Big ups, NY Times. I’m not sure when you stopped being the *paper of record*, but it was probably before you printed Judith Miller’s breathless regurgitation of Chalabi’s dubya-emm-dee fantasies, possibly even before Howell Raines’ coddling of Jayson Blair.
Can I be honest? You’re actually leading me to doubt just about everything.
.
(I’m not embedding this YouTube clip– because I know it’s immature to include it at all.
I just walked into a meeting to learn that some *disturbing news* had come to light– it was *blowing up all over the internet*, so why didn’t I know about it?
I actually love the fact that my colleagues expect me to stay abreast of new developments– I expect the same of myself. But I’m a bit puzzled as to how I just sat through an entire meeting under the delusion that some underworld had just been unearthed over which Spitzer lorded as pimp, possibly putting his government connections to nefarious ends.
He’s just another guy willing to spend a few hundred bucks on quality nookie.
Of course I’m aware that it’s against the law— just as I’m aware, as are you, whoever you are, that most adults agree that it should not be.
As to the fact that he’s a guy behind numerous high-profile prosecutions over the last few years— sure, perhaps any breach of the law on his part constitutes grounds to call the man a hypocrite. But for that h-bomb to really, really apply, one needs to demonstrate that Spitzer placed the prostitution industry within his crosshairs in one of his previous crusades— or that he ever overtly presented himself as the paragon of connubial virtue.
Schadenfreude is healthy, after all. Spitzer’s a Democrat, so I imagine the Republican pundits are all getting their make-up ready for tonight’s TV appearances. Well, good. But it’s important to keep things in perspective.
What I mean is that I anticipate at least one bloviator to throw up his hands and his eyebrows and ask where the cries of outrage are from the same Democrats who had a field day with Larry Craig, or with Ted Haggard, or with Mark Foley, or with— you get the idea. The bloviator won’t mention all those names, of course. Regardless, impressed with himself, the bloviator will add that the question just posed was a rhetorical one.
In a few days Bill Maher will probably feed this nugget through his monologue fodder grist mill, and we can pretty much expect him to note that the difference between Republican scandals and Democratic ones is that Republicans generally wind up tumbling out of the closet. Assuming that Barney Frank is not a guest that night, he might even get a laugh– but that’s not to say that he’s got a point.
What made those Republican scandals into real scandals was the fact that there were specific points of public activity on each of the actors’ parts that rendered their deeds hypocritical.
I refer you to exhibit A:
Update!
It’s been amply pointed out to me that Elliot Spitzer did, in fact, agitate against the prostitution industry in his role as New York’s Attorney General. So then: let those h-bombs drop.
In Oregon, where I’m registered to vote, the Primary doesn’t occur until May, and here in The District, where I live, voting occurs in one week.
But as we all know, by the end of today Democrats in twenty-two states and Republicans in twenty-one will have chosen the nation’s candidates for President. Or not. Predictions vary. My colleague Pat Ottenhoff has some intel at The Huffington Post.
I’m really impressed with this piece at N+1 (via Matthew Yglesias): it’s a simple exchange of letters between two family members, discussing in very personal terms their respective choices for the Chief Executive.
Underpinning everything said in the stump speeches and the debates, the press releases and the news shows, the N+1 piece indicates that maybe it all does come down to identity politics– not the old gender and race politics that amount to so much talking head fodder but another, hidden one, configured along generational lines.
So come on, Generation X,Y, and Z– voters of Middle America between the ages of 18 and 50, none of whom are likely to read this: Please. Get out there and vote today. Don’t let the Boomers screw this thing up for you too.
A couple observations: Matt Drudge may have thought he was “breaking” a story that Newsweek had “spiked”– and everyone else, sharing his ignorance, may have thought so too– but he wasn’t. Newsweek was coöperating with a federal investigation; Drudge’s erroneous intrusion into the saga effectively grounded negotiations between the Feds and Lewinsky’s lawyer, thus perverting the investigation and thus obstructing justice. Also: Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek reporter at the epicenter of the whole sorry ordeal, is also the sorry Newsweek reporter who alleged that Guantanamo interrogators were flushing Korans, and who later recanted entirely– but not before an impressive round of rioting in all sorts of places had claimed a number of human lives and American flags. So, make of that what you will.
However: this regression is probably unnecessary, given that a few Welsh guys have already, long ago, had the last word:
↑(From 2001’s essential, sonically all-over-the-map ((pun intended)↑ Super Furry Animals release Rings Around the World)
So Gawker is trumpeting its refusal to be cowed by Scientology’s bully tactics. They’ve got the Tom Cruise video, and they’re keeping it up, and we in the world can just stand in awe of
a) Gawker Media’s totally heroic journalism
b) The newly-cemented irrefutability that Tom Cruise is completely crazy. He like completely is, omigod!
–All of which really, to my mind, begs the question: When did you people think he was sane?
It was R&R in Amsterdam, on leave from The War. Central Station’s dingy hotel had a little TV: soft-porn teen soaps on one channel and live Bush/Kerry debates on the other. Kerry spoke verbose parabolae around and over the sound stage, and The Cowboy shot him down: “My opponent,” he slurred as he squinted and ducked, “is a Massachusetts Libbrul.”
Then it was SXSW in Austin, Stateside now as before. Steam rose from bodies packed stage to stage in Emo’s as Sleater-Kinney hit its first dischords. A poodle-skirted MTV2 rep informed me that she was “so over Bloc Party” just as she slid toward a silver-haired exec wearing fauxhawk and blazer. His Corona splish-splashed onto the floor as they twisted to Corin Tucker’s beatific wails: “I want to run away! I want to get away!”
Now a sunset ribbons the Washington D.C. skyline, reflecting pink office towers onto the melting snow below. I’ve just flown from the Columbia Gorge to the District of Columbia to surf the internet for a living: what a hell of a way to watch another Presidential race.
