Tuesday, April 21, 2009

More on Spitzer

So when I posted the blog yesterday about Eliot Spitzer, I wasn't quite sure if I was onto something or if I was just being a crazy dog lady, as I am known to be.

I am happy to report that other media sources, big and small, had similar reactions. A couple of my favorites:

New York Magazine: It's funny how he makes it sound brave to walk a bichon.

Scottish Terrier and Dog News: Poor Jesse, what must have he thought all those times he was left at home alone, a casualty of his master's image control?

Here's the whole article if you are interested. (Personally, I stopped at the dog-walking anecdote.)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Judgment and Eliot Spitzer

Dog and I try not to be judgmental—Really we do!

We like to believe that everyone is doing the best they can with their life circumstances and we always say a little prayer for those who hurt our feelings or who seem to be falling short of their highest potential.

But there are exceptions.


And today, when we read the cover story in Newsweek, we felt compelled to comment, OK, judge.

Eliot Spitzer, the moral crusading governor of New York who became famous and beloved for bringing white-collar criminals to justice, fell on his own hypocritical sword when it was discovered that he was a frequent customer of the high-priced prostitution service, “The Emperors Club.” Spitzer had it all—a beautiful, intelligent wife, two daughters, a position of power and a set-for-life trust fund to boot. Then he squandered everything for a few cheap thrills. (Actually, they were quite expensive, thousands of dollars per “thrill,” but that’s another blog.)

When I first heard about the scandal, I was outraged for Spitzer’s wife, daughters, and constituents—how could he do this to the people he loved the most and pledged to serve?

But not as outraged as I was today when I read the following in Newsweek:

When he was a young politician with a tough-guy reputation, he preferred to walk only James (a Wheaten Terrier) and leave Jesse, the other family dog, at home. Jesse is a bichon frise, the kind of dog that blue-haired women leave their fortunes to. “I wouldn’t take her out in public,” Spitzer recently explained. “I thought James was the better image for me.”

And now it is all very clear. What more do we need to know except that Spitzer decided which dog to walk based solely upon how it reflected upon himself.

That Spitzer would leash up one dog, ready for his photo-opp, and leave the other dog at home, with sad eyes, whining, wondering why he wasn’t getting to go out. What a narcissistic, Machiavellian, reprehensible human being! And, even worse, the writer indulges Spitzer’s “rehabilitation story” by noting that he now walks both dogs together. Yay! Spitzer!

“It’s like OK, I have a bichon, a little white ball of fluff…I don’t care,” says Spitzer. “What do you have to lose?”

Well, for starters, any thread of empathy or benefit of the doubt that I might have given you. Any idea that you might be a genuinely good guy with some uncontrollable, bad, addictive behaviors.

Now I know that you are just an ass.

And while we’re on our judgmental high horse, let’s just say, that if Spitzer’s wife knew about his sociopathic dog-walking behavior and she married him anyway or even stayed married to him, then she should have been well aware of what she was getting herself into.

That said, Dog and I are back to praying for them all.