spitzer

Funny one.

I prefer Jay Leno, too…but now I'm into Scrubs. Ever watch it?

Sounds like you were the key person. 

Mike & I watch Leno.  It's kind of a ritual with us.  We watch the monologue and then the first feature–we love Headlines.  But after that, we want to just go to sleep.  Jay's guest has to be really, really, really good for us to stay up and watch.  I've got to say that Jay really adds to our lives.  One time we realized that we hadn't laughed all day, or for maybe a couple of days.  We realized that without Jay's stuff we wouldn't have laughed at all.  I've never watched Scrubs.

I prefer Jay Leno too.
Scrubs - no
Dexter - yes

So I'm the only freak  in this comment stream who likes Scrubs? Boo hoo.  :)

Dexter? He's kind of cute. But isn't he a serial killer? LOL

Yes, but…….
He works for the police dept.  And he just gets all those killers who got away with murder.
Sure he does gruesome stuff. He is trying to have a normal life, but not succeeding.
It is a fascinating character study, great cast, and writing.  Just close your eyes at the real gory stuff, but not as gory as CSI, or Dr. G medical examiner.  I like the Twin Peaksy flavour, I think that is what it was called - the David Lynch thing many years ago.
I think Martha said she was a Dexter fan, —right Martha?

yep, yep.  I do like Dexter.  A great mixture of black humor and suspense.  Ah, but Mimi, I have a NEW passion!  “Breaking Bad.”  It is GOOD! 

MorningStar, I think that maybe I don't watch Scrubs because I'm an old fart.  (The accent is on the “old”, not the “fart”.)  It seems my students watch shows with hospital themes more than I do.  But then again, our college has a HUGE nursing program and many health programs, and I think our student body has a very healthy “health profession” fantasy life, which may, in the long run, be much more (literally) healthy than a “cops and robbers” fantasy life, which I, a holder of a B.A. in Criminal Justice, must ultimately “cop” to…

Back to Spitzer the Sleaztzer,
    Why oh why do those wives stand up there beside the sleazebags.  There is somethiing wrong with those women.  It is so deperately undignified.  Maybe thewives  don't want to give up their “position” , like being Mrs. Governor, and all the perks that entails.  Kick the cad to the curbside.  Once a cheat, always a cheat.   There is no excuse.  Go away.

oh rats.  I thought we could escape talking about HIM.    Well, ok, good question Mimi.  I've wondered about that myself, and about what I'd do.  Thing is, I think in MOST (not all, but MOST) cases, if the partner is of a “cheatin' kind,” the person DOES have a clue, if they are savy enough or brave enough to recognize it, at a much earlier time than decades later when the news cameras are rolling.  Personally, I think it's in the nature of men, and maybe even of people in general, to want to enjoy sex and intimacy with with multiple partners.  I think it happens more than we would want to know about, if we saw the whole true patterns of behaviors.  And wouldn't that be scary?  We depend on this “social fabric.”  I'm your wife, you're my husband, you're my aunt, my daughter, my son, my college roommate…  These relationships can get pretty hinky.  But they're all we've got.  My hypotheses about why she's standing there by him:
1.  Possibly, she knows the guy inside and out, and she just loves him and wants to be there for him.
2.  Or, she wants to be “Mrs. whatever he is” and hasn't figured out how to get OUT of it in one piece yet, so she has few alternatives.
3.  Or, she's waiting to set him up for a big financial settlement, which will take place later behind closed doors with lawyers who file their teeth.
4.  Or, possibly she's in shock.  Her position has, as we have noted, both private and public significance.  If she doesn't show up, she will deepen the tear of both the private and public social fabric.  Maybe she is a servant to the mythic aspect of it–the publically held reality.  She's just doing it because it's there to do.  It's, like, her dharma.

My criticque of the above: 
1.  I would be there for love or I wouldn't be there.
2.  Honey, the lesson is never go IN to something unless you've scoped the OUT door.
3.  My lawyers ALWAYS file their teeth.
4.  Without the ego running the show, a significant truth of the situation is that all other things being equal, we can learn a lot and share a lot of love and increasing honesty in this situation.  It's a boon.  A mitzvah.  It's dance music!  :)

Mr. and Mrs. Spitzer are Teachers:
They teach us by either being a good example or a bad example.
Or they are a good example of a bad example.
After living all these years (65) I think it could be more realistic to not be monogamous, as Martha has said in her post. ” want to enjoy sex and intimacy with multiple partners”
But I would differentiate between sex and intimacy.
“anybody can get laid” - mimi 1965

Interesting that Mimi and I are talking about individual social roles, their meaning from a woman's point of view, and from society's point of view.  And maze, you're wanting to talk about gossip.  That's what you started with, and nobody has said a word about that so far, so you remind us… what about the gossip aspect? 

Well, as we sociologists are trained to think about it, gossip is a modality of social bonding, and can have a “positive” function with regard to deviance:  “Ain't it awful what that poor woman's goin' through.  But serves her right though for not kickin' his ass when she had the chance.  You gotta keep your husband in line if you live in the public eye.  I mean, even Hillary Clinton knows that.  It's hard work, but a woman's gotta be strong, or she has to go through what this one is.”  And other crap like that.  Redefining social roles, keeping us just as we are.  Remoding society.  Telling the stories that get us through from one day to the next withe the requisite social forms and relationships and potentialities intact. 

From Mimi's perspective, it's about the same as the sociologists say, but simply in other terms.  People's behavior serves as good examples or bad examples.

But I say, examples of “How to live in the box.”  I want to be able to see out of the box and get my nose out so I can breath.  What I'm saying is that the finest potentiality of this situation is that the players wake up and mindfully say, “Look, this part here was bullshit, and I'm sorry, and this part here is true love, and I think that what happens is like this, and I'm going to be very genuine with you right now. ”  I think that's what Bill Clinton should have done.  We were talking about that a little while ago, right Maze?  I was saying that he should have told the pack dogs to go ahead and bite his ass.  THAT would be the brave thing to do!  Or maybe just silly.  I donno.

I don't know what the fuss is about with Spitzer.  If I had the money to spend on a $5,000 escort, I'd probably be doing it, too. 

Another man being persecuted for having a penis…Mr. Spitzer, having made himself a target, now has to bear the shame for the entire gender…

Yep, don't know what all the fuss is about either.  Maybe I could work up a little judgment that he's a big name crime fighter, but somehow that seems like too much of a stretch.

Personally I'd like to think that the wife is there for reason number “1.  Possibly, she knows the guy inside and out, and she just loves him and wants to be there for him.”  After all we're all living in glass houses and I think Maze pointed out something about the first stone.  Yep, it doesn't seem like anyone here is really into the bashing of anyone…I have to say, I think that's kinda cool.

Oh man!  I just gotta say what I really think and feel in response to Clifton's comment, “Another man being persecuted for having a penis…”  Well, from my point of view, I'm looking at total, raw, cuts-way-into-my-guts kind of PAIN here.  …What it FEELS like if you love and trust someone, and then they CHEAT on you.  Been there!  Watching the person you utterly have shared everything with, built a whole life with, and this person is going on the the next person!  Opening them to play with and rejoice about like a present!  This person has forgotten, at least for the moment, all about their partner and their actual life.  Their joy, their passion, is totally refocussed.  You, yourself feel worse than a rock.  There is despair, anguish, humiliation.  Maybe your “friends” all know what happened, and you're the last to know.  And THEN you attend a news conference to share this whole deal with the Entire World???? 

Oh, and one more thing.  I have NEVER persecuted a man for having a penis.  Actually, I like them a lot.  I think every man who wants one should have one.

Maze, it just dawned on me… Buffalo is in New York! You must be really pissed.

well, martha, i just don't know.  i don't know anything about the spitzers' relationship. all i could possibly do is speculate.  

people looking at all this from the outside tend to reduce it to: husband cheats on wife/how awful/what a prick/that must be awful, etc.  but the truth is we don't know how they feel.  and so i don't see any point in projecting a bunch of our own prejudices and ill-informed speculations onto the situation and then getting self-righteous about it.

having said that,  one ill-informed assumption is as good as another so here's one of mine:  the governor and his wife are probably feeling somewhat isolated right now, like, “it's me and you against the world,” a kind of bunker mentality.  they're probably feeling like no outsider is going to push them to make any decisions about THEIR family for them, so fuck off and thank you very much!

about the persecution comment:  do you realize that if i as a male should happen to expose myself to a female–intentionally or not–it would very likely be presumed that i am a pervert (and summarily hauled off to jail), but if a woman would do so, if the roles were reversed, i as a male could STILL very well be presumed a pervert!  there's a bias, there, that's my point.  it's a bias that favors the woman as victim.  people are going to believe i was a peeping tom before they believe that a female exposed herself, unless i can prove otherwise.  all it takes is an allegation, and i'm in trouble.

now, prevailing wisdom would say that, I, as a male, need to be aware of “how things look,” but why do I have to?  I'll tell you why, it's because I'm presumed guilty, because “you know how men are.”

Yikes!

My two cents….in Europe, this probably wouldn't be the scandal that it is here. When the Monica L/Clinton scandal broke, the Europeans thought it was kinda silly. They just sort of accept that politicians go to prostitutes and/or have mistresses…and as long as they're doing their job well, it's fine.

That's not to say that what Spitzer did was OK…or that he should have stayed in office….or that his wife should stay with him. I have no tolerance for cheaters and cheating. But then that brings up another point–and I'm just posing the question.  Is seeing a prostitute the same as regular cheating (an affair)–as in, what about the emotional side of things? Is sex with a prostitute equal to an ongoing affair that includes emotional involvement? It seems to me that a regular affair is a bit worse because it's on several levels…

The bottom line–there's clearly something wrong there, given who Spitzer is/was, the career he's had, etc. Brilliant man, no common sense? A man whose power went to his head (no jokes, please–LOL)?  A human being with an addiction, some version of “Clintonitis”? Someone who simply thought he could get away with it?

Not sure how the wife could stay with him and continue to love him…trust has been destroyed, for sure….and does she even know who he really “is”? Who is the real man behind that persona?  She–and we–may never really know…

On the other hand, he was a very good governor, wasn't  he?

MorningStar, Thank You for your thoughts!   Yes, very, very good questions!  All of them.  And we can't know the answers, so what does this mean for our social fabric?  Our only response is to accept his resignation, which is a kind of destruction.  I wish we were more “European” in our outlook! 

Clifton, thank you for coming back and elaborating on your comments so that we can better understand your points of view.  It was Very helpful to me for you to point out that I'm Projecting!!!  Well, duh!!!  :)    Yes, I am/was  but when one is in the midst of it, one gets caught up in it and doesn't see it for what it is.  Oops! Sorry.  There is a good reason I dragged my “stuff” out and reacted to your comment, and if you want to, you can take a look at 3 of my last 4 blogs…  basically I had a dream that was quite significant to me that invited me to look seriously at being responsive to the world from my vulnerability, rather than my urge to “control.”  So, when I read your posting and unpleasant memories came up, I realized that pushing them back down would not help matters.  So, I let the memories come up and felt the PAIN.  I wanted to see What do we DO with this stuff?  You know, it's like using the new curly lightbulbs.  They're good for the planet, but they have mercury vapors in them, so how to dispose of it???  So, I definitely didn't want to attack you personally, since obviously you had no intention whatsoever of “hurting” me.  So, I simply began to express and explore the material that emerged.  So now, you've given me something to go on.  You remind me that I don't want to project it, either.  So THEN what???  :)  Any ideas?

And, then what do we do with the whole thing of the presumed guilt of the man in any situation?  I think that has a companion classical concept–there's the whole thing of “she brought it on herself for provoking him or dressing provocatively or whatever,” like men are loaded guns, and it's the responsibility of everyone else not to set them off, and if they go off, obviously it's the “attacked” person's fault.  I mean, both of these approaches are bullshit, and they go hand in hand. 

You know, after I wrote that every man who wants a penis should have one, I thought that maybe I should amend it to, “everyone who wants one should have one.”  It's much more realistic.  And in the same spirit, probably the emerging ethos for social sexual behavior should emphasize personal responsibility for the use of one's sexual organs?  To use them in a way that does not cause harm?

What amazes me above all about this scandal is the naivete people betray vis-a`-vis their shock and outrage.

It was wrong, he shouldn't have done, but there he went and did it.

So?  I'm like, “Your point?”

We tip our hat to the supposedly commonplace knowledge that “everyone's human,”  “we all have feet of clay,” and “nobody's perfect,” yet when someone manifests it, OMG!!

As near as I can figure out, it's because it's something that most people can understand and relate to one way or another–the great value of their own relationships, their own marriages.  Helen and I are explaining more about it over here, briefly sharing our background on it.  Also, it's because this particular guy was such a “moral crusader.”  The blatant hypocracy of it.  I have nothing against the man, personally.  If I met him today, I'd say, “Gee, I'm sorry it all happened like that.  Is there anything I can do to help?”  But, it's a spoiler.  And, of course, it doesn't have to be, on a public level.  Why the hell would you or I care who the man sleeps with?  I'm perfectly “European” about it  :)  if you will.  As long as the job gets done… ok, bust your own pleasure palace last, but…     or something.  Ok, wiggle room for you buddy, just 'cause.  But it's the way the situation echos back to the personal for us.  Maybe we're ALL projecting! 

i would be remiss if i didn't mention that i'm actually quite fond of my penis, having discovered it relatively late in life.

It is interesting how Elliot Spitzer was caught and this is something that I never knew about before. I knew that whatever a person charged on a credit card could be traced but the same thing is true about debit cards. Banks monitor all kinds of transactions. They have this software that evaluates them for risk: risk of money laundering, taking bribes, terrorist operations. If you are a politically exposed person (a governor, senator or related to a governor or senator) your name goes on this list and all your transactions are scrutinized. It used to be that only transactions above $10K were reported to the government but after 911 lots of others are as well, say a million $5 transfers to a particular account.  The thing that is very ironic is that Mr. Spitzer came out as a big supporter of this technology. It is like he willfully shot himself in the foot. Link to this story on NPR here.

About his wife - I certainly feel for the gal and wouldn't want my 5 minutes of fame to used up that way.

Hey there Clifton, I'm glad you finally found yourself–at least in part!  Our expressive parts are very improtant!  But read Janine's (Jw's) summary of credit card monitoring and remember…

Janine, we've always known it's true.  It's harder to trace cash.