Spitzer Scandal About Crime, Not Sex

Because I saw her face as she stood on the Podium next to him. Unless she is the best actress yet produce this century or last that was a woman who was hurt and hurt badly. Part of it may well have been that she felt as if the magic carpet had been yanked out from under his feet.

I never sensed by the way the same thing about Hillary.

Favorite Scripture...Judge not and ye shall not be judged; condemn not and ye shall not be condemned; forgive and ye shall be forgiven… Luke 6:38

Lily S.
http://lilyseymour.blogspot.com/

"Many in the media have accused the Catholic Church of being obsessed with sex, but the media frenzy surrounding the Spitzer scandal makes one wonder who is really obsessed."

What? All a sudden you're denying who gets to and does contextualize 'sex' and how it's reacted to by those out for a moralistic frisson?

Sorry, you and the corporate media are *still* the ones advertising 'sex' as some dirty, 'forbidden fruit' and 'irresistible temptation' and all that noise.

A mature view of it neither sells toothpaste nor scares people into the pews, but it does *not* involve driving people to morally-crusade against their own peccadilloes with the might of law.

GaryD,

What makes you (and seemingly a lot of other people) so sure that he lied to his wife?

Maybe she knew? Has that ever occured to you?

Fr Murphy's law says that anything that can happen once can and it will happen again too. The highway patrolman pulled Fr Murphy over. He noticed the smell of alcohol on his breath and noticed an empty wine bottle inside the car.

"So you've been drinkin have ye father" says he. "Just water" replied the priest. "Now father, what's that empty wine bottle there all about?" "Good heavens" exclaimed the priest. "He's done it again."

It was not a single crime (being a John in a prostitution deal). It was also a money laundering crime, aiding criminal activity of interstate prostitution and, potentially, breaching rules of using taxpayer's money or false travel cost reports, etc.

He was a proscutor and went after people that commited the same crimes. Moreover, Mr. Spitzer took an oath to be the chief law enforcement officer of the State of New York. But he turned out to be a customer of the Emperor's Club in the Empire Estate.....

Norrie - business deals are typically between consenting adults -- but they take time to decide if they want to work together before signing a contract - submitting proposals, having meetings, discussing the scope of work, etc.

Not that I would know, but it's my impression that prostitution doesn't work that way. The John could turn the girl away, I guess, but the girl doesn't have much choice, does she, if the guy doesn't appeal to her?

It doesn't sound like a very fair business deal to me.

At least he didn't go after children... Or treated women like wending machines: get a... dollar in get a baby out... like some.
Or killing animals for fun like others...Or people...But he is the man of the past like all of the above...

Pseudo, Pseudo, Pseudo,

Only the facts are presented!! So they get repeated. So that is called education. Learn from it or be helplessly lost in the "land of religious flaws".

Norrie most do work the streets. And paid sex is pretty sordid whether it is done between silk sheets or up against a wall in a back alley. And no matter what you do you are going to have STD's.

What else was in Mr. Spitzer's hotel room??? The stench and ghosts of JFK, Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Kobe Bryant, Bill Cosby and every Muslim polygamist!!!!!!

"Some have even argued that prostitution should be legal because it is between consenting adults. Most Americans (excerpt [sic] in Nevada) disagree because usually prostitutes are not really free in their choices. They are exploited."

That's the way it used to be, particularly for street prostitutes, but things and times have changed for many prostitutes.

On National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" this morning a sociologist who has studied prostitution described the changes.

Many "prostitutes" today don't work on the streets, as was the case with Governor Spitzer's hired companion.

Many of the new order of hired sexual companions are well educated, some with graduate degrees. There is nothing tawdry about the relationships between the women and the "Johns".

The sociologist's most interesting finding for me was that, in many cases, sex was not the principal object of the interaction. Rather, companionship, understanding, sympathy, and simply human interaction were the main motivations for the "Johns", though sex also took place.

Many of these educated women testify that their being "prostitutes" had advanced their lives along several dimensions.

Consider a woman college or graduate student struggling to pay off educational loans:

The income can be greater than she could gain from any other work.

The working conditions are not at all grungy and can be elegant.

If the client is the sort primarily seeking non-sexual satisfaction, the encounters can expand the woman's human understanding and she may actually be extremely helpful to her clients - in other words she may be providing a significant social service.

There is always the risk of a bad encounter and violence for the woman, but this can be minimized by careful planning. It may be that more "prostitutes" are killed or injured in automobile accidents driving to their appointments than by "Johns".

So, Father Reese, you might want to study the NPR sociologist's studies on the actual workings of "prostitution" today, rather than relying on past stereotypes to draw your conclusions.

Best wishes.

CCNLM:

Hmmm, what was you biggest mistake? Self righteousness? Self superiority? Hate speech? Boorishness? Repetitiveness? Mindless adulation of inferior "scholars"? The list is so long...

concerned you could at least vary that statement a bit and thus become a lot less boring.

Mr. Reese the man lied to his wife, put her a risk of serious health problems and in doing so proved that he shouldn't be trusted by anyone. Compound this with his politically motivated witch hunts of everyone whose politics differed from his own and we have a corrupt individual who has know business being in charge of anything.

There's a book out you should read or at least as I did watch the author's commentary on book TV. The author made the comment that in the history of America there have been more than one hundred politicians with the sobriquet 'honest' attached to their name. As near as anyone can tell only one of them appears to have been unequivocally so. The point having been elected by the public at large is no guarantee whatever that a given politician will be either honest, or competent let alone both.

Hmmm, what was Mr. Spitzer's biggest mistake??

He did not become a Muslim. Had he, he could have declared his call girls his other wives and been above the law at least in the Islamic world.