Okay, so the NY governor, Elliott Spitzer, is forced to resign because he met with a prostitute in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago. The lieutenant governor, Patterson, is sworn in and a lot of the good feeling is blown away when in his first public act, he and his wife confess to marital difficulties and relationships with other partners that are inconsistent with the usual marital vows that are sometimes broken, humans being the beings they are and what to do, what to do. I'm sure I don't know.
But the question remains. Why did the first governor resign and the second one didn't? Didn't they both do the same thing, essentially, sleep with women other than their wife?
Yes, but you don't understand. Guv-1 paid for it.
So what.
Who cares.
But he had her travel by interstate train from N.Y. to D.C.
So what, I don't care.
But he took money out of his ATM machine so he could pay cash which would be hard to trace.
I could care less.
He has a family.
They'll have to deal with it. Men are dogs. Women are bitches. They find each other. Don't ask me how. It's something about nature.
The reason Guv-1 had to take the pipe and Guv-2 didn't was for a different offense: hypocrisy.
You see, Guv-1 was a crusader for law, order, and morality. He prosecuted prostitution rings like the one he arranged his date with. In public he rode a white horse. In private, he was morally impure, as the convention would have it. This inconsistency was too much for the voters and their representatives, the Albany legislators, some of whom (from the opposite party) threatened to impeach him for one trumped-up charge or another. Suddenly, with the hypocrisy banner being waved energetically by foe and supporter alike, Guv-1 no longer had the backing needed to govern. His hypocrisy had sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Let's not talk about the new tax or welfare bill, let's talk about the governor's "banging whores," as David Letterman gently put it.
He also paid a lot. Too much, some would say. Like four grand a pop. The proles found that a bit much. But Elliott was a rich kid, the son of a rich dad who apparently handed him a lot. So he could flaunt it. It's his money. For him it was cheap, as long as he could keep it private and no one was the wiser, for where was the harm. The harm was to him, but only if, and when, he was found out. Catting around secretly was his Achilles heel, that one vulnerable spot where the magical protection didn't work, alas.
Guv-2 could bang anyone who'd have him and no one cared, except his wife and she had issues of her own that we don't care about. "We expected that," is probably the operating principle. But Guv-2 had not ridden into town astride a white horse making everyone else shape up. He was just a guy, and you know about them. See the dog entry, above. Consenting adults, you know. But not with Spitzer, because he was shown up to be not quite the white knight on the white horse he rode into town on.
Plus he'd made enemies. He tried to clean up Wall Street, our Augean stable. He sent a few guys to prison. He was good, they were bad. Suddenly he was shown to be no better. So he had to dismount the pedestal. And he did.
Now he's just a guy who made a mistake and who'll have to get on with his life. Old story. He'll be fine; just not governor.
The law against too much hypocrisy has been vindicated. It's not an indictable offense, it may be an impeachable offense (see Bill Clinton), but it certainly is powerful enough in certain cases to insure resignation from office.
Justice has triumphed, in one form or another.
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Cute line in Leah Garchik's column in the SF Chronicle (sfgate.com) today: "The devil always wins in the end." More truth than poetry, there.