Perhaps Elliot Spitzer was really sorry for having sex with a prostitute from the Emperor’s Club, but he failed the I’m sorry Test. Why? For two reasons. Because it wasn’t Spitzer’s turn to apologize and his apology was mis-directed.
It was George W. Bush’s turn to apologize, I’m fairly certain. Why do I write this? Because Bush has done each of the following:
- Plunged the U.S. into armed combat and an extended occupation of Iraq based on numerous lies.
- Mismanaged the medical treatment of veterans at Walter Reed.
- Mishandled Plamegate (Chief of Staff to the Vice President was convicted of perjury).
- Mishandled Iraq (assuming that we should have been there at all), due to lack of preparation for occupation, looting, including the National Museum, too few troops, lack of training, lack of equipment, lack of securing loose Iraqi munitions, disbanding the Iraqi army . . .
- Invited no bid contracts in Iraq, including to Halliburton and companies that provide mercenaries with little or no accountability.
- Encouraged torture, indefinite detention, the end of habeas corpus, and kangaroo courts.
- Mishandled the political firing of US attorneys.
- “Heck of a job, Brownie,”
- Authorized warrantless NSA wiretapping in October 2001.
- Allowed extraordinary rendition to facilitate interrogation by torture
- Maintained cozy corrupt relationships with K Street Lobbyists.
- Allowed Cheney’s Energy Policy and refused to divulge the oil industry participation.
- Encouraged financially irresponsible cuts for the wealthiest, big corporations.
- Denied of Global warming and its human causes.
- Attempted to disband the 911 Commission.
- Damaged to the US reputation internationally.
- Led the White House War on Science, against stem cell research, global warming, evolution, research funding, energy, abstinence programs and AIDS prevention.
- Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo.
- Attacked Plan B contraception, staffing Women’s Health positions with religious conservatives.
- Fought for the right to spy on U.S. citizens, including opening US mail.
- Failed to be accountable for “lost” White House emails.
Bush should also apologize for providing numerous false reasons for the Iraq invasion and occupation:
1. WMD
2. Saddam Hussein behind 9/11
3. Saddam Hussein connected with al Qaeda
4. Fighting terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here
5. Spread democracy
6. Saddam Hussein was a bad man
7. Iraqi violations of UN Resolutions
8. The 1993 assassination attempt against GHW Bush
9. Oil
10. Bases
11. Defend Israel
12. Bad intel
[Thanks to Hugh’s Comprehensive Bush Scandal List [1]for it’s comprehensive list of these problems and many others.]
Most of Bush’s wrongful acts and omissions occurred years ago. Spitzer’s use of a prostitute was rather recent (February of this year). Therefore, it was Bush’s turn to apologize. I’m been waiting for a Bush apology for at least five years . . . I’m still waiting.
The second problem is that Elliot Spitzer’s apology was misdirected. I can understand an apology to his wife, but why apologize to everyone in NY for soliciting a prostitute? We all know that this was not really an apology but an act of public submission. It was but a little dance that all politicians do when they have offended the People. That Spitzer has to get up and do this sort of mea culpa is palpable evidence of the America’s unhealthy obsession with sex.
It’s plainly evident that a person can no longer do the work of a politician in the U.S. unless he or she has the right kind of private sex with the right kind of person. God help a politician who has an orgasm in private with a person to whom the People of New York haven’t given their stamp of approval.
Elliot Spitzer had sex, in private, with a woman who wasn’t his wife? “Gad, how could he possibly be qualified to be governor?” chant all of the holy and moral politicians on the sidelines. Those protesting “holy” politicians are the ones who feign lots of anger in public while, in the privacy of their homes they lap up the salacious accounts of Elliot’s young and beautiful consensual sex partner; they virtually lick the words off their newspapers as part of the process of working up more faux rage for tomorrow’s press conference. They practice their horrified expressions in their mirrors, so that they can make it clear to the People how awful it is for two people to have consensual sex where money is exchanged instead of a diamond ring.
Let’s at least be consistent. If proper sexual practices are really part of the qualifications for being a politician, let’s put “politician sex cams” on all politicians, 24 hours every day. Let’s make sure that they are all having enough sex, for starters. Make them all keep sex diaries. Let’s also make sure that all of our politicians have the right kind of sex—not too conventional and not too wild. Let the cameras role and then let’s talk mostly about sex at political debates. That’s apparently what we want, based on the current media feeding frenzy.
Let’s write it into the federal and state constitutions that the People need to be well-informed about the sex practices of all politicians and that our politicians should only engage in proper sex. If not, we’ll destroy their careers so that some morally pure political hack, the kind that practices only missionary-position-half-dressed-in-the-dark-with-his-spouse sex, can take over and enact the superior kind of government policy that is understood only by those who politicians who practice such “proper sex.”
At future political debates, let’s talk exclusively about the sex lives of our politicians instead of discussing the children who are needlessly dying of diseases or the corrupt contracts to buy ever-bigger conventional weapons that we’ll use to level the last few surviving Iraqi neighborhoods. Let’s talk about the thrusting and moaning of politicians instead of stopping the torture. Let’s talk about sex instead of kicking the shit out of huge corrupt blood-sucking corporations, which is what Elliot Spitzer often did, once upon a time.
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