CLIENT 9 REVISITED
by
Hy Brett
In our virtuous society, chances are that the media pundits who are still throwing stones at New York's former governor, Eliot Spitzer, aka Client 9 of a prostitution service, are themselves without sexual sin. Their virtue is to the great credit of themselves, their parents and spiritual advisers, and they make us proud to live in America and not in a country like France. There, the media was not upset in the least by the funeral of former President François Mitterrand, which was attended by his wife, mistress, and children by both women. From a distance, it must have been hard to distinguish the two chic women, attired in similar mourning from possibly La Maison Dior.
Hopefully, after Time, Nature's own therapist, has healed their traumas of disappointment in yet another leader whose public image was, inevitably, too good to be true, critics will acknowledge that though Mr. Spitzer had lusted not wisely but too well and too extravagantly, his choice of extramarital sexual activity in, of all places sacred and profane, the nation's capital, indicated, nevertheless, as commendable a dedication to America's highest value, the free market system, as that of any of his gloating foes on Wall Street.
Unlike with films and rap songs, there is no official or consensual ranking of America's core values, those ties that bind the nation together through wars, recessions and the administrations of subprime presidents, not that we've ever had any. But what may well serve the purpose in the case of Media et al v. Spitzer are the rulings of the nation's highest court. According to a New York Times Magazine cover story on March 16, conservatives and liberals on the Supreme Court differ on many issues. This came as no revelation, because, let us be frank, justices are nominated by presidents whose views the justices, being men and women of honor, are obliged to respect and transfigure into the holy writ of our secular religion, Democracy. But what was surprising in the Times article was the information that, despite the varying agendas of their sponsors in the White House, the nine justices agree almost unanimously in their support of the business community and its values and objectives. Wrote Jeffrey Rosen: "[Business cases before the court] involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for the economy and can have a greater effect on people's daily lives than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars." Mr. Rosen specifically included among the symbolic battles such bellicose and presumably secondary, noncommercial issues as abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty. Space permitting, he could have added immigration, gun control, narcotics, wiretapping and privacy, torture, freedom of the press, the rights of women and minorities, the separation of church and state.
"Power is the great aphrodisiac," said super-senior statesman Dr. Henry Kissinger, perhaps the keenest observer of our backstage politics since French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who toured the country in the 1830s and was particularly impressed by how our leaders evade impediments that had found their way into the Constitution. Like Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and other public servants before him and, for all we know, currently in office, Mr. Spitzer, the powerful governor of the Empire State, could have stooped to adultery with one or more married women, thus exposing them and their spouses and innocent children, some still in nursery school, to the sort of shame that has engulfed his own wife and daughters, hitherto able to hold their heads high at the most prestigious of gatherings in town, the sort graced by overachiever Donald Trump and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Or, as happens in both the public and private sectors, he could have, with or without a Christmas bonus, bedded the attractive women of varying ages and figures on his efficient and dedicated staff. Or, during college commencements, en route to a backward state to inspire graduates to the sort of civic virtue he was promoting so vocally at home, he could have solicited a female or male partner in an airport terminal, a place where strangers meet and then pass in the night, but not before the sort of brief encounters that are inappropriate in their hometowns.
Instead, he did, if the truth be known, what all too many a true-blue, red-blooded American guy might do were he affluent and, for whatever reason, dissatisfied with the sexual offerings at home, whether that home be in the city or the suburbs, where country clubs offer a broad selection of indoor physical activities besides Tai Chi. He resorted to the well-known magic of the free market place, and specifically to a firm with the respectable name of The Emperor's Club VIP. Naturally, doing business in Washington within the shadow of a White House totally devoted to faith and family, it would have been unseemly for such an enterprise to call itself The President's Club VIP, and their good taste is to be commended and worthy of consideration by the FBI.
And there in Washington, at a hotel named, prophetically, for the vessel that bore daring adventurers across treacherous seas to an uncertain future, Mr. Spitzer was willing to pay top dollar for his carnal pleasure, just as he and neighbors on Fifth Avenue often pay even greater sums for more acceptable modes of physical, emotional or aesthetic gratification. Be it a box at the Metropolitan Opera or a sky box at a Super Bowl. Or a table at an event where one can hear an inspiring, six-figure speech by a retired statesman who is still milking his beneficiaries and always will. Or a political fundraiser where, of course, expecting neither contracts nor favors, a good citizen can shake the eager palm of a would-be president and hear vows of ever-lower taxes for his particular bracket, from which manna will trickle down and make the economy bloom like another Garden of Eden but without clever serpents who would tempt visitors to read leftist literature composed on Apple computers.
Mr. Spitzer is reported to have spent $4300 for his tryst on St. Valentine's eve with the prostitute first identified as Kristen and later revealed as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a name to inspire Rupert Murdoch to create an imprint called Boudoir Books and order it to reissue the almost 600 romance novels of Barbara Cartland. Let it be said in Mr. Spitzer's favor, if there is anyone to listen, that for a lesser sum he could have availed himself of the reluctant services of a Balkan or Asiatic teenager who had been kidnapped and smuggled into the country. Instead, he saw fit to hold fast to the standards of his socioeconomic class and to engage a middle-class young woman from New Jersey, the Garden State, and the home of the Institute of Advanced Studies. She was twenty-two, of an age to choose her career and lifestyle, and to buy a gourmet vodka advertised in Vanity Fair, and to help decide the fate of the nation and Iraq by voting in November for either Senator John McCain or the Democratic candidate, if one is ever selected.
As in many a mishap both personal and national, there may well be a silver lining in the Spitzer scandal. President Bush does not believe that the country is facing a recession, but just in case he is wrong for the first time in office, he has signed into law a growth package that includes a tax rebate that would encourage consumer spending and spur job creation. Though she is, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the bracket of maximum discretionary spenders, the sort of shopper who might drop into Barney's on Madison Avenue for a designer T-shirt on sale for $99.95 and emerge also with a Balmain top costing $7,090, Ms. Dupré, being single and childless, could have expected a mere $300 toward her patriotic desire and responsibililty to stimulate the economy. But one need not be a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers to appreciate that, thanks to her professional income from Mr. Spitzer and perhaps also Clients 1 through 8, and 10 through…., she is already making a most significant contribution to the president's program, potentially the economic counterpart to his surge in Iraq. Needless to say, Mr. Spitzer's role in her present and future expenditures cannot totally expunge his misconduct, but if and when the economy improves, it will behoove his critics to consider a reassessment of his image.
by
Hy Brett
In our virtuous society, chances are that the media pundits who are still throwing stones at New York's former governor, Eliot Spitzer, aka Client 9 of a prostitution service, are themselves without sexual sin. Their virtue is to the great credit of themselves, their parents and spiritual advisers, and they make us proud to live in America and not in a country like France. There, the media was not upset in the least by the funeral of former President François Mitterrand, which was attended by his wife, mistress, and children by both women. From a distance, it must have been hard to distinguish the two chic women, attired in similar mourning from possibly La Maison Dior.
Hopefully, after Time, Nature's own therapist, has healed their traumas of disappointment in yet another leader whose public image was, inevitably, too good to be true, critics will acknowledge that though Mr. Spitzer had lusted not wisely but too well and too extravagantly, his choice of extramarital sexual activity in, of all places sacred and profane, the nation's capital, indicated, nevertheless, as commendable a dedication to America's highest value, the free market system, as that of any of his gloating foes on Wall Street.
Unlike with films and rap songs, there is no official or consensual ranking of America's core values, those ties that bind the nation together through wars, recessions and the administrations of subprime presidents, not that we've ever had any. But what may well serve the purpose in the case of Media et al v. Spitzer are the rulings of the nation's highest court. According to a New York Times Magazine cover story on March 16, conservatives and liberals on the Supreme Court differ on many issues. This came as no revelation, because, let us be frank, justices are nominated by presidents whose views the justices, being men and women of honor, are obliged to respect and transfigure into the holy writ of our secular religion, Democracy. But what was surprising in the Times article was the information that, despite the varying agendas of their sponsors in the White House, the nine justices agree almost unanimously in their support of the business community and its values and objectives. Wrote Jeffrey Rosen: "[Business cases before the court] involve billions of dollars, have huge consequences for the economy and can have a greater effect on people's daily lives than the often symbolic battles of the culture wars." Mr. Rosen specifically included among the symbolic battles such bellicose and presumably secondary, noncommercial issues as abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty. Space permitting, he could have added immigration, gun control, narcotics, wiretapping and privacy, torture, freedom of the press, the rights of women and minorities, the separation of church and state.
"Power is the great aphrodisiac," said super-senior statesman Dr. Henry Kissinger, perhaps the keenest observer of our backstage politics since French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), who toured the country in the 1830s and was particularly impressed by how our leaders evade impediments that had found their way into the Constitution. Like Founding Father Alexander Hamilton and other public servants before him and, for all we know, currently in office, Mr. Spitzer, the powerful governor of the Empire State, could have stooped to adultery with one or more married women, thus exposing them and their spouses and innocent children, some still in nursery school, to the sort of shame that has engulfed his own wife and daughters, hitherto able to hold their heads high at the most prestigious of gatherings in town, the sort graced by overachiever Donald Trump and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Or, as happens in both the public and private sectors, he could have, with or without a Christmas bonus, bedded the attractive women of varying ages and figures on his efficient and dedicated staff. Or, during college commencements, en route to a backward state to inspire graduates to the sort of civic virtue he was promoting so vocally at home, he could have solicited a female or male partner in an airport terminal, a place where strangers meet and then pass in the night, but not before the sort of brief encounters that are inappropriate in their hometowns.
Instead, he did, if the truth be known, what all too many a true-blue, red-blooded American guy might do were he affluent and, for whatever reason, dissatisfied with the sexual offerings at home, whether that home be in the city or the suburbs, where country clubs offer a broad selection of indoor physical activities besides Tai Chi. He resorted to the well-known magic of the free market place, and specifically to a firm with the respectable name of The Emperor's Club VIP. Naturally, doing business in Washington within the shadow of a White House totally devoted to faith and family, it would have been unseemly for such an enterprise to call itself The President's Club VIP, and their good taste is to be commended and worthy of consideration by the FBI.
And there in Washington, at a hotel named, prophetically, for the vessel that bore daring adventurers across treacherous seas to an uncertain future, Mr. Spitzer was willing to pay top dollar for his carnal pleasure, just as he and neighbors on Fifth Avenue often pay even greater sums for more acceptable modes of physical, emotional or aesthetic gratification. Be it a box at the Metropolitan Opera or a sky box at a Super Bowl. Or a table at an event where one can hear an inspiring, six-figure speech by a retired statesman who is still milking his beneficiaries and always will. Or a political fundraiser where, of course, expecting neither contracts nor favors, a good citizen can shake the eager palm of a would-be president and hear vows of ever-lower taxes for his particular bracket, from which manna will trickle down and make the economy bloom like another Garden of Eden but without clever serpents who would tempt visitors to read leftist literature composed on Apple computers.
Mr. Spitzer is reported to have spent $4300 for his tryst on St. Valentine's eve with the prostitute first identified as Kristen and later revealed as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, a name to inspire Rupert Murdoch to create an imprint called Boudoir Books and order it to reissue the almost 600 romance novels of Barbara Cartland. Let it be said in Mr. Spitzer's favor, if there is anyone to listen, that for a lesser sum he could have availed himself of the reluctant services of a Balkan or Asiatic teenager who had been kidnapped and smuggled into the country. Instead, he saw fit to hold fast to the standards of his socioeconomic class and to engage a middle-class young woman from New Jersey, the Garden State, and the home of the Institute of Advanced Studies. She was twenty-two, of an age to choose her career and lifestyle, and to buy a gourmet vodka advertised in Vanity Fair, and to help decide the fate of the nation and Iraq by voting in November for either Senator John McCain or the Democratic candidate, if one is ever selected.
As in many a mishap both personal and national, there may well be a silver lining in the Spitzer scandal. President Bush does not believe that the country is facing a recession, but just in case he is wrong for the first time in office, he has signed into law a growth package that includes a tax rebate that would encourage consumer spending and spur job creation. Though she is, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the bracket of maximum discretionary spenders, the sort of shopper who might drop into Barney's on Madison Avenue for a designer T-shirt on sale for $99.95 and emerge also with a Balmain top costing $7,090, Ms. Dupré, being single and childless, could have expected a mere $300 toward her patriotic desire and responsibililty to stimulate the economy. But one need not be a member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers to appreciate that, thanks to her professional income from Mr. Spitzer and perhaps also Clients 1 through 8, and 10 through…., she is already making a most significant contribution to the president's program, potentially the economic counterpart to his surge in Iraq. Needless to say, Mr. Spitzer's role in her present and future expenditures cannot totally expunge his misconduct, but if and when the economy improves, it will behoove his critics to consider a reassessment of his image.
No comments:
Post a Comment