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| The Spitzer Spritzer |
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| and again with the Mann Act |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Fifteen years ago, actor Hugh Grant was caught at the receiving end of a prostitute’s ministrations and arraigned. This was apparently so shocking to the moral fabric of America, that Grant’s presence was fought over until he appeared before us, we divine arbiters of morality, on national television. There he sat, more or less embarrassed, on Jay Leno’s show, then inferior in viewers to his rival, David Letterman. Leno turned to him and started his famously light weight interview with “What the hell were you thinking?” The applause was long and from that night Leno has led the ratings, Grant has faded as a bankable actor, and his streetwalker paid a fine. What many found unbelievable about this was not the desire for risky sex nor man’s supposed inability to keep things zipped but that Grant was then living with one of the world’s most agreeably beautiful women, Elizabeth Hurley, a certified heart stopper. Why, the world wondered with its wrist stapled across its forehead, would he risk Liz for a streetwalker? Why risk heaven for low rent hell? He could afford better, after all……. This is recalled solely because the Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has been caught in a call girl ring. Apparently, he’d been a client of an international and high end business that caught the FBI’s attention. There is some suspicion that it wasn’t all that accidental. It’s the Bush administration, after all, and Spitzer was a Democratic glory hound who’d made his name going after rich and powerful Wall St. types, generally Republicans, to the general applause and approbation of the public. He thought well of himself, and was a crusader, basing his highly successful campaign for the Governorship upon bringing high morality to Albany, and these types always have powerful and motivated enemies. And, he has a lovely wife. That being so, what the hell was the Governor thinking? That he could keep this quiet? That he could quash any investigation? That he was above the law? That the public would forgive him because they loved him so much? The latter might have promise as an insight, because he apparently was refusing to resign until the public spoke. This is beyond hubris. This is dementia. Early polling suggests the public is not pleased. Among the many hypocrisies that hover around concept and participation in the world’s oldest profession is the Mann Act, a 1910 law supposedly enacted to prevent White Slavery, which back then was mandated by the image of delicate white women subject to use by those not white, supposedly kidnapped and taken to another state where nobody would know them. I do not believe anyone ever saw fit to apply the law to save black women. Not once. In reality, as Mencken pointed out, it was a law to punish wealthy men for carrying on their shenanigans across state lines. This, because the Congressmen who voted for the Mann Act failed to see equal evil in obscenely young ages of sexual consent in their home states. In this way, old men having their legal way with fourteen year olds in the barn could look down upon men who could afford to take their same aged mistress across state lines for a weekend. Win-win, as it were, for the Bible Belt types, rich in hypocrisy. Spitzer arranged for the woman to cross state lines clearly for the immoral purposes that makes Mann Act proponents faint. It’s law, and he broke it, and I don’t see the point of further discussion: Spitzer has to resign, asap, and may be up on federal charges. But the question remains, what drives people - by which we mean men - with the world at their feet to seek out risk? We understand sex within marriage after a quarter century can seem a contradiction in terms, given you cannot successfully fake lust for an experienced adult, who knows by myriad physical clues. We know that love is not only not forever, but may have a physically measurable time span due to genetic code. But why go through this worn template of dragging the humiliated family through it? It’s as scripted as an elementary school holiday pageant and about as rewarding. In France, the President is newly married to a woman, Carla Bruni, who announced again, last year in a major publication, that she was a believer in, well, variations on the marriage concept, including multiple sexual partners and prolific utilization of same. Nothing in her well photographed past does anything to cast doubt. Whatever happens in this most visible marriage, I predict no children in therapy, nobody feigning surprise at human lust’s various permutations, and separate vacations with old friends that raise no eyebrows outside the US embassy, rich in virgins. The only positive spin that can be achieved about the Spitzer Spritzer is at least it wasn’t a gay sex scandal, and Spitzer wasn’t their only client. Be interesting to see what falls out this election cycle. Canting hypocrites like Eliot Spitzer are always a long lasting log to toss on the political fire. |
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