In an (appropriate, all things considered) bit of meta-meta reflections on the media’s treatment of former Wall St. prosecuting Eliot Spitzer, Digby of Hullabaloo says of ongoing twit-vs-substance questions about his presumably-former employment of expensive sex workers…
...it’s disgusting that Spitzer “has to” answer questions about his sex life at this point. They didn’t file any charges, he’s resigned from office and I don’t htink think the public really gives a damn. Certainly, they could acknowledge the scandal and then move on rather than insisting on grilling him about the details. It is gratuitous and embarrassing to everyone watching as well as the man himself. But it is typical juvenile media behavior, replete with the usual nauseating spectacle of middle aged men giggling over some other man’s sexual foibles. Ugh.
Eliot Spitzer is an expert on the financial crisis and he shouldn’t have to subject himself to the media’s puerile curiosity in order to share that expertise with the public. In a sane world, he would be working in an official capacity to straighten out this mess, but because he had unsanctioned sex he is now relegated to the sidelines —- mostly because the press can’t seem to stop acting like a bunch of Jonas Brothers fangirls whenever a story makes them feel funny down there.
Incidentally one needn’t be anti-prostitution to feel white-lipped fury about Spitzer’s peccadilloes. Whatever one feels about hiring sex workers I don’t see how it would be possible to respect anyone who a) zealously prosecuted in public precisely the kind of sex workers he b) zealously employed privately.
So. Having neutralized the knee-squeezy question we can turn to Digby’s point that, sexual peccadilloes/hypocrisy notwithstanding, Spitzer is unquestionably qualified to be a big, fat, capable, and most importantly feared stick to match any carrots offered to Wall Street titans as incentive for them helping us out of the financial mess they’ve gotten us into.
It also raises a (hypothetical but illuminating) question… sort of a reverse of the Appeal to Celebrity fallacy: would you be willing to see economic collapse if the only person who could prevent the collapse had frequented sex-workers? (Or, if you prefer, had prosecuted sex-workers and/or maybe just frequented and prosecuted them?)
