Spitzer Fallout: The "Victimless Crime", or Why Alan Dershowitz is a Dickhead

Last week it was revealed that Eliot Spitzer (by the way, wouldn't "Spitzer Fallout" be a great name for a band?), the now former New York governor, was alleged to be a customer of a prostitution ring.

Upon hearing this, many talking heads assembled on many news channels. In a discussion on CNN about what punishment should be meted out to Mr. Spitzer, I had the misfortune, or perhaps the good fortune, to hear Harvard professor (someone who should know better) Alan Dershowitz refer to prostitution as a "victimless crime," a statement no one else on the panel of talking heads chose to contest.

"Victimless crime." Interesting.

Depending on whose numbers you may want to believe, anywhere between 400,000 and 1.7 million women and children are "trafficked" each year, meaning they are forced into labor, quite often in the sex trades, and quite often in a country other than their home.

If a person is forced into labor of any sort, I think that person could be considered a "victim." I would hope that someone as allegedly intelligent as a Harvard professor would understand that point.

I don't know what motivated the young lady implicated in the Spitzer scandal to be a prostitute, but by her own admission, she came from an abusive background. Escaping abuse but landing in a world of prostitution is a familiar story. Whatever her motivation, prostitution is hardly a "victimless crime." Just ask Eliot Spitzer's wife and children. It seems to me he victimized them, too.

I can only hope that the thinking exemplified by Dershowitz will someday come to an end. Perhaps we can use the idiocy of a statement like "victimless crime" to begin a a national discussion on the tragedy of human trafficking.

The Race Issue: Defending Geraldine, or "Say It Loud, I'm Multi-Racial and I'm Proud!"

Geraldine Ferraro said this (blame Mother Jones magazine if the quote is incorrect):
"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Some of this does sound a tad racist coming out of an older white woman's mouth. But she does bring up a valid point about the country being caught up in the "concept" of who Barack Obama is, and God bless her for sticking to her pistols and not apologizing or backing down and getting all politically correct on us. She did resign from being an unpaid advisor to Hillary Clinton, but I don't think that's a big loss for Ferraro.

I don't necessarily agree that if Obama were a white man he wouldn't be in the position, that of Democratic presidential front runner. American political history has examples of white men who were eloquent but had little political experience to brag about, John Kennedy being the most obvious. So if Barack Obama were Barry O'Bama instead, he might still be where he is now.

But the United States of America is indeed caught up in the concept of who Barack Obama is, and that includes the issue of race, but not necessarily in a racist way though. Talking about race, mentioning one's race, and being racist are two different things, and I don't Geraldine Ferraro was making a racist comment, I don't think Obama is a racist when he mentions his background and I don't think America is racist when it looks with fascination at Obama.

Obama is who he is and there's nothing wrong with being who he is, nor is there anything wrong with Obama pointing out his personal history. His personal story is a story of race to a certain extent. He is obviously muti-racial. But Obama popularity is not as a story of racism, or the concept voting for or against someone based on race. Obama is popular, or at least of interest to many (including a fawning media) because of who Obama is at this point in time in America. Obama looks a lot like what America, or more to the point, Americans, look like now, and what we as a people will continue to look like more and more in the future. Obama's personal history includes a black father, a white mother, and an Indonesian step-father. Obama is multi-racial, multi-cultural and had a multi-continental upbringing.

I haven't any scientific data in front of me, but I don't need any. I have eyes to see. The US is more and more a place where marriage occurs between people not just of different ethnic groups or different religions, but between people of different races and cultures. White marries black, Hispanic marries Asian, etc, etc. This is a good thing and when Obama talks about race it is to point out his background, one he is proud of, but also to possibly make a politically advantageous point that he looks like you, America. It is not racism, it's just a fact. When Ferraro made her comments, she was not speaking from a racist viewpoint, but from a viewpoint that reflected some truth: Here is a guy without a whole lot of experience, but is well spoken and intelligent and if he were anything other than who he is, he wouldn't be here because America is very taken by what the multi-racial, multi-cultural candidate he is stands for right now. There's simply some truth to that, and that doesn't make anyone racist to think that.

Obama made his speech today about "the race issue" and I think it was a darn good one. He brought up a lot of good points. He spoke of black anger that still brews, but also mentioned the anger and fear the white middle class has, and how people of all races can and should unite to fight the things that could destroy all Americans, regardless of race, or else we will remain divided, by race and ethnicity and class, and thus never move forward, continually distracted by issues left unsolved, or worse, unspoken of.

I Still Want a Riot of My Own

So, John, why all the Clash songs on your music play list? Well, ok, fine, I'll tell you.

The other night the good beggars at PBS aired a special on the Clash called "The Clash Rocks" or "Here's the Clash" or something like that. "Revolution Rock"! Yeah, that's it. Whatever. I recorded it and watched it tonight so I could zip through the begging breaks the way I zip through commercials when I record Letterman.

Anyhoo....I'd forgotten how much I loved the Clash. From the time I first heard them somewhere round 1977 or '78 I wanted to be them, I wanted to be whip thin with pasty white skin and bad teeth, I wanted to have funny hair styles and turn the collar of my shirt up and sing in a raspy Joe Strummer sort of way. Well, I did eventually turn the collar on my shirt up. I had that going for me. Kept my teeth in good shape though. All you kids out there, take care of your teeth and they'll take care of you!

But the music...the music was great to a young lad, and to the middle-aged lad I am now it's still great. Every word of every song seemed to have urgency and deep meaning, the way they looked and played, it was all something that mattered and was so different from everything around me, the words and music had sinew and fiber and were tough and could not be broken, just as Strummer and Jones and Simonon and Headon looked tough and sinewy and fibrous like a rope on a ship in the Queens Navy, like a rope that would bend and curl and wrap itself around you but would not be broken.

The greatness lasted for five albums with some singles and EPs thrown in for good measure. They were a wonderful band, got to see them live once at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, don't really remember it too well though. I'm sure it was a rockin' good time. And it was a rockin' good time to see them again tonight as they were and be reminded that fury can be power.

In the news: Client Number 9, Number 9

Eliot Spitzer was, oh, I'm sorry, still is (as of this blogging), governor of New York. He was allegedly involved, as a customer, with a prostitution ring; he was taped on a wiretapped phone ordering up a honey for a trip to Washington, DC.

He was the alpha malest amongst the alpha males while New York state Attorney General. He pursued crime on Wall Street and, in a bit of foreshadowing, prostitution rings, and referred to the criminals as betrayers of the public trust.

Well, now, he is the betrayer, and it's not just a personal matter immoral behavior, like that of a husband getting caught with his pants down and someone other than his wife with a lip lock on his love muscle, a la Slick Willy, the former President who was a hard dog to keep on the porch, as they said way back in Arkansas.

Prostitution is a crime, albeit a misdemeanor in New York from what I hear on CNN yesterday, but the business Spitzer frequented may have been involved in money laundering, and that's a federal crime, as is trying to conceal movements of money, and that puts the former "Untouchable" (if only he really didn't want to be touched, he wouldn't have the problems he has now) in a world of legal crap, equal only to the world of marital/personal crap he has entered into now with his wife, Silda. Odds are Sptizer will try to stay in office as long as possible. If he resigns he will have nothing to do but stay home with Silda, an unpleasant thought for him now at best. Of course, she might be out of the house a lot, filling up her personal schedule with divorce attorneys. I wonder if the missus will want to run for the US Senate from New York now.

What the governor of New York does with his Little Gov is of meager interest to me. What is interesting is why he did it, and why he was the way he was? What created the bulldog who was a white horse riding attorney general, pontificating about criminals and their betrayals of public trust? Is this just another example of hypocrisy in a politician? Of hubris? Was he so arrogant that he thought he could what he put others on trial for? Was he self-destructive? Filled with a self-hate because he did things he knew were really, really wrong and just wanted to get caught and bring his darkness to light and his career to an end? There is a definite psychological element when people go on crusades and many times, as in the case of a preacher who sermonizes on the evils of homosexuality only to be caught in a tryst with another man, the crusader reveals himself to be his own target.

The Bad Humor Man

How can a guy who sells ice cream be so unlikeable?

Jim Oberweis, he of the Oberweis chain of ice cream shops, lost his fourth election in six years. He has run twice for the US Senate from Illinois and lost, has run for governor of Illinois and lost and now has lost a special election to fill Dennis Hastert's unexpired term in Congress. What's next, running for dog catcher and losing that? How long does it take the average millionaire to figure out that people simply don't like you?

Oberweis is just not a political creature, no matter how strongly he may wish himself to be. His conservative views seem to sound more radical than they really are when they come of his mouth. This is a personality issue. Oberweis is the kind of person who can shake your hand, smile and laugh and still look angry. He always looks a minute or two from a melt down.

Oberweis has spent an awful lot of his own money to attain office. He really should hang on to it and stick to making dairy products. Just don't work the front counter at any of your shops, Jim. You'll frighten away the small children.

But did he think of John Maddens needs?

Say it ain't so, Brett!

Brett Favre retiring on the heels of a frigid Green Bay loss in the playoffs? This is hard to accept.

It is also truly the end of an era in the NFL. There are good quarterbacks around, but there is no Brett Favre, no Troy Aikman, no Montana or Marino or Elway. For a football fan in passing such as me, football just became a little less fun.

Sports: The Zellionaire and other things

-So Sam Zell might sell the naming rights to Wrigley Field. I like to think of myself as a traditionalist so you would think Wrigley Field by any other name would bother me. For some reason, it doesn't. Well, perhaps a little, but only from an aesthetic standpoint. When Comiskey Park became Cellular Field, I didn't like the change. Cellular Field doesn't exactly roll off the tongue and the name Comiskey hearkens back to the early days of 20th-century baseball. Unfortunately, early 20-century baseball included the Black Sox scandal, caused partially by the Old Romans cheapness. Comiskey didn't like to pay his players what they were worth. He didn't even like to pay to have their uniforms cleaned on a regular basis. Thus, Shoeless Joe and the others were open minded toward alternate revenue streams for themselves. So, a name with tradition isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

The Wrigley family, owners for many, many years of the Cubs, named the ball park to advertise their chewy product. Nothing wrong with that. The company makes great gum but they fashioned a lousy tradition of World Series win free baseball on the North Side. A century of failure, most of it while the Field was Wrigley, is nothing to be sentimental about. Changing the names of Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park would seem to be more sacrilegious to me. Perhaps it might do the Cubs good to get a new name for their ballpark for a new era. Doesn't matter what it's called really, people from far and wide will flock there. Heck, you could even name it truthfully and call it The Hole of False Hope and people would still show up to drink cold beer on a hot day or occasional night. Fans could then say,"Hey, let's go to the Hole and see a game." Probably won't happen though and if the name does change it will be in glorification of some corporate entity, but I say we call it the Hole anyway.

-Rex Grossman is back with the Bears, at least for one year. Now you might think general manager Jerry Angelo should perhaps pursue a quarterback who could, say, actually quarterback well. It wouldn't matter if the Bears had drafted Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, they traditionally do not know how to nurture a quarterback to greatness. Jim McMahon was a Bears Super Bowl winner but McMahon was fully formed as a quarterback when he signed on as a Bear. He was what he was and what he was ever going to be from the first day of his first Bears training camp. McMahon needed no nurturing, molding, or forming.

Beyond a quarterback, an offensive line and a few other things what the Bears really need to become winners is to be sold. The Bears are nothing more than a cash cow for the McCaskey family. Winning is secondary to profits, and lots of them. Until they sell, which I really thought they would have done already since the remodeling of Soldier Field made the teams worth skyrocket, the Bears will never have a win at all costs mentality. So you will always see mediocrities like Rex Grossman and Cedric Benson, with the occasional stars like Brian Urlacher and Devin Hester thrown in to keep fans hopes and interest up and their money flowing.

Early prediction for next season is they go 8-8 and get blown out in the wild card round of the playoffs.

-Speaking of Brian Urlacher, please allow me to be a heretic and state that rather than restructuring his contract to be more favorable to him to keep him here and happy, let's find out his worth on the market. Can he fetch the Bears some valuable young players? Or would other teams be too smart to bite at an unfortunately fading star with an arthritic back who just had neck surgery?

-I read in the Sunday Daily Herald that Jason Marquis is demanding the Cubs assure that he'll be a starter rather than a reliever. Marquis was 12-9 last year with a 4.60 ERA, over 6.00 in the month of September. When Sweet Lou heard this, he said Marquis "could go somewhere else right now if he wants." I think Marquis would look good in a Reds uniform. He and Dusty Baker, always a players friend, deserve each other.