- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Interesting how Shapiro writes his article from the perspective of how "tragic" an event this is to Spitzer. One comes away with the impression after reading it that the article had be written by someone working for a Crisis Management firm hired by the Governor, not by a journalist whose constituency is supposedly the People.
Isn't there anything beyond the personal harm to Mr. Spitzer that is worth commenting on or thinking about?
For this writer, there are at least three more important issues that are raised by Spitzer's fall. Two of them are rather obvious with fairly limited ramifications. The third is not so obvious in its connection.
1. Hypocrisy is the most difficult of vices for the public to tolerate.
2. Why did Spitzer's bank apparently contact the IRS of its own volition, in secret? What law is lurking out there that gives banks this kind of authority to rat-out its own depositors, with no notice to the depositor required? If Jane Doe writes some checks that some bank clerk thinks present a "suspicious pattern," can Jane find herself the target of a Justice Department investigation, of wiretaps and other surveillance?
3. Finally, the episode is a brilliant real-world illustration of why true conservatives always argue for the most limited of power for those who govern: Irrespective of any and all other criteria, those with power are human beings, some subject more, some subject less, to human frailties.
In the culture of the still puritanical USA, it is frequently that most powerful of human urges--sexual desire--that winds up as the proximate cause of the downfalls of the mighty, as is the case here. But it's the thought of this guy--with power--having the gall to be concurrently prosecuting prostitution rings and being a client of prostitutes himself that disqualifies any sense of the "tragic" be used as the adjective to describe Spitzer.
Governors, Senators, Mayors, City Council-people and, especially, Presidents should have only the absolute minimum of power to harm and harass others as is required to keep governments functioning.
Spitzer not only abused his power as AG and Governor, but both those offices came equipped with too much power long before Elliot Spitzer arrived on the scene.
