More Ranting About Spitzer

Three reasons I'm so ticked off about Eliot Spitzer:

1. Justice Denied Again. Spitzer made his reputation by going after financial abuses and outrageous salaries on Wall Street. Needless to say the abuses are still going to be there whether Spitzer is governor of New York or not. But Spitzer's diddling around with prostitutes is going to delegitimize the efforts of other people to rein in the abuses.

2. Sympathy for New York Democrats. I've lived in two of the super Republican rural counties in Upstate New York (Tioga and St. Lawrence). I know how hard it is for Democrats to make any headway. Spitzer's morally bankrupt behavior with prostitutes betrayed years of hard work by local Democrats to prepare the way for a popular Democratic candidate like Spitzer was in 2006.

3. Doing a John Bolton Within. Amanda Marcotte writes:

I propose that the problem with prostitution is unique not because sex as a service is unique exactly. I think that the problem with legalization schemes is that prostitution is more, for the majority of the customers, about buying the opportunity to treat a woman like utter trash. In order for prostitution to be legal and yet still viable, the scheme either has to preserve the customer’s right to treat the prostitute like trash (which is why it works in Nevada, though it does the actual prostitutes little good), or an illegal side market of prostitution will flourish next to the legal one.

Just a "kiss up/kick down" guy like John Bolton was always looking for opportunities to abuse those below him, prostitution is about "buying the opportunity to treat a woman like utter trash." In other words, guys like Eliott Spitzer are seeking the opportunity to be assholes without paying any consequences for their degrading behavior toware women.