Politics and Pr-hos

As you may have noticed (all 15 of you), I did not post at all on the biggest political story from last week. I am referring, of course, to the surprising and sad revelations regarding former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. I want to say now, with his resignation behind us and the media beginning to move on to more important things, that I deliberately did not want to post because I did not want to add even the tiny little voice of this blog to the horrible cacophonic dissonance that burst out of the gaping maw that is the modern media. It was hard not to miss the barely concealed glee with which the "reporters" on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News doled out every last scrap of information. I don't know if you were watching but on the day Mr. Spitzer announced his resignation, every single one of those so-called news organizations showed non-stop coverage of the car in which the then-governor was traveling to the announcement. The car! It was just driving through the streets of the city and yet not one station cut away to anything else. In fact, on MSNBC they were even showing a split screen with the car on one side and the empty podium, the car's destination, on the other. A driving car and an empty podium. This is what passes for news.

So I did not post on that story. As my own little protest, I resolved not to post until the story had died down, and the new governor was sworn in.

With my rant on the sorry state of tv news out of the way, let me "begin" by saying that Mr. Spitzer was right to resign. He committed a crime, he betrayed the public trust, and, from a purely political perspective, the story was just too huge for him to outlast it. But I think there is an important question that has not only been unanswered during all of this...it has gone completely unasked by the news media. That question is: "Why is Senator David Vitter still a Senator?"

Last year, it was revealed that Senator Vitter frequently used the services of a DC prostitution ring run by the "DC madam." Senator Vitter is married, Senator Vitter ran for Congress on the idea of "Family Values" (when he originally ran for the House he was replacing Congressman Livingston who resigned amidst a sex scandal of his own), and Senator Vitter is a public servant who broke the law and betrayed the public trust in exactly the same way as Mr. Spitzer. So...why is he still a Senator.

Well, Senator Vitter explains it this way:

Anybody who looks at the two cases will see there is an enormous difference between the two of them.

That difference, apparently, is left for everyone else to discern. Suffice it say that I fail to see one. I do think that when you run for public office you take on the responsibility to hold yourself to a higher standard of conduct, and that even if you don't, the public has a right to hold it to you for you. Of course there are differences of degree and paying money to prostitutes has to be at the upper end of the "that's a no-no" scale. That being said, two politicians, both admitting to the SAME crime, should be held to the SAME standard.

Senator Vitter should resign.