New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, the guy who made his bones dragging other people’s dirty laundry out into public view, is likely to resign tonight because he is eyeball-deep in a multi-state hooker ring. The hookers, by the way, went for a cool $5,500 clams a night. The story is still playing out and the best roundups right now are at Michelle Malkin’s place and Hot Air. I’d expect that the updates will go there as soon as they arise. And there are going to be plenty of those because his involvement looks like it wasn’t just a one-time thing.
So, yeah, he’s in it deep. Toss me in with the legion of folks taking about this tonight who are significant less than broken up about it. There is one thing I wanted to mention, though. During his statement this evening, he said this:
I failed to live up to standard I expected of myself…
It sounds noble, but it’s a weasel sentence. The issue isn’t the standard he expected of himself but the standards he expected of everyone else. Spitzer was easily among the top three most self-righteous and arrogant public officials I’ve seen in my lifetime. He did not hesitate to castigate his foes for even the slightest impropriety, going so far as starting whisper campaign against them and using the power of his office to blackmail them into acting in a way that suited him.
On a personal level, I could care less if he bought sex from really good prostitutes. I do care that he spent his time enforcing his own moral code on the citizens of this country in the most egregious and dictatorial fashion. I care even more that he was doing so while engaging in behavior that he would have wielded as a cudgel against any of his chosen enemies.
He need not apologize for his whoring. He does need to apologize, sincerely and abjectly, for his rampant hypocrisy.
It’s not hypocrisy – it’s corruption. It’s blatant disregard for that basic American concept of “all people are equal under the law”. It’s corrupt because the law applies to “thee”, but not to “me”. When those who are responsible for enforcing the law apply it to only those whom they choose to enforce it upon, then that is governmental corruption.
People are always going to be doing illegal stuff. When they do, the law should be enforced. When cops speed, they should get tickets – even if the cop who pulls them over recognizes them as a cop. If it’s ok for cops to break the law, it’s ok for others to break the law – otherwise, the whole legal system breaks down. Spitzer is the biggest “cop” in NY state. If it was wrong for others, it’s _especially_ wrong for him.
It’s not about hypocrisy – it’s about corruption.
{cringe of an honest Democrat}
It is about corruption *and* hypocrisy.
[...] starting to look like you all went completely out of your minds when you elected the Spitzer/Paterson ticket to Albany. Seriously, did anyone up there bother to vet these guys even a little [...]