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Spitzer Commentary Worse than the Scandal

Written by Tiffany Sanders

Tuesday, 25 March 2008 00:21

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after it came to light that he'd been partaking of some very expensive local prostitutes, but the reaction and the commentary that followed that revelation was at least as disturbing as the incident itself. The prostitute in question became an overnight celebrity with more than five million hits on her web page. Discussion forums across the country buzzed with debate about whether or not Spitzer's wife should be standing by him. And, as if that weren't all enough, "experts" like Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Erica Jong appeared on camera to share their opinions with us.

The content of their statements was bad enough: Dr. Laura told us that men were bound to be susceptible to the charms of other women if their wives didn't attend to their personal and sexual needs and make them feel like men, successes and heroes. And Erica Jong followed that up by diagnosing Spitzer as a sex addict.

Dr. Laura’s statement surprised me a bit, given her reputation for insisting on fidelity and personal responsibility. Turns out those poor men just can't be expected to stay faithful if their women aren't acting right at home. Does that apply to Eliot Spitzer? Did his wife fail to make him feel like a man, leaving him vulnerable to the "charms" of another woman? I don't know. Neither does Dr. Laura, despite the prestige of her doctorate in…um…Physiology. Nor, of course, can Erica Jong possibly know whether Eliot Spitzer is a sex addict based on what's been revealed in news reports.

It would be professionally questionable for a mental health professional to reach such a conclusion (and announce it) without any firsthand knowledge or professional records on which to base her conclusion. Fortunately, Erica Jong is off the hook because she's…well…a novelist. She wrote a famous novel about sex, which apparently qualified her in the minds of a certain television station to speak on the larger meaning of Spitzer's actions.

Unfortunately, Jong's famous novel isn't as famous as it once was. What was controversial and widely reported in the seventies has become fairly standard fare today, and the world is full of people who have never heard of Erica Jong. I happened to watch her pronouncement on an airport television with several of those people, and what I witnessed was troubling: because she announced a diagnosis, they assumed that she was a psychologist or some other kind of mental health professional.

Of course, people are free (within legal bounds) to say any fool thing they want to. But wouldn't it be nice if they just…didn't? Wouldn't it be nice if people didn't make declarative statements about things they didn't really know much about, and if television stations and magazines and other media didn't hold people out as experts who just…weren't?

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One Minute Outrage - Political

Issue: Nations around the world join forces to put an end to the use of cluster bombs because of the high incidence of civilian injury and death--sometimes long after the conflict is over. But the United States, like Russia, China and Israel, refuses to sign the treaty.

Impact: The United States further abdicates the role of world leader, while still clinging stubbornly to the title. The continued use of cluster bombs is bad enough, but far worse is the message to the world that force by any means necessary is the way to go--and the path to be chosen by the largest and most powerful nations on earth.

Read More: US Joins China and Russia in Rejecting Cluster Bomb Ban

One Minute Outrage - Earthly

Issue: A blind couple is prosecuted for employing a commonly accepted method of composting in their own garden.

Impact: Your tax dollars at work making life difficult for people with the audacity to grow vegetables--and an apparent legal preference for chemical fertilizers over organic matter that might actually help the environment.

Read More: Gardener Threatens Public Safety with Compost

One Minute Outrage - Legal

Issue: Police departments in major cities across the country aren't content to arrest self-made criminals, but have decided to hit the streets and see whether they can create some more.

Impact: Time and tax dollars poured into sting operations designed to test ordinary people and create crimes that would never have been; meanwhile, who's minding the store? Hundreds of thousands of unserved felony warrants lie inactive across the country while police experiment in subways, department stores and on streetcorners.

Read More: Make Your Own Criminal – It's So Much Easier than Chasing the Real Ones

One Minute Outrage - Cultural

Issue: A disabled child is left to die by a negligent mother, and the people charged with her protection stand by and let it happen; sadly, Danieal Kelly is only one example of the wide-ranging failure of the systems that are supposed to keep our children safe.

Impact: The impact on this particular child was a slow and painful death, and she is not alone. Right now, as you're reading this, other children are living in similar circumstances; other parents and caseworkers are ignoring their needs and waiting for someone else to do something. The most helpless among us will not survive unless we all step up and do our part--and insist that others do theirs.

Read More: Disabled Child Left to Die by Mother, Social Workers

Sex Offender Registration / Residency Restrictions Do More Harm than Good

sex offender registration

Fifteen years ago, the mother of a kidnapping victim had a good idea--an idea that made a lot of sense. That idea involved the creation of a registry for use by law enforcement to track child molesters. Soon other states got on the bandwagon, and the classes of crime included in the registries mushroomed. Then those registries were shared with the public, voluntarily or under legal mandate. And then the public found out that there were sex offenders down the block (never mind that those "sex offenders" might have urinated outdoors after too much to drink late one night or had sexual relationships with girlfriends just a few years younger than themselves after they'd crossed the line into adulthood), and we didn't like it. New state laws cropped up across the country restricting where convicted sex offenders could live, and now, we're finally seeing the fruits of those frantic efforts. States are spending tens of millions of dollars to attempt to keep convicted sex offenders in stable places where they can be tracked, and losing the battled. Homelessness has skyrocketed among convicted sex offenders, and with it, the rate of recidivism.

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