According to the NY Times, (Breaking
News 9:25 AM ET): NY Governor Elliot Spitzer is expected to resign this morning.
Even if he is only contemplating
resignation, the response is so far out of proportion to the crime that the
only serious question is: What are we not being told?
The “shock” and demands for his resignation
would have been embarrassing blow-hard buffoonery in a Victorian society. In
ours, it's also a fatuous reminder of just how irrelevant the public interest, indeed
the public, is to journalists, public officials, and the whole of politics.
With its incredibly misleading headline and story leads on the issue, the NY Times
shows its colors, in what must be some serious Democratic divide.
Of course Spitzer is a hyporcrite (he has prosecuted such "rings"), but he even did it the
"right way," very discreetly, not like Clinton.
So who reported him and why?
Harpers
reports that during the Bush Administration, the Justice Department
has opened 5.6 cases against Democrats for every one involving a Republican,
and that even cases opened against Republicans are in fact only part of a
broader pattern of going after Democrats. About this case, Scott Horton of Harpers writes:
The prosecution is opened under the
White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910. You read that correctly. The statute itself is
highly disreputable, and most of the high-profile cases brought under it were
politically motivated and grossly abusive. Here are a few:
- Heavyweight boxing champion Jack
Johnson was the first man prosecuted under the act — for having an affair with
Lucille Cameron, whom he later married. The prosecution was manifestly an
effort “to get” Johnson, who at the time was the most famous African-American.
(All of this is developed well in Ken Burns’s film “Unforgiveable Blackness”).
- University of Chicago
sociologist William I. Thomas was prosecuted for having an affair with an
officer’s wife in France.
Thomas was targeted because of his Bohemian social and his radical political
views.
- In 1944 Charles Chaplin was
prosecuted for having an affair with actress Joan Barry. The prosecution again
provided cover for a politically motivated effort to drive Chaplin out of the
country.
- Canadian author Elizabeth Smart was
arrested and charged in 1940 while crossing the border with the British poet
George Barker.
This is clearly a politically
motivated attack. Government investigators are obligated to investigate crimes,
not people, but according to According to ABC news, the whole investigation of the
prostitution ring itself was triggered by an investigation of Spitzer:
The federal investigation of a New York prostitution
ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers,
initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to
federal officials. It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined
that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what
prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the
Emperors Club. …
The suspicious financial activity
was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the
Justice Department, brought in the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad. “We had no
interest at all in the prostitution ring until the thing with Spitzer led us to
learn about it,” said one Justice Department official.
The New York Times alert (and corresponding headline and article lead),
> The New York Times
> Monday, March 10, 2008 -- 1:57
PM ET
> -----
> Spitzer Is Linked to
Prostitution Ring
>
> Gov. Eliot Spitzer has
informed his most senior administration
> officials that he had been
involved in a prostitution ring, an
> administration official said
this morning.
is an affront to journalism.
"Linked to"? What, was he running it? How many such affronts can the Times commit and still maintain their status as the nation's leading newspaper? It's a sorry state in which not one of hundreds of supposedly free press newspapers can offer a powerful alternative perspective and serious competition.
"Who wanted Spitzer out?" and "Why?" are the questions that journalists and investigators ought to be
asking. Spitzer was likely doing
something right, going after someone powerful. And had to be brought down one way or another.
