Ian Boyne, Contributor
Another one bit the dust this past week, joining myriads of others whose careers - often illustrious, larger than life and grand - have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Eliot Spitzer is the latest victim's name.
Spitzer, graduate of Ivy League universities - Princeton and Harvard Law School - and one of the biggest thorns Wall Street has ever had in its side, tumbled to the literal applause of many in America's business elite. Traders stopped trading on Wall Street early last week to catch the latest development in the sex scandal involving Spitzer, husband and father, who was linked to a prostitution ring. Spitzer had used a high-class call-girl service at least eight times, paying up to $5,500 an hour for his titillation. Even his enemies were stunned when this was revealed about 'Mr Clean'. Spitzer resigned on Wednesday as New York's Democratic governor.
Spitzer was once called by Fortune magazine 'the Enforcer' and Time magazine once likened him to Moses, with the right-wing National Review labelling him "the most destructive politician in America." Atlantic Monthly, in an article titled 'The Crusader' in its October 2004 issue, said, "Make no mistake about it. Spitzer is the Democratic Party's future."
The right-wing press, including the Wall Street Journal, gloated over his fall this week in editorials and op-ed articles.
It seems that when it comes to sex, the best and the brightest of us behave no differently from those who just attended primary school. Reason is, indeed, the slave of the passions, as the philosopher David Hume did say. Bill Clinton allowed a young White House intern to wreck his political career and thrust George Bush on all of us.
Fearlessness
Now Spitzer, who had won some celebrated battles against Big Money and the Big Corporations in America, and who was fearlessness personified, has been destroyed because of his sexual indiscretions - and stupidity, really. (The cynics say if he found prostitutes irresistible, he should at least have avoided escort services with websites which can be traced!) Remember, Spitzer, as governor, was prosecuting prostitutes and crusading against prostitution rings. Like the former president of the powerful United States National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, who was alleged to have bought sex on a regular basis from a male prostitute over a period of three years - after strongly opposing gay marriage and attacking homosexuality as evil.
His prostitute lover, who did not know who he was at first, after seeing him on TV speaking out against gay people, said he decided to come forward to expose the preacher's hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy and double standards are not limited to politicians or preachers, however. Just last year too, one of the most powerful and successful business leaders in Britain, and a close friend of Tony Blair's, John Browne (a lord at that), former head of British Petroleum, had to resign in disgrace after his former male lover came forward to tell of their extravagant life together and after he lied about how they met. (They also met through a male escort service.) Obsessions and com-pulsions are no respecter of status, professions or age.
Explicit email messages
Members of Congress are found guilty of sending sexually explicit email messages to male interns. Senators and judges sexually molest their staff. Ambassadors are alleged to be involved in wild group-sex activities.
But as sensationalist and scintillating as these juicy sex scandals and gossip stories are, could we really sustain some hard questioning on some things we have taken for granted?
It always fascinates me how smug we are in our conclusions on certain matters, oblivious to the fact that other things we are equally smug about and take totally for granted contradict those things. Let me explain.
People talk about morality and standards, but who really determines right and wrong in sexual matters, for example? There was an awkward moment in an interview last week when the issue of having the father's name on every child's birth certificate was being discussed. Everyone was waxing eloquent about the irresponsibility of fatherlessness and of the costs of the sexual promiscuity of our men.
We really needed to restore family life and values, they all agreed. And while everyone was agreeing with one another and sounding the high moral notes, one speaker mentioned that we might have gone too far in enacting the Status of Children Act and conferring the same status on children born out of wedlock (whom we used to call illegitimate) as those born in marriages.
There was an awkward silence, and I don't know whether the person being interviewed picked it up, but the break came at this point and he did not push that point much afterward.
The issue is, where do you draw the line on this matter of morality? There was a time when it was an absolute disgrace for someone to have a child and not be married.
It was considered a thing that people from the lower classes did. Those people lived in concubinage, a legacy from slavery, but middle- class people had better values. They married and then had their children, not the other way around.
No longer a disgrace
Today, the social pages of our newspapers proudly announce prominent businessmen who appear in social spaces with their common-law 'lady-love', as the social writers nicely put it.
And no one would want to be considered quaint, stupid and backward to suggest that there is anything immoral about that.
It is no longer a disgrace for a middle-class young woman to be pregnant and unmarried.
How do we judge what is right and what is wrong? Do we wait for society's attitude to change and then that change constitutes the newly established morality?
There was a time when divorce was a disgrace, but today it is not; when having a child out of wedlock was scorned, and now it is not; when living together without marriage was frowned upon as lower-class behaviour, but now accepted as hip; when abortion was seen as a mortal sin and murder, but now seen as pro-choice; when homosexuality was seen as sodomy and abomination, but now that kind of language is termed 'hate speech'.
Could we one day relax our views on call-girl services so that an Eliot Spitzer could keep his job and status? Might we change our views on prostitution?
If we change the language and get rid of that awful word 'prostitution', with its emotionally laden baggage and refer to people as commercial sex workers who provide a service just as some women provide secretarial, janitorial, nursing or engineering services, then could we not sanitise it?
How do we come by morality anyway? The church? But there are so many things which the Church is against and which society has come, over the years, to see as quite acceptable.
Many churches condemn any form of alcohol drinking as sin. Most of us have long rejected that. But there were once laws against that. There used to be laws against divorce, too. Adultery was once criminalised, just as buggery today is. We talk about bringing back values and attitudes but when we really start to talk deeply about it - or have someone throw some questions at us, Socratic-style - we find that our foundations are shaky.
Social construct
If humans have evolved and are driven by instinctual drives and passions, then isn't morality merely a social construct? And, if a social construct, can't it be deconstructed? This is what the gays are fighting for, and they are gaining a great deal of acceptance.
Many gays have successfully demonstrated that we don't really consistently follow the Bible when it comes to moral rules and that we engage in a lot of cherry picking.
Once this inconsistency is shown, it is easier for them to make their point that their 'abomination' might turn out to be tomorrow's acceptable standard. Shirley Richards and others are putting up a valiant fight locally to forestall that but will Bob Marley's words, 'none of dem can stop the tide' reach them? Time will tell.
Conflicts of appreciation
If a woman can sell her brain - her intellect - why can't she sell her sexual organ? Why can a man legitimately pay for a woman's creativity in designing his home décor, looking after his accounting and legal affairs, but can't pay her for her sexual expertise - outside of some religious prohibition based on what some book says?
What in natural law could demonstrate, conclusively, that consensual prostitution between adults is wrong?
For those who reject divine revelation - and either think the notion is either foolish or baseless - how do you really prove that homosexuality, prostitution, adultery is wrong? Why be exclusively sexually devoted to just one partner for life? Suppose one, like Spitzer, looks after his family, loves and cherishes his wife but gets his fling now and then outside?
Why should a man like Spitzer, who has been doing an excellent job as governor and before that a remarkable job as New York attorney general, be forced to give up that exemplary service because he had some compulsion for sexual variety of a certain type?
Don't misunderstand me, I am not advocating prostitution, homosexuality or any of the things commonly condemned by conservatives.
I am simply saying that for those who do not have a theological basis for ethics, how do you consistently ground the strident objection to certain things and the wailing about the decline in standards in Jamaica?
If John Browne was doing an excellent job as BP's boss, Bill Clinton as president, as well as disgraced former New Jersey governor, James McGreevey (who confessed to being gay), why should they leave their jobs because of private matters which are not directly related to their office? Can't a person be a good president, governor and business executive if he is an adulterer, scans porn websites, or throws wild group sex parties?
If, as in the case of Spitzer, it can be demonstrated that he violated law, that is different, one could say.
Perhaps we should take a more philosophical approach to sex scandals. Let's see where the reasoning leads.
In the meantime, don't condemn or misunderstand me for simply asking questions or for forcing you to think.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.
