A message for Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton and other disgraced public figures

Background:

• John Profumo
• Christine Keeler
• The chair in the above photo
• The Profumo Affair

How to Find Grace After Disgrace - Today's fallen politicians have a lot to learn from John Profumo's example.

Excerpt:

Because Profumo actually believed in shame, he could absorb it and let it change him however it would. In a way what he believed in was reality. He'd done something terrible—to his country, to his friends, to strangers who had to explain the headlines about him to their children. He never knew political power again. He never asked for it. He did something altogether more confounding. He did the hardest thing for a political figure. He really went away. He went to a place that helped the poor, a rundown settlement house called Toynbee Hall in the East End of London. There he did social work—actually the scut work of social work, washing dishes and cleaning toilets. He visited prisons for the criminally insane, helped with housing for the poor and worker education. And it wasn't for show, wasn't a step on the way to political redemption. He did it for 40 years. He didn't give interviews, never wrote a book, didn't go on TV.

Comment: Same goes for pastors who have fallen morally (into adultery). Go away. Serve quietly. Redeem yourself. Don't seek to Pastor again!

Cramer on Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer: Flashback 2004

18 Arrested in Lucrative Prostitution Ring Out of Staten Island

Excerpt:

Prosecutors from the State Organized Crime Task Force, working with the New York Police Department and the F.B.I., charged 16 people with enterprise corruption and two others with falsifying business records and promoting prostitution and money laundering.

About eight midlevel managers ran the ring, which operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using about 15 to 20 drivers to dispatch 30 to 40 prostitutes each day, officials said. In most instances, customers paid $250 for sex, sometimes using credit cards. The transactions, officials said, were processed through merchant accounts held by escort services or limousine companies, and in one instance a company that hired musical bands for weddings.

''This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,'' the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, who oversees the task force, said in a statement. ''It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring, and now its owners and operators will be held accountable.''


Comment: This post and the previous ("renting out" an organ for 10 minutes) underline the wrongness of Spitzer's behavior.

“renting” out an organ for 10 minutes

The Myth of the Victimless Crime

Excerpt:

“I’m here for a purpose,” she said in a conversation with her booking agent after meeting with Governor Spitzer, according to the affidavit of the F.B.I agent who investigated the prostitution ring. “I know what my purpose is. I’m not a ... moron, you know what I mean.”

Her purpose, as a man who knew patiently explained, is “renting” out an organ for 10 minutes. Men rent women through the Internet or by cellphone as if they were renting a car. And now, in response to the news about Governor Spitzer, pundits are wading into the age-old debates over whether prostitution is a victimless crime or whether women are badly hurt in prostitution no matter what they’re paid.

Whose theory is it that prostitution is victimless? It’s the men who buy prostitutes who spew the myths that women choose prostitution, that they get rich, that it’s glamorous and that it turns women on.

But most women in prostitution, including those working for escort services, have been sexually abused as children, studies show. Incest sets young women up for prostitution — by letting them know what they’re worth and what’s expected of them. Other forces that channel women into escort prostitution are economic hardship and racism.

The Emperor’s Club presented itself as an elite escort service. But aside from charging more, it worked like any other prostitution business. The pimps took their 50 percent cut. The Emperor’s Club often required that the women provide sex twice an hour. One woman who was wiretapped indicated that she couldn’t handle that pressure. The ring operated throughout the United States and Europe. The transport of women for prostitution was masked by its description as “travel dates.”


Comment: Good article on the victims of prostitution.

Updated: Woman at the Center of Governor’s Downfall

Excerpt:

On MySpace, it says: “I am all about my music and my music is all about me. It flows from what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen and how I feel.”

She left “a broken family” at age 17, having been abused, according to the MySpace page, and has used drugs, “been broke and homeless.”

“Learned what it was like to have everything and lose it, again and again,” she wrote. “Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone.

“But I made it,” she continues. “I’m still here and I love who I am. If I never went through the hard times, I would not be able to appreciate the good ones. Cliché, yes, but I know it’s true.”

Comment: She is younger than my daughter (my youngest child)

To whom is he "Deeply sorry"?

'Deeply sorry,' Spitzer to step down by Monday

Excerpt:

"I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me," he said in a brief news conference announcing his intention to resign, effective Monday. "I will try once again outside of politics to serve the common good."

Comment: Is he 'deeply sorry' to his dear wife to whom he made marriage vows? Is he 'deeply sorry' to his three teenage daughters? Is he 'deeply sorry' to the Almighty who commanded "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14)? Or is he just 'deeply sorry' he was caught?

The "lame" political ritual of repentance

Public apology, the ritual of repentance

Excerpt:

First, we watch the news conference. There's Spitzer, with his wife by his side. He says, "I want to briefly address a private matter." Then he expresses remorse (albeit vaguely) and promises to "dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."

Then, we call Mark Geragos, the high-profile criminal defense attorney, who -- as it happens -- has not actually seen the news conference. He proceeds to describe the news conference that he has not seen.

"You've got to have the dutiful wife and you have to have the 'it's a private matter,' " Geragos says. "And remorse for the past and plans for the future."

Whoa.

"If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all," Geragos says.

How strange that so many of us watch when we already know what will happen. And as we watch, random thoughts emerge: Did Silda Spitzer know when she got dressed this morning what she was dressing for? And did he change his tie from blue to a bold red, knowing that this image of him would be indelible? How do you dress for a scandal?

And what about that last line?

"I will report back to you in short order," Spitzer said at the end of the news conference, like he was closing a business deal and just needed to check some numbers, like he was completely in control of the situation.


Comment: Image above is of Dina Matos McGreevey & former NJ Gov. James E. McGreevey. Below: Silda Spitzer

Comment: Spitzer and McGreevey have common tastes in ties! See also Newsweek: The Wronged Wives Club