Monday, March 10, 2008
Karma and pride
Pride does in fact goeth before nearly all falls. Eliot Spitzer, the soon-to-be-former governor of New York, built his career and reputation - and pretty much won the governorship - by prosecuting what he said were evil wrongdoings among businessmen and prostitutes. He sounded like a zealot and pursed his lips like a religious convert. Yet apparently all the while he was conducting business with prostitutes himself. Huh, you say? What, you ask?? One wants to assume the news is wrong but Spitzer himself announced this all a few minutes ago and said he will resign.
How can anyone expect to hide something like this? How could Spitzer have been so astonishly hypocritical? One is reminded of Gary Hart insisting he had not had any doings with call girls and telling the press to follow him everywhere if they didn't believe him . . . and then being appalled when they showed photos of him with, er, call girls.
We all do wrong or illegal things - few, if any, are immune from human nature, after all. But if you choose to run for a public office, you have to expect - no, you have to know that all will eventually be found out. Either don't run or, up front, acknowledge the transgressions with complete assurance that they are finished. One simply cannot expect to hide, not in the age of 24-hour news. Unless, that is, you are Bill or Hillary, both of whom are apparently made of a different cloth that allows all manner of transgression to be (a) committed, (b) hidden, (c) admitted and (d) ignored / gotten away with.
I feel very bad for Spitzer's wife and children but there is almost no derision too strong for someone so loudly and publicly self-righteous whose feet are as clay-filled as all of ours.
How can anyone expect to hide something like this? How could Spitzer have been so astonishly hypocritical? One is reminded of Gary Hart insisting he had not had any doings with call girls and telling the press to follow him everywhere if they didn't believe him . . . and then being appalled when they showed photos of him with, er, call girls.
We all do wrong or illegal things - few, if any, are immune from human nature, after all. But if you choose to run for a public office, you have to expect - no, you have to know that all will eventually be found out. Either don't run or, up front, acknowledge the transgressions with complete assurance that they are finished. One simply cannot expect to hide, not in the age of 24-hour news. Unless, that is, you are Bill or Hillary, both of whom are apparently made of a different cloth that allows all manner of transgression to be (a) committed, (b) hidden, (c) admitted and (d) ignored / gotten away with.
I feel very bad for Spitzer's wife and children but there is almost no derision too strong for someone so loudly and publicly self-righteous whose feet are as clay-filled as all of ours.
Labels: anger, modern culture, people
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