| Checking the news for emerging or evolving scandal about a NYS pol once a day is no longer sufficient. By the time 24 hours has passed, slimy stuff just revealed may have piled up on you. Or, yet more important people who have not yet been implicated in any corruption may be moving farther along the "clean up this mess" scale, such as today's news that Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs actually intended to ask Paterson to resign, but, decided to soften his words a bit, merely telling the Governor that, if true, the allegations were fatal. That, of course, was before the ball game tickets thing surfaced.
So, there is a whirlwind of bad behavior among Albany pols, most but not all of them Democrats. Any reasonable progressive would be focusing intently on two things: 1) HOW do we clean house? (check here for an answer on that). 2) HOW do we limit damage to the Democratic brand, to avoid a reflexive turn to voting Republican? Hey, if it can happen in Massachusetts, it can happen here. If you think all this is not encouraging throwing the baby (you and me, bub) out with the foul sewer-like bathwater, you're dreaming.
So, what is surely not helpful during this difficult time is public retrospection and fulminating on his fall by Eliot Spitzer. Eliot, do not give interviews where you talk about your sex life to Time Magazine. Do not make it possible for The NY Post to publish articles headlined "Eliot Spitzer: Why I liked ho's" (sic). Do not opine--
"How do you think I feel?" he said, eyes misting. "At one point, I stood for something that was important and useful.
"I was in a place in time where I had a purpose, where it mattered. And then I destroyed it."
Eliot, STFU. How you feel is not something to be considered by the public now. You have a new role, let me spell it out for you: say nothing, just collect your investment income, and send money to others who don't stain the cloth of our political system every time they open their mouth. |
