Why is it morally OK for a man to implicitly barter with a woman for sex?

Isn't that *really* what is going on when a man buys a woman expensive gifts, expensive meals and expensive entertainment? Or are men such altruists that the idea of receiving a sexual reward for the largesse never enters their minds?

How many of you moralist women have had men implicitly barter with you for sex?

Even more tellingly, how many of you have completed the bargain?

If so, I don't think there are going to be very many elected officials left.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Zero sympathy for Spitzer here. When you make your living holding other people accountable for misdeeds, you can't really expect them to feel very sorry for you when you're held equally accountable.

Whether prostitution should be illegal isn't the point - it IS illegal, and Spitzer is one of the people who helped keep it that way. Screw him - he's getting exactly what he deserves.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Post Of The Day!!

Maybe even week..

If these guys didn't resign, why should Spitzer?

(Oh, yeah - I forgot. IOKIYAR.)

Probably been said before, I know.

The act between Spitzer and his Valentine for the night is no one's business but the participants and his family. It is a personal matter...but...I'll be damned, had I been his wife, I would have not been standing by his side when he made his announcement.

She let herself be used. He made a fool of her.

For that, he is a son of a bitch.

Where how I feel and what I think don't synch up together.

I find the idea of prostitution highly distateful and I'm willing to grant the john's wife and family the status of victim. But I also recognize that that represents the feelings of one person and I don't have the right to impose my discomfort on others with the force of law.

This view puts me in a sufficiently small minority that all sorts of behaviors which have no hamful effect except to creep people out are nevertheless illegal.

That's good to know. The best lawyer I ever hired is in jail for that now.

Hi Glenn--

I see this morning that about 550 letters ago you asked me if I was as angry with Bill Clinton as I am with Eliot Spitzer for handing the Republicans a reason for hounding him out of office. The answer, like so many in life, is "yes, but...." I was incensed by the whole sex scandal circus cooked up by Ken Starr, et.al. It was a pernincous waste of everyone's time and the nation's energies. As for Bill himself, on the one hand his actions with Monica -- unlike Spitzer's alleged activities -- weren't a crime (whether you believe this is ridiculous or not -- personally, I'm ambivalent). Yet, what Bill did, ethically, was worse. Having sex with a young employee, with all the obvious power imbalance, shows at best a disturbing level of disregard for others. Still, Bill was no hypocrite. He didn't go around condemning others or making himself out to be a shining model of rectitude -- so the natural impulse was to cut him some slack.

In any event, I very much appreciate your level-headedness in the midst of all this unsavory media attention to Spitzer's alleged activities -- which, after all, pale in comparison to all the very real crimes committed by our dear president (who's still very much in office).

Xrandadu Hutman:

If you're arguing that attention to this matter is out of proportion, then at least in my case, the argument fails. It's only Day 1 of Spitzer's scandal. If I'm still writing about this on Day 3, or Day 7, then sure, you might have some argument here.

Are you saying that may just be passing time here, that it is not really a big deal? You are confusing us with your seven or so pages of posts on this thread since last night. Your online worshippers breathlessly await your answer; I don't think we can hold out until Day 3 or 7.

Because two wrongs don't make a right.

Neither do three, four, or a bazillion.

They should all resign.

So should william "cash-in-the-freezer" jefferson, democratic congressman from Louisiana. They guy with $50k in his freezer. Still serving in congress.

If not, then Spitzer shouldn't.

Besides, since when does a bank go to the IRS instead of to the account holder if they notice strange transactions that could indicate a compromised account? Only, apparently, if the account holder is someone that the financial industry has a reason to hate.

I find the idea of prostitution highly distateful and I'm willing to grant the john's wife and family the status of victim.

Wife? Maybe, maybe not.. It really depends on the nature of the relationship in the marriage. It may be that the wife has at least some peripheral responsibility if she was withholding sex for some reason.

No, a man does not have a right to sex even in marriage.. But if he isn't getting it because the wife is using it as a negotiating card or even weapon then I can't really blame him for going to a prostitute.

By the way, I'd feel exactly the same way if the situation were reversed and it was the husband holding out on the wife and the wife were to avail herself of the services of gigolo.

Kids? Absolutely, the kids are suffering for sure and it they have absolutely no responsibility for the situation at all.

I come to a different point than Glenn on this issue, and I get there because I think that for our political system to work, the people must insist on getting what they paid for when they elect an official to office.

I think Spitzer should resign. I think Vitter and Craig also should have resigned. In all three cases, that is because they have been shown to be something quite the opposite of the packaging they employed in running for office. Both Vitter and Craig ran their campaigns and are carrying out their time in office as "Family Values" types for whom a very narrowly defined sexual morality is central. To be shown to conduct their private lives completely outside the narrow confines they prescribe demonstrates that they are not what they claim to be and are unfit to perform the services for which the public hired them.

A slight caveat here is that hints of Vitter's use of prostitutes came up during his Senate campaign, so the most discerning voters in Louisiana had hints that he wasn't quite as advertised.

In Spitzer's case, he ran for office on the premise that he was the white knight who had taken on the worst offenders on Wall Street and had made significant progress in cleaning up the corruption there. Along the way he also prosecuted prostitution crimes, so for him to be caught in the very type of crime he prosecuted makes him also very different from his own packaging. Had he been making DCLaw1's argument about the differences between prostitution and pornography, I would feel differently about his fitness for office.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was right not to resign over Lewinsky. He did not campaign on "Family Values" and we already had "I did not inhale" during the campaign, so we knew we were hiring a policy wonk who might weasel his way through minor indiscretions. [I was still angry with him over Lewinsky for him giving the Republicans such an opening for criticism and for the impropriety of a relationship with a lower level aide.]

Michael Mukasey also should resign. The detailed, sordid information being leaked about Spitzer only can be coming from the US Justice Department. There is no way these leaks should be tolerated. Likewise, it already looks as though the investigation itself was quite politically motivated, and if so, all involved in the decision to move it forward should be removed from DOJ.

Note especially the difference in handling Vitter and Spitzer by the Justice Department and the judiciary. In the "DC Madam" case, a judge actually ordered that the telephone records not be made public after a mid-level official in the State Department was identified. Only after the gag order was later lifted did the press identify Vitter's phone number in the records. Contrast that with our having full details of the phone tap info on Spitzer, less than a month after the phone calls. "Justice" Department, indeed. It should have been clear to us that Mukasey would act in this way when he refused to call waterboarding torture during his confirmation hearing.

Finally, the same line of arguing leads to an easy dismissal of the candidacy of John McCain. His willingness to become something other than his previous packaging or what he should be because of previous events in his life is easy to point out. He has a son in Iraq, yet he continues to advocate policies that make our troops targets of extremists while failing to provide them with adequate material and financial support. He was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and yet he took time off from his campaign to return to the Senate to vote against a bill that would make it illegal for the CIA to torture prisoners. He packages himself as an independent "maverick" candidate and yet his campaign is run by lobbyists who carry out their work from inside his bus.

When we buy an item at the store, we are right to return it if it differs significantly from the picture on the box when opened. Should we demand any less of our elected officials?