2008 Woodie Awards
Who is the real Client No. 9?
Issue date: 3/13/08
In 1621, my ancestors (the Raes) arrived with the second batch of pilgrims and set foot on the miserable ground that is now Massachusetts, and still miserable ground. They brought with them and helped instill a spirit that is still alive in America: the Puritan spirit. Loosely defined by Baltimore's own H.L. Mencken, Puritans live in the constant fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time.
And so it is with today's media, including the New York Times, who relish and continues their descent into tabloid status this week by reporti ng that now former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was caught on a wiretap setting up an appointment with a prostitute in Washington D.C. Spitzer boldly characterized his personal sexual life as "private," but it is safe to say that his life is going to be quite public for the next few weeks.
The pilgrims, being the first white people here, defined the culture with their drab clothing and lousy beer (passed on to us as Sam Adams), both designed to be too gross to keep people from getting drunk enough to have judgment lapses. As a result of the Pilgrims, the Puritan Spirit lives on, and American media and print outlets love nothing more than to bring down a public servant who has committed a foolish indiscretion in his private life and turn it into a monstrous cluster of their own.
Thanks partly to a reasonable concern about human trafficking and partly to Puritan dislike for people having sex for pleasure, prostitution is illegal in our country except in Nevada. However, like other laws that repress an unstoppable market demand, the prostitution law obviously fails a lot of the time.
But I make the following argument: with a small increase in oversight from the New York Morality Times and other such purveyors of all that is Fair and Balanced, prostitution could become legal and transgressors in the public eye could still be held accountable for their actions. The fact is simply that we are better at judging people on moral grounds than legal grounds.
And so it is with today's media, including the New York Times, who relish and continues their descent into tabloid status this week by reporti ng that now former New York governor Eliot Spitzer was caught on a wiretap setting up an appointment with a prostitute in Washington D.C. Spitzer boldly characterized his personal sexual life as "private," but it is safe to say that his life is going to be quite public for the next few weeks.
The pilgrims, being the first white people here, defined the culture with their drab clothing and lousy beer (passed on to us as Sam Adams), both designed to be too gross to keep people from getting drunk enough to have judgment lapses. As a result of the Pilgrims, the Puritan Spirit lives on, and American media and print outlets love nothing more than to bring down a public servant who has committed a foolish indiscretion in his private life and turn it into a monstrous cluster of their own.
Thanks partly to a reasonable concern about human trafficking and partly to Puritan dislike for people having sex for pleasure, prostitution is illegal in our country except in Nevada. However, like other laws that repress an unstoppable market demand, the prostitution law obviously fails a lot of the time.
But I make the following argument: with a small increase in oversight from the New York Morality Times and other such purveyors of all that is Fair and Balanced, prostitution could become legal and transgressors in the public eye could still be held accountable for their actions. The fact is simply that we are better at judging people on moral grounds than legal grounds.
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