me put it this way -- does the regulation of legal businesses now insure that all workers everywhere are happy and out of danger? Of course not. But you do the best you can. Adding more layers of stress and danger to the lives of sex workers is not doing the best we can.
Do you know any sex workers or is all your knowledge academic? Through charity work and an eclectic social circle, I've known sex workers who have no choices and are utterly miserable and I've known sex workers who are exercising their choices and having the time of their lives. Regulation would help both extremes and everyone else in between, but continuing to prosecute them as criminals will not.