As we await what must be the inevitable resignation announcement from Eliot Spitzer, it occurs to me I’ve posted a few times on the all-too-well-known theme of a fall from grace on the part of an admired — invariably male — public figure. Here’s a selection:
Private virtue, public justice: some very long thoughts on men, leadership, and the lie of “compartmentalism”
“There Never Was a War that Was Not Inward”: a long reflection on Ted Haggard
“The inner darkness of the redeemed”: in defense of Mel Gibson
Lengthy musings about Clinton, feminism, erotic justice
The titles of these posts are sufficiently descriptive as to require no further explanation. What I’ve said about Bill Clinton, Antonio Villaraigosa, Ted Haggard and Mel Gibson (an odd quartet indeed) more or less applies to Eliot Spitzer. And the bookers from the major chat shows have already called up the legion of pop psychologists who appear at times like this, all proffering an answer to the timeless question: “Why would a man like X, in his position, with so much going for him, do something so monumentally stupid?” By now we know all the answers: sexual addiction; deep-seated shame and the desire to be punished; self-destructiveness; mid-life crises; good, old-fashioned hubris. And because falls from grace are often breathtaking in their suddenness, we are fascinated as the ancients were fascinated. These are, as everyone points out, very old stories.
I’ve been tiresome, frankly, in my insistence that men are called to match their language to their lives. (Cripes, I use that phrase so often, I ought to pledge to give it a rest until after the next president is inaugurated.) If you click on the four posts linked above, I generally make the same point over and over again: we are called to resist compartmentalization. Both feminism and Christianity, I think, call human beings to wholeness, congruence, and radical integrity. Both call us to “erotic justice”. From my 2004 Clinton post:
My goal as a feminist man is not merely to treat women as my political, economic and social equals, nor even to help other men treat women in that same way. With the help of many mentors and friends of both sexes, my goal for myself is to live a life of what progressive theologian Marvin Ellison calls “Erotic Justice”. Erotic justice means refusing to reduce another human being to the status of an object which exists for one’s own pleasure. For so many men, discipling the libido is one of the hardest struggles of their lives. A commitment to erotic justice is a commitment to engage in that disciplining, even when it is immensely difficult. Erotic justice is not, however, just exercising self-control. It is the conscious effort to transform one’s sexuality so that it loses its capacity to wound, to alienate, to objectify. It does not mean the end of erotic excitement — it is just the insistence that the truly erotic is incompatible with injustice. To put it mildly, it’s a long journey.
But we all have goals, and in one way or another, we all fall short — me included. And though we can all agree that it is best not to slip in the first place, I’m thinking this morning about how we deal with those folks (governors, pastors, fathers, professors, husbands) who do fall. Lynn Gazis-Sax has a great post up today on just this subject: Public Figures, Private Sin. Lynn reminds us that failure in one area of life, however grievious, doesn’t completely cancel out the good that was done in another; speaking of everyone from Bill Clinton to Dr. King, she notes that “whatever is good in their public record doesn’t suddenly become bad because they were unfaithful.” That’s true too.
The title of this post comes from a line attributed to Thomas Merton. Salvation is worked out on earth by men and women who are deeply flawed, and to say otherwise is to deny the reality of our humanness. No matter what, we are not, in this life, going to “be perfect as (our) heavenly father is perfect.” That doesn’t mean surrendering to our worst impulses with a shrug, blaming our lack of self-control on a defect that we cannot hope to control. It doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to injustice in any form — and yes, infidelity is injustice, prostitution is injustice, deception is injustice. No excuses. But every last one of us is going to fall short in one area or another, though usually not as spectacularly as Eliot Spitzer has fallen this week. If only those who weren’t hypocrites were capable of changing the world for the better, the world would be far bleaker than it is.
In the face of another disappointing, sad, revelation of human brokenness, we’ve got to avoid two pitfalls. The first is to overreact with an outrage so deep that we overlook the positive contributions that have been made — and may still be made — by he or she who has fallen. The second mistake is to suggest that the good the miscreant has done is so great that it cancels out the failing, and that we “shouuldn’t judge a private matter.” We ought to judge injustice and dishonesty in others as well as in ourselves; these universal human failings are no less heartbreaking for their universality. People aren’t going to be perfect, but they can amend their lives and become better when held to account. At the same time, no sin is so great that it completely nullifies the very real good that we can also do. Public justice doesn’t excuse private misbehavior; private misbehavior doesn’t mean that the public justice done didn’t matter.
God writes straight with crooked lines. I am crooked, Eliot Spitzer is crooked, and most of the people I’ve met in my life are crooked to one degree or another. My two favorite figures from Scripture — King David and Simon Peter — were men of often disastrous impulsiveness. They blew it, time and again; in the former’s case, “blowing it” entailed not only adultery but murder. And yet, and yet, and yet, God worked out His plan through these obviously flawed human beings. It’s good to remember that.
I think Eliot Spitzer ought to resign; it doesn’t seem possible for him to remain in office. But I also think a man of his talents and his convictions still has much good to do in this world. His first order of business is taking total responsibility for what he has done and facing whatever consequences are to come. His public reputation is in tatters, and the trust of his family is broken. To put it vulgarly, he fucked up big-time, and big-time fuck-ups need time to overcome. But if he walks through this with determination and brutal honesty and a real desire for redemption, amazing things will happen for him.
Great post! And posts!
His first order of business is taking total responsibility for what he has done and facing whatever consequences are to come. His public reputation is in tatters, and the trust of his family is broken.
I agree with your statement on Spitzer’s first order of biz & how he’s being a big boy NOW. But I’m not sure the trust of “his family is broken” completely. That’s saying something not about Spitzer himself but about Silda Wall, his wife of 2 long decades, and their daughters Alyssa, 17, Sarabeth, 15, and Jenna, 13. Her friends are, justly, telling her not to “trust” the failure of a man. If she ignores them, and continues to stand by his side, is that idiotic codependency? Is it whacked opportunism, as with certain other wives?
Will you talk about these women who Antonio, Ted, Bill (WJC), JFK, FDR, and MLKjr have failed? What kind of woman does what they do? Is that kind of trust and forgiveness naive or divine?
Hugo,
I find really interesting how you can write about all this in such an eloquent way, and then occasionally say something as problematic as this. When you’re fantasizing about sex (as you’re not using porn, I suppose), how do you not objectify? Why is it you seem to think you cannot treat a woman as an equal if you fantasize (graphically) about her breasts? When a woman sees my butt and feels sexually aroused, why on earth should she care about my life history or whether I had a bad day?
Wow. This is probably the most condescending thing I’ve read in a while. I wonder if something like that was also told to red-haired women during the Spanish inquisition . “Love the punishment… believe me I KNOW it’s for your own good.” Ahh - life must be good with that kind of moral clarity. Oh wait, didn’t you say something about “mixed motivations” and how “logic” doesn’t always work in the complex world of gender? Well… I guess this may cut both ways -
Sam and Kurk, you ask some good questions (Sam, I’m ignoring your bizarre concluding paragraph); future posts to focus on women in relationship with men like this — and on objectification.
By respecting the one you desire as a conscious being and an equal. Sexual fantasy and objectification aren’t equivalent. One can lust after another and still recognize that person as a complete, complex human, with her own agency, her own set of thoughts and desires. (If you’re not doing this while lusting, I think you’re Doing It Wrong.)
Let me start with the caveat that I can’t excuse Elliot Spitzer. As the chief executive of New York and its former chief law enforcer, one who made a career as a reformer, his tawdry breach of his private and public trusts and of the law are inexcusable. I’ll also leave aside the issue of the criminalization of prostitution.
Beyond that, while I can’t speak to the imperatives of your, or any other, particular religious conviction, all of which have to be kept in their proper perspective in a multicultural and church-state separated society, I do wonder whether the Spitzer case and the other cases of publicized sexual scandals that you highlighted don’t speak to the need for a reevaluation of the public expectations of mens’ relationship and sexual behavior. While we shouldn’t excuse infidelity, as a violation of an existing familial, social and legal commitment, perhaps we ought to question the hegemony of monogamy and marriage as the norm. We may have, in effect, already been questioning it for a number of years on a “grass-roots” level in the culture, but that obviously hasn’t translated into the realm of politics, where an unmarried and non-monogamous politician (of either gender, and almost certainly the worse for a woman) would be all but unthinkable.
I raise the issue because it seems clear to me, as highlighted by this and the other cases that you raised, that Spitzer and these other public figures clearly were forced into public and relationship commitments under social expectations out of alignment with their own personal desires and sexualities. Rather than this talk of “transforming one’s sexuality” to fit the hegemonic narrative, which seems eerily similar to nothing so much as the talk of “ex-gay movement” proponents and perhaps just as dubious, perhaps we ought to consider, much as feminism did for women a generation ago, the gender expectations of men and the occasional disconnect with their own individual desires and aspirations.
You left out as motivations something they all have in common: “Powerful people who eventually buy in to their sense of power and think the rules no longer apply to them.”
DaisyBond,
Yeah, sure. I’m not saying that’s not possible (well, as we’re all closed systems it is impossible in a technical sense, but we’re talking about what’s the appropriate amount of empathy for allowing oneself to have sexual thoughts involving someone else, right?). To the contrary, I’m arguing that “objectification” (ie, the reduction of complexity to the information relevant to the immediate activity) is in no way opposed to any of that (except, of course, a woman in my or anyone’s *dreams* by definition has no agency, as she’s not real) And yes, when I’m masturbating I’m usually not thinking about the amazing discussions I could be having with that woman. What about people with a specific fetish? Say somenone really likes feet. He/she will probably concentrate on that particular “object of desire”…
DaisyBond,
just wondering - assuming you’re a woman I would find sexually attractive and I’m a guy you’d find attractive, we’d be sitting opposite of each other on the subway and would be intrigued by each other’s bodies. Everything is happening in our brains, there’s no drewling, no inappropriate staring, for all we know, the other one has not even realized we’re there. What would be the right way to appreciate the others beauty without having any attempt to go further? And what would be the wrong way?
Folks, I’m sorry, this is massive thread drift. I will post on objectification, but not yet — and this thread needs to be on the main topic of Spitzer and redemption.
Tom, how do you square your concern about public dialogue with the fact that he was allegedly conducting illegal money transactions to hire prostitutes? This isn’t a question of someone trapped in a monogamous marriage and privately strugging with having an open marriage.
I’d be much less angry with Spitzer if he had ‘just’ had an affair (with an adult of similar age). But he didn’t, he spent money purchasing sex with a prostitute about 1/2 his age (22 years old or very close to that). I don’t think sex should ever be bought or sold, and I have a particular problem with him desiring, and using, a prostitute woman so young. To me, I can believe a man could have an affair without being ’sexist’ or without thinking he’s better than his wife, or certain types of women, or women in general. But I can’t believe a man can have pay for sex with a prostitute without being sexist (without a degree of arrogance/superiority over prostitutes). Personally I can’t dream of purchasing sex with a male prostitute without feeling profoundly embarrassed and ashamed and guilty - unless I managed to think of him as less of a person than myself, and then it wouldn’t matter to me what he thought or whether he desired sex with me.
I’m glad Spitzer resigned.