Moralistic Media and Society - Spitzer, The Prostitute and Puritanical America
I was in Dubai presenting at the bi-annual Women As Global Leaders Conference on the "Dangers of Leadership" when the news broke about former Governor Eliot Spitzer and his 22 year old Scortum (Roman word for secret prostitute).
It was almost an irony being in the most opulent Theocracy in the Middle East dealing with the burgeoning challenges of empowerment and gender parity for Arab women while watching my own country deal once again with another public scandal involving sex.
Most of the woman attendees at the conference came from the United States.
The news traveled fast between and amongst the American participants.
A chorus response from the women were, "His wife should not have stood by him! She should leave him!" It was clear women were sick and tired of the "Stand by your man," theme song that people like Hillary Clinton and others have done over the years.
You could feel the anger from many women condemning Spitzer as sick, a pervert and other pejorative terms to describe him.
I must admit when I heard the news, I sort of chuckled and remarked aloud in my hotel room, "Here we go again.
" The media and our citizens are engrossed in the melodrama of public erotica; focusing on the immorality of one man who spent a good deal of his political life pointing the finger and slamming others into the dungeons of their sin - fornicators they were literally and figuratively of the law and moral society.
For every Wall Street miscreant and salacious "John" Spitzer put away, he seemed to have become more and more aroused by his power and might.
It looks like it came to the point that the very thing he quote publicly abhorred, he adored and struggled with inside his personal closet.
What is it about this sort of "deviance" from what we expect has our tongues wagging, wondering, condemning and then secretly wondering again what this must be like to get caught doing the nasty in a way that is unacceptable by our culture? While we cringe, some of us still wonder.
Some yet still have taken the leap and just have not been caught yet.
Some will never be caught.
Spitzer flirted with fantasy and reality and got the two mixed up! That was seemingly the great turn on that led to his own demise! Our Puritanical heritage tells us anything related to a morally defined sexual deviance must be "put on blast.
" We must be outraged.
How dare he do this act? Spitzer is only bad because of the sex with the prostitute.
He was not bad for the way he used his hubris to go after others who committed the same wrong.
Truth be told our history in America dating back to Thomas Jefferson is full of public sexual scandal (some we talk about and others we do not).
Jefferson's blatant affair with slave Sally Hemmings and fathering a number of children by her still did not keep him from being seen historically as one of the great Founding Fathers of our country.
Jefferson did not need a prostitute he had Sally.
Other scandals from Congressional leaders found to solicit boys, run around with super models, engage strippers and involve themselves in various other sexually compromising leadership positions, raises the question that perhaps America needs to revisit how they emphasize sexual scandals.
What is more immoral, Spitzer and the prostitute or millions of Americans losing their homes due to being pimped by the greed of predatory lending and the fat Cats getting away with hundreds of millions in severance packages? What is more immoral, Spitzer's revelation of his unsafe sex requests of the prostitute or thousands of people losing their jobs in Michigan and Ohio because someone lied to them about manufacturing staying strong in a globally competitive society in a rapidly shrinking American economy? What is more immoral, that he paid $80,000 to feed his hunger for sex or the poor and disfranchised people of America who are forgotten? We spend more time talking about sex and more sex, but not about the degradation of this great nation due to other willful sins - greed, the love of money and exploitation.
Eliot Spitzer, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, Gary Hart, Jim McGreevey, Jimmy Swaggart, and so many others represent something in all of humanity; their struggles and "sins," are not unique to the average person.
There are thousands and thousands of Eliot Spitzers in military uniforms, business suits, pastor and doctor robes.
Nearly every profession known to people have Spitzers.
I don't think prostitution slowed down in New York City because Spitzer was exposed? If anything, it might have increased since the psychology of people has a way of being more drawn to an activity when it becomes public.
This is not to say Spitzer's behavior did not compromise his leadership and respect by the people of the Empire State.
This is also not to say that his reckless behavior jeopardized the trust of his wife and daughters.
It is all painful and terrible when a person makes a wrong turn.
Spitzer is paying the biggest price for his decisions - total public humiliation.
Leaders and citizenry and all of us need to be mindful that our struggles become apparent when we begin to point the finger at others.
Like the pastor who repeatedly condemns homosexuality in the church every week and talks about these "gays" burning in hell; now makes you wonder if the pastor is secretly gay or struggling with something that is not "acceptable.
" Is he a Spitzer? This does not mean one does not call right and wrong by its name.
It just means when the name is called, we have to ask ourselves about the hypocrisy we lead in some way and we must be balanced in our approach.
Our balance in America right now is that the Spitzer scandal in the sum total of the challenges we experience in this nation is NOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING COMPARED to the pain Americans are facing as many suffer economically due to the crisis we are currently in financially.
This crisis has moral repercussions beyond Spitzer.
When people can't pay their bills, moral decay can increase - people turn to drugs and alcohol, families become tense and more break ups can occur, suicide is on the rise amongst people in their 40s and 50s, people are afraid that their basic human needs are going up in smoke.
This is what we must be focusing on.
Sexual scandals how gossippy and interesting they are serve as work avoidance distractions to what must really get done to heal this nation of its financial, social, emotional, physical and yes moral wounds - IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SEX!
It was almost an irony being in the most opulent Theocracy in the Middle East dealing with the burgeoning challenges of empowerment and gender parity for Arab women while watching my own country deal once again with another public scandal involving sex.
Most of the woman attendees at the conference came from the United States.
The news traveled fast between and amongst the American participants.
A chorus response from the women were, "His wife should not have stood by him! She should leave him!" It was clear women were sick and tired of the "Stand by your man," theme song that people like Hillary Clinton and others have done over the years.
You could feel the anger from many women condemning Spitzer as sick, a pervert and other pejorative terms to describe him.
I must admit when I heard the news, I sort of chuckled and remarked aloud in my hotel room, "Here we go again.
" The media and our citizens are engrossed in the melodrama of public erotica; focusing on the immorality of one man who spent a good deal of his political life pointing the finger and slamming others into the dungeons of their sin - fornicators they were literally and figuratively of the law and moral society.
For every Wall Street miscreant and salacious "John" Spitzer put away, he seemed to have become more and more aroused by his power and might.
It looks like it came to the point that the very thing he quote publicly abhorred, he adored and struggled with inside his personal closet.
What is it about this sort of "deviance" from what we expect has our tongues wagging, wondering, condemning and then secretly wondering again what this must be like to get caught doing the nasty in a way that is unacceptable by our culture? While we cringe, some of us still wonder.
Some yet still have taken the leap and just have not been caught yet.
Some will never be caught.
Spitzer flirted with fantasy and reality and got the two mixed up! That was seemingly the great turn on that led to his own demise! Our Puritanical heritage tells us anything related to a morally defined sexual deviance must be "put on blast.
" We must be outraged.
How dare he do this act? Spitzer is only bad because of the sex with the prostitute.
He was not bad for the way he used his hubris to go after others who committed the same wrong.
Truth be told our history in America dating back to Thomas Jefferson is full of public sexual scandal (some we talk about and others we do not).
Jefferson's blatant affair with slave Sally Hemmings and fathering a number of children by her still did not keep him from being seen historically as one of the great Founding Fathers of our country.
Jefferson did not need a prostitute he had Sally.
Other scandals from Congressional leaders found to solicit boys, run around with super models, engage strippers and involve themselves in various other sexually compromising leadership positions, raises the question that perhaps America needs to revisit how they emphasize sexual scandals.
What is more immoral, Spitzer and the prostitute or millions of Americans losing their homes due to being pimped by the greed of predatory lending and the fat Cats getting away with hundreds of millions in severance packages? What is more immoral, Spitzer's revelation of his unsafe sex requests of the prostitute or thousands of people losing their jobs in Michigan and Ohio because someone lied to them about manufacturing staying strong in a globally competitive society in a rapidly shrinking American economy? What is more immoral, that he paid $80,000 to feed his hunger for sex or the poor and disfranchised people of America who are forgotten? We spend more time talking about sex and more sex, but not about the degradation of this great nation due to other willful sins - greed, the love of money and exploitation.
Eliot Spitzer, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Larry Craig, Gary Hart, Jim McGreevey, Jimmy Swaggart, and so many others represent something in all of humanity; their struggles and "sins," are not unique to the average person.
There are thousands and thousands of Eliot Spitzers in military uniforms, business suits, pastor and doctor robes.
Nearly every profession known to people have Spitzers.
I don't think prostitution slowed down in New York City because Spitzer was exposed? If anything, it might have increased since the psychology of people has a way of being more drawn to an activity when it becomes public.
This is not to say Spitzer's behavior did not compromise his leadership and respect by the people of the Empire State.
This is also not to say that his reckless behavior jeopardized the trust of his wife and daughters.
It is all painful and terrible when a person makes a wrong turn.
Spitzer is paying the biggest price for his decisions - total public humiliation.
Leaders and citizenry and all of us need to be mindful that our struggles become apparent when we begin to point the finger at others.
Like the pastor who repeatedly condemns homosexuality in the church every week and talks about these "gays" burning in hell; now makes you wonder if the pastor is secretly gay or struggling with something that is not "acceptable.
" Is he a Spitzer? This does not mean one does not call right and wrong by its name.
It just means when the name is called, we have to ask ourselves about the hypocrisy we lead in some way and we must be balanced in our approach.
Our balance in America right now is that the Spitzer scandal in the sum total of the challenges we experience in this nation is NOTHING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING COMPARED to the pain Americans are facing as many suffer economically due to the crisis we are currently in financially.
This crisis has moral repercussions beyond Spitzer.
When people can't pay their bills, moral decay can increase - people turn to drugs and alcohol, families become tense and more break ups can occur, suicide is on the rise amongst people in their 40s and 50s, people are afraid that their basic human needs are going up in smoke.
This is what we must be focusing on.
Sexual scandals how gossippy and interesting they are serve as work avoidance distractions to what must really get done to heal this nation of its financial, social, emotional, physical and yes moral wounds - IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SEX!
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