What Eliot Spitzer Should Say To Save His Career

Eliot Spitzer is no doubt wondering what he can do to save his career now that it has been revealed that he paid a high-class prostitute for sex. When New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey was being sued for sexual harassment by his former male lover, Golan Cipel, whom McGreevey had appointed as his homeland security advisor, the governor asked the gay-rights group the Human Rights Campaign for advice about what he should say. The group, which has always tried to be very helpful to corrupt politicians, recommended that he refer to himself as a "gay-American."

Sadly, there is no well-funded lobbyist group for men who enjoy the services of prostitutes that Eliot Spitzer can turn to -- at least not yet -- but if there were, I am sure they would give Spitzer the same advice the HRC gave McGreevey: he should become the first sitting governor in American history to say the words, "At a point in every person's life, one has to look deeply into the mirror of one's soul and decide one's unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is. And so, my truth is that I am a whoremonger-American."

Many of our founding fathers, men like Benjamin Franklin, for example, were whoremonger-Americans. In more recent times a number of great political men have patronized prostitutes, men like Jerry Springer, Rep. Joe Waggonner, Rep. Allan Howe, Rep. Fred Richmond, Dick Morris and most recently Louisiana Senator David Vitter, and these are just the ones who got caught. Many of these men have been forced to live in shame for who they are and their political careers have been ruined. But is that fair?

In this era of loosening sexual morality is whoremongering really the worst sin? Is it more of a sin than homosexuality? Is it more of a sin than committing adultery for free? According to the 1948 Kinsey report, 70% of American men patronized prostitutes at least once. A 1994 survey by Edward O. Laumann put this figure at 15%. While it is possible that Kinsey's data was abnormally high, it is also possible that Laumann's lower figure may be accounted for by the fact that fewer men have needed to pay for sex in the decades since the 1950s because of changing sexual mores. Now certainly there are many men who still cannot get a woman to sleep with them for free no matter how loose sexual mores become. For men like Eliot Spitzer and David Vitter, it may be impossible to find a woman who is willing to sleep with them unless they pay for it, and in the case of Spitzer, unless he pays a lot. (In fact, the picture that accompanies this post may give a clue as to why Spitzer may have needed to pay for sex.) But isn't it possible that for Spitzer and Vitter, men who have dedicated their lives to upholding virtue and morality, patronizing prostitutes is a way of rejecting the sexual immorality of the present and returning to the traditional mores of the past when there were rules about who successful men could sleep with?

Of course, like most conservatives, I deplore the loosening sexual mores of our time. I would like to return to the 1950s when men who wanted extramarital sex had to pay for it at great personal risk. Indeed, the way our society has defined sexual deviancy down with its acceptance homosexuality, illegitimacy, adultery and premarital sex has made the lives of men like Spitzer and Vitter even more difficult. Gay marriage has weakened their own marriages (a fact that Spitzer, a supporter of gay marriage, may have learned too late) and yet they may be unable or unwilling to cheat on their wives the way men like John McCain, Bill Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and many other politicians have. While these politicians lured decent women into committing adultery, Spitzer and Vitter instead committed adultery with women who were already fallen and they did so at great financial cost and risk to their careers. Whether because of necessity or a deep-seated belief in traditional values, Spitzer and Vitter have rejected the free-sex, anything goes sexual mores of our era and lived by the sexual code of another time, a simpler, better time. Maybe Vitter and Spitzer could not have found women who wanted to sleep with them for free, but the fact is they went ahead and paid for it. Should they be condemned more than men like McCain, Clinton, Giuliani and Gingrich just because they courageously limited their whoremongering to women who had already lost their virtue?

Now some people say that Vitter and Spitzer are hypocrites. Vitter has been a crusader for family values and Spitzer prosecuted prostitution rings with the same zeal that has now been loosed on the prostitution ring he patronized, reportedly even at the time he was breaking up other rings that apparently withheld their services from him. But as I have said before, hypocrisy is not necessarily a bad thing. Ted Haggard recognized that that having meth-fueled sex with a gay prostitute was wrong, which is far superior to having meth-fueled sex with a gay prostitute and thinking it was a good thing. Spitzer and Vitter recognize more than anyone how terrible it is that the loose sexual mores of our time have driven them to seek the succor of prostitutes. They know first-hand what it is like to be the victims of the sexual immorality that is all around us and because of that they have made it their life's work to try to prevent other men from making the same mistakes they have. Shouldn't that count for something?

While I cannot deny the glee I feel that a holier-than-thou Democrat who is supporting Hillary Clinton has been hoist on his own petard, I cannot in good conscience say that Spitzer should resign, while Vitter, whose seat would be filled with a Democrat if he quit, should not. I am not a hypocrite when it comes to hypocrisy.

Instead of resigning, Spitzer should admit that, like many American men, he is a whoremonger-American, and while that may not be a good thing, it is better than the alternative. Why should his career be ruined when many other politicians have survived cheating on their wives only because he paid a professional instead of sullying the reputation of a decent woman? Whoremonger-Americans have rejected the sexual immorality of our era. They want to return to the sexual immorality of the past, which was not quite as bad. Instead of luring good women into becoming adulterers, they only consort with women who are already fallen. They want to return us to an era when men tried to be faithful to their wives and if they couldn't be faithful at least they paid a professional. Whoremonger-Americans like Spitzer and Vitter are victims of a sexual double standard that gives men a pass if they lure moral women into sexual immorality but condemns men who try to stop the spread of sexual immorality by sleeping with prostitutes who have already been morally compromised and paying handsome compensation for it.

I am not saying that Spitzer should be proud of being a whoremonger-American the way Jim McGreevey is proud of spending so many years in the closet in order to avoid risk to his political career, giving his lover a job for which he was unqualified and then finally admitting the truth when he had no other choice. For Spitzer admitting he is a whoremonger-American would be more akin to an Alcoholics Anonymous member saying, "I am an alcoholic." But instead of suffering from the disease of alcoholism, Spitzer is a victim of the sickness that has infected our sexually immoral society. By admitting to being whoremonger-Americans, men like Spitzer would not just be helping themselves but they would be helping America get itself on the 12-step program back to sexual sobriety.

Of course, in a perfect world men would be faithful to their wives and alcoholics wouldn't drink. No one believes that more than whoremonger-Americans like Spitzer and Vitter, who might have been faithful to their wives if they weren't constantly bombarded with sexual imagery from the media. But instead of condemning whoremonger-Americans we should recognize them as heroes who have resisted the temptation of freely available sex and through their own example are returning us to an era when men rarely cheated on their wives and even then only if they could afford it. Spitzer is no saint, but he and Vitter are part of a movement of men who want to turn back the clock to a more virtuous era, a time that may not have been perfect but was better than we have now. Whoremonger-Americans like Spitzer and Vitter are pioneers and like many pioneers they are unfairly being singled out. Men are not all going to be faithful to their wives overnight, but by limiting their adultery to paid professionals, Spitzer, Vitter and other whoremonger-Americans have taken one small step toward that goal and for that they should be congratulated not driven from office.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Eliot Spitzer, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, David Vitter, Whoremonger-Americans, Politics

New York Times Report on John McCain Is Pre-9/11 Journalism

There is no love lost between John McCain and conservatives. But as much as we hate McCain, we hate the New York Times even more and the newspaper's hit job on McCain, accusing him of having a "close" relationship with an attractive young telecommunications lobbyist and doing favors for her, is causing conservatives to circle the wagons and rally around McCain. Even Rush Limbaugh, who hates John McCain, has blasted the New York Times. We are outraged that a purportedly respectable newspaper would print such sleaze after delaying the story for several months, until John McCain secured the nomination and the New Republic, which we also hate, threatened to scoop the paper. We are tired of this kind of dirty politics. When revelations about Gary Hart's affair with Donna Rice torpedoed his campaign and Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, it was a different time. And if these allegations about McCain had come out eight years ago when they took place, they might have derailed his campaign, too. But that was before September 11; 9/11 changed everything.

Before 9/11 McCain would have been the first to admit that it is wrong for a President or a Presidential candidate to commit adultery. After all, he voted to impeach President Clinton. McCain has denied having a romantic relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, but even if the allegations are true, it isn't any of our business. We have more important things to worry about now than politicians' sex lives. I'm sure some liberals will think it's hypocritical to say that a sex scandal is no big deal now that it is a Republican who is being accused, but that is just another example of pre-9/11 thinking. Back in the 1990s impeaching Clinton was the right thing to do but now the rules have changed. 9/11 changed everything.

Before 9/11 it was the duty of the news media to pry into the sex lives of Presidential candidates. News organizations had to check into every allegation of sexual misconduct because that was their job. The public had a right to know every detail of what went on between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky no matter how tawdry. It was important back then to know about Bill Clinton's private life and worth spending millions of dollars to prosecute him. And the news media had no choice but to report on it. But now that we are at war in Iraq and engaged in a global war on terror, the news media should not be digging around in the dirt like a tabloid newspaper, wasting precious resources reporting on some trivial sex scandal. It just makes them look sleazy. 9/11 changed everything.

Before 9/11 McCain felt really bad about doing favors for campaign contributors. When it was pointed out back in 2000 that he had sent a letter to the FCC on behalf of a campaign contributor Paxson Communications, whose lobbyist was Vicki Iseman, he expressed sadness that our campaign finance system gave people the impression that politicians were bought and sold and that campaign contributions were a legalized form of bribery. "We're all tainted," McCain said. "We're all under suspicion as long as Washington is awash in special interest money." In 2002 he co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold Act to help dispel this false impression. What McCain didn't realize at the time was that this law put a wedge between politicians and companies' whose help might be needed not just to pay for expensive campaigns but also to aid in the War on Terror. For example, the government needed the help of telecommunications companies to spy on potential terrorists. In return McCain and other members of Congress are trying to get them immunity from being sued by angry customers who selfishly don't want to give up their privacy to fight terrorism and telecommunications companies are giving these politicians even more campaign donations. It's a system where everyone is happy as McCain eventually realized. McCain didn't understand how important it is to keep these lines of communication between big business and politicians open while we are fighting the War on Terror. He didn't understand that 9/11 changed everything.

One of the things that has worried conservatives about John McCain is that on many issues he seems to have had a pre-9/11 mindset, not just on campaign finance reform. But in the course of the campaign he has modified some his stances so that they are more in accord with the post-9/11 world. That doesn't mean that we are ready to trust him yet, but at least he seems to be moving in the right direction. He has opposed waterboarding and torture because he hasn't been able to get over being tortured himself in Vietnam. But since he has been running for President, he seems to have softened his stance a little, supporting a compromise that allowed the Bush Administration to torture a few people when it is really, really necessary to fight the War on Terror. Many conservatives will never forgive him for sponsoring legislation to reform immigration, which would grant amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants and leave our borders undefended. But now he is beginning to realize that we need to secure our borders to stop terrorists disguised as Mexican workers from streaming over and he doesn't seem so eager to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants who are already here, who could potentially be members of terrorist sleeper cells. He seems to realize that once someone has broken our immigration laws, they may feel that they can break other laws, too, like laws against terrorism. McCain also angered conservatives when he joined the Group of 14, which stopped the appointment of conservative judges who would not allow terrorists to be released because of technicalities like habeas corpus and rules against secret evidence and forced confessions. As a Presidential candidate he has promised to appoint these kinds of conservative judges who realize that the War on Terror cannot be hampered by abstract constitutional principles. Though he still has a long way to go, little by little, McCain seems to be more flexible with his principles, coming to terms with the fact that 9/11 changed everything.

Conservatives don't want to return to the days when politics were dominated by the dirty tricks of the Clintons, which is why we are relieved that Hillary appears to be going down to defeat and that Democrats are going to give Barack Obama the nomination. We want to discuss issues not engage in tit-for-tat scandal mongering. Many conservatives, with the exception of a few of the less reputable blogs, resisted spreading the allegation made by Larry Sinclair in a YouTube video and reported in the World Net Daily that Barack Obama did drugs and had gay sex with him even though Sinclair does not look crazy at all. Although some people might think that if Obama was going to have gay sex with someone, he would do it with someone a little more attractive and less emotionally unstable, Sinclair's allegations do contain some credible details, for example, the fact that Sinclair, who is white, says that he snorted powder cocaine, while Obama, who is, of course, black, smoked crack before they had sex. Everyone knows that statistics show black people are more likely to smoke crack so that would make sense. While most conservatives did not want to have to report on these allegations, the New York Times story has forced our hand. John Hawkins of the Right Wing News did link to the story "because not only does the Left side of the blogosphere have zero qualms about promoting this kind of story when it involves Republicans, the mainstream media has absolutely no qualms about it either," he says. The fact that the New York Times is willing to print innuendo about McCain but not take this story about Obama seriously, he says, just proves that there is a double standard.

But we conservatives don't want to wallow in sleaze. We really want to get back to discussing the issues, like the fact that Obama is a Communist "to the left of Mao" because everyone knows that in the 1960s only Communists married outside their race as Obama's parents did. "For a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics," wrote Dan Quayle's former speechwriter Lisa Schiffren in The Corner this week. (Of course, some white men, like Strom Thurmond had children with black women out of wedlock, but they certainly weren't Communists and they didn't marry the women.) Why isn't the New York Times writing about this? If the New York Times didn't have a political axe to grind, it would investigate whether the marriage of Obama's parents was part of a Communist plot to encourage miscegenation and undermine the security of this country, instead of dirtying this campaign with sleazy innuendo about John McCain's private life. Haven't we moved beyond this kind of politics? Didn't 9/11 change everything?

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Vicki Iseman, John McCain, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, New York Times, New Republic, Politics

Why the Kennedys Are Endorsing Obama

Senator Edward Kennedy has decided to endorse Barack Obama for President, saying he wants a President who "can make us believe again." Over the weekend John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, announced her support for Obama, saying he reminded her of her father. Kennedy's speech writer Ted Sorenson asked what he could do for Obama last year, hoping no doubt that after the election Obama will ask what he can do for Sorenson. Like Kennedy, Obama is young, handsome and inspiring and he represents the passing of the torch to a new generation. But it is not just that Obama reminds them of Kennedy, it is also that the Clintons remind them of Lyndon Johnson. And if there is anything that the Kennedys don't like, it's a bunch of hillbillies in the White House, which is being kept in trust until a competent Kennedy can be groomed to take it back for its rightful owners. Until that time Obama will do.

Like Johnson, the Clintons play politics like it was mud wrestling or the roller derby, while the Kennedys have always believed that politics should be like a friendly game of touch football or beanbag. They never had to get down in the dirt with their opponents. Their father and his friends always took care of that for them.

When Hillary Clinton pointed out that it took Lyndon Johnson to get the Civil Rights bill passed, she was not only insulting Martin Luther King but also JFK, who did all the hard work of asking southern Democrats very politely to please vote for the Civil Rights bill, which they might have done some time in future as soon as they looked into their consciences and realized it was the right thing to do. Then Kennedy died and Johnson stepped in, rudely cajoling people and threatening to show them his scar unless they voted for it. Is that the kind of politics we want in America? Of course, if Kennedy had lived he also would have awakened one day and realized, unlike Johnson, that all of his advisers were not the best and the brightest but were really a bunch of dopes and he would have stood up to them and got us out of Vietnam.

In 1968 Robert Kennedy tried to take the White House back from the dumb hick who had taken it over by a fluke of history, but he was killed, too, before he got the chance. Ted Kennedy tried to save the country from another country bumpkin who got the keys to their house in 1980, but he lost to Jimmy Carter in the primaries. At first the Kennedys let Bill Clinton burnish their image by showing the photo of how he was somehow able to sneak his way into the White House to shake President Kennedy's hand when he was a young man. Now the Kennedys are saying enough is enough.

No one loved the Kennedys and hated Johnson more than liberals and the liberal media and they feel the same way about the Clintons. "Is the right right on the Clintons?" liberal pundit Jonathan Chait asks in an article in the Los Angeles Times. For years conservatives have been saying that the Clintons give politics a bad name. We look back with nostalgia to a time when gentlemanly Democrats like Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, George McGovern and Hubert Humphrey lost elections with grace and dignity. They didn't go around smearing their opponents and cynically triangulating the way the Clintons do. Now many liberals and members of the liberal media are coming around to thinking we've been right all along.

Although Republicans do not love the Kennedys the way liberals do, we hate Johnson and the Clintons more. Like many northeastern liberals we hate the way Johnson and the Clintons seem to believe unfairly that Americans are a bunch of racists. Unlike Johnson and the Clintons, Republicans are completely colorblind and never think of race at all. After the Civil Rights bill passed many southern Democrats were so tired of the way Johnson crudely and repeatedly flashed the Race Card that they became Republicans. President Nixon never mentioned race at all in his battles against busing and crime. President Reagan, who paid silent tribute to three Civil Rights workers who were killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when he launched his campaign there, never used the Race Card either when he fought against Welfare Queens and quotas. The first President Bush loved black people except when they were criminals like Willie Horton and his son appointed black people like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice to his cabinet and felt really bad about all the black people who died in New Orleans.

And you don't see divisive racial battles in the Republican primary. None of the candidates has even mentioned the fact that Alan Keyes is black. When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York he lowered crime, which disproportionately affects black people, by giving more power to the police and ended all the racial divisiveness that erupted during the previous black mayor's term. Mitt Romney feels really comfortable around black people probably because his father marched with Martin Luther King, which affected his son so much that he imagined he was there, and how he did cry tears of joy when the Mormon Church announced that black people were no longer considered evil and his maid wouldn't have to go to hell after all. Governor Mike Huckabee stood up for the rights of all the people of South Carolina, black, white, brown, yellow and green, not to be told by white northern elites that they can't have the Confederate flag flying on their state buildings, which is a historical symbol of their unique culture going all the way back to 1962. And all the Republican candidates have fought very hard for the rights of African-Americans not to have their low-paying jobs taken away by illegal immigrants.

Conservatives are really appalled at the way the Clintons are injecting race into this campaign. In a piece in Red State called "Democrats: The Party of the Klan?" Eric Erickson writes, "They are always claiming that Republicans are racist, but it is looking more and more like the Democratic Party, to its core foundation, is racist." In South Carolina the Clintons threw everything at Obama they could think of except pointing out that he fathered a black child. Republicans are offended by such down-and-dirty politics, which reminds them of the time they had to employ Lee Atwater to counter all the dirt the Democrats were putting out, which even Atwater himself regretted as soon as he was dying. His protégée Karl Rove no doubt was also troubled by all the dirty politics that erupted in campaigns he was involved with, which could never be traced back to him since he had nothing to do with it at all.

Many conservatives are saying nice things about Barack Obama, even though he is liberal and black, which they probably don't even realize, because they long for the days before the Clintons ruined politics. "I tell you, he almost had me tonight until he talked about the war that shouldn't have been authorized and reminded me there are real policy issues at stake in this election!" gushed Kathryn Jean Lopez in The Corner. "But listening to his inspirational, rallying speech tonight it's clear and obvious that if he's the nominee, he will be tough to beat." Andrew Sullivan, who makes no secret of his hatred for the Clintons, has endorsed Obama. Unlike the Clintons and many white Democrats, they don't see him as the black candidate. Almost 25% of white voters voted for Obama in the South Carolina primary and if he is nominated he may even get a few white votes in the general election, though probably not enough to win. That's because race is no longer an issue for voters in the South and it really is rude of the Clintons to subtly imply that it is, if that's what they were doing and we know it was because the media has constantly pointed it out.

I think everyone is tired of the kind of politics the Clintons represent, which sees voters as easily manipulated racist dupes and does not appeal to the better angels of their nature the way Barack Obama does. Conservatives are really hoping that the Democrats nominate Obama because he gives us a chance to heal the wounds that the mean-spirited Clintons have inflicted on the body politic. Conservatives would relish the chance to debate about ideas again. I can assure you that I and my fellow conservative bloggers and pundits will not go digging around for mud to throw at him. We won't spread rumors that he's a Muslim or bring up past drug use or go looking through his books Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope for contradictions we can exploit.

That was the old kind of politics, which is entirely the fault of the Clintons. We want to transcend that. I agree with Bob Kerrey that it is great that Obama went to a madrassa and I think Hussein is a very nice middle name. I think it's about time we had a President who admits to using cocaine in the past so that he can tell our youth from experience how bad it is. Conservatives can all get behind a man who talks so movingly about faith even if his church does have some wacky ideas about white people being devils and it once honored Louis Farrakhan. And I think we'll all forget that he is black and best buddies with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. If the Democrats nominate Obama conservatives will relish the chance to talk about issues and make the election as he says not "about black and white but about the past and future." Who couldn't be stirred by that kind of rhetoric?

Of course, we won't vote for Obama in the general election but that will only be because he is a tax-and-spend liberal who wants to surrender in Iraq, is against executing murderers and wants to impose gay marriage on everyone. In other words, we will just point out that we have a few policy differences with him. We relish the chance to debate the nuances of Obama's policy proposals and we'll be relieved not to have to drill into the heads of voters simplistic demeaning labels the way we had to do when we constantly referred to John Kerry as a flip-flopper and Al Gore as a phony. And the media will be happy not to have to repeat these charges in every story they write, which must have gotten kind of boring for them. Instead, they will be able to write the kinds of long thought pieces about issues that matter to people, which is what journalists really want to do. Conservatives will be so grateful to actually be able to finally debate the issues in a civil manner that we won't even mention all the other troubling stuff about Obama. You can trust us.

Update: It appears I have scooped the mainstream media if The Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers is correct about the reason Kennedy endorsed Obama.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Barack Obama, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Lee Atwater, Bush, Nixon, Alan Keyes, Politics