K Shot: Mentally Ill
The audacity of the discrepancy between Eliot Spitzer’s public persona and his private indiscretions is breathtaking, so much so that it goes well past the lines of denial or sexual addiction into an area that requires a copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders wielded by an ultra-talented shrink to figure out what’s going on in that man’s head.
His disingenuous automaton-like statement to the press this afternoon set back the cause of the good guys who rode in to clean up this town by at least a decade or two. His purposefully vague wording, which I’d guess he and his advisers created in a shocked stupor, couldn’t pass a skunk’s smell test.
The political Governor is in dire need of a mechanical governor. His engine needs some modulating, and his psyche needs to spend some time in the garage with some master mental mechanics tinkering with it mercilessly.
I wish it was as simple as the reaction I overheard from a 13 year old watching a news report of the unfolding events, who nonchalantly declared, “what a dope”.
But I think it’s part of the deeper and darker pathology of the times.
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Good Morning, LK
The DSMIV will not help diagnose Mr. Spitzer, unless under the headings “Personality Disorder,” there is a syndrome called The Corruption of Power. Spitzer, like Swaggart, Clinton, et al believe they are above the fray, and therefore not covered by the laws that blanket the rest of us. We are the proletariate…Children of the Machine. Consider Ramos and Campion. Prison time for protecting our borders. Do you think Spitzer will do one day? Worry not about the Chinese, LK… we are doing ourselves in just fine.
morning Falc. i think it’s beyond “above the fray”. i think it’s a different kind of juice running through their veins. you’re dead on about the discrepancy of punishment; that’s an axiom in the geometry of today’s world. as for the Chinese, they think in much longer time frames than we do, which isn’t saying much considering the length of the national attention span, but does indicate that they’ll actively watch and wait while we’re busy digging that hole you’re talking about.
LK, love your points as well as the Falcon’s on this, but bring on the intelligent 13 year-old. Despite whatever underlying disorder or syndrome that may or may not exist, it is clearly not debilitating enough to mask the difference in Spitzer’s own mind between right and wrong. Hell, he was certainly capable of exercising that discernment in his judgment of countless others. Thus, sane enough to stand trial both in court and in public opinion, and “dopey” enough to commit the act and get caught.
excellent refinement BB. he may well be mentally ill by my layman’s standards and possibily in need of treatment by clinical standards, but that shouldn’t allow him to plead being temporarily unable to tell right from wrong. the image isn’t pretty, and may be ultra-cold, but he shouldn’t be exempt from picking up the proverbial bar of soap in the communal shower. resigning in disgrace isn’t doing penance; whatever the modern version of the stockade and lashes administered by every citizen he lied to seems appropriate.
i need to work on the forgiveness thing. LK