Spitzer Resigns, Speaks of Love and Compassion, (Fails to Shed A Tear)…

Here is the text of Spitzer’s resignation speech (wife is still there – see picture):

In the past few days I have begun to atone for my private failings with my wife, Silda, my children, and my entire family. The remorse I feel will always be with me. Words cannot describe how grateful I am for the love and compassion they have shown me. From those to whom much is given, much is expected. I have been given much: the love of my family, the faith and trust of the people of New York, and the chance to lead this state. I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me. To every New Yorker, and to all those who believed in what I tried to stand for, I sincerely apologize.

What Do You, Like, Get For $4300?

I know we’ve all been wondering about it and while New York Times wastes our time with absolutely idiotic insights into the “human story” of Silda Wall Spitzer who allegedly abandoned her super successful corporate lawyer career to… raise her children and help her husband with his political ambition (and, apparently, according to some sources, urged him not to resign), Washington Post gets on the realy case, i.e. what the people want to know: why would an alpha male type of super-politian like Mr. Spitzer pay $4300 for a prostitute and what does one get for such an amount? They go right to the source, an anonymous “woman involved in the industry” who speaks with much eloquence about the issue:

“You have your streetwalkers. You have your local escorts who do the Yellow Pages or the paper, and you have your escorts who do the Internet, and then you have, like, your courtesans, who are like the top of the top,” said one woman involved in the local industry who asked that her name not be used so that her business would not face scrutiny. “It’s not that they do anything particularly special. . . . It’s the image.”

“People are like, ‘ How much money? Oh my gosh,’ ” she said. “I know some girls are like, ‘We need to move’ ” to New York.  

This is so, like, enlightening that I am, like, stunned that I did not, like, think about it myself… Who needs a mysterious nameless call girl to tell me that it’s the image that counts and not the act (however perverse)? That is why Mr. Governa is in the news, that is why he risked his career, that is why he was bound to be caught – What’s the purpose of paying millions for a stolen Rembrandt if you cannot show to anybody? What is the point of paying $4300 for a prostitute if you cannot, at least, mention it or be exposed eventually? Is he really that ashamed? It was not the first time, was it?

So basically, according to the Washington Post, you get an intelligent conversation and sex in exchange for up to $250,000 per weekend – how is this an indication of being a successful sexually superior (even if balding) hero?

On Analytical Judgments: Stanley Fish Feels Misunderstood

In his most recent column in The New York Times, Stanley Fish talks about analytical judgments. It should certainly resonate for those of us that teach critical thinking courses. Fish writes:

Every once in a while I feel that it might be helpful to readers if I explained what it is I am trying to do in these columns. It is easier to state the negative: For the most part, it is not my purpose in this space to urge positions, or come down on one side or the other of a controversial question. Of course, I do those things occasionally and sometimes inadvertently, but more often than not I am analyzing arguments rather than making them; or, to be more precise, I am making arguments about arguments, especially ones I find incoherent or insufficiently examined.

When I find an argument incoherent, it is not because I find the argument on the other side persuasive; although that is the assumption made by those who lambaste me for being a conservative or a liberal, a hopeless fuddyduddy or a corrosive postmodernist, and address me in the confidence that they know on what end of the ideological or moral spectrum I am to be found.

But, in fact, a reader of a typical “Think Again” column will have no idea at all where I stand on the issues that catch my attention, because at least for the length of the column (as opposed to real life, which is much longer), I am agnostic on those issues and interested only in the way they are playing out in our present cultural moment. When, for example, I wrote three columns criticizing the atheist tracts written by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, I was motivated not by a belief in God — which I may or may not have, you’ll never know — but by what I took to be sloppy, schoolboy reasoning that was passing itself off as wisdom. I could have been an atheist myself, and I still would have found the so-called logic of these books weak and risible.

The difference between making arguments and analyzing them is not always recognized, and when it is missed, readers get outraged about things I never said. This is this case with two recent columns, one on identity politics, the other on the shape of a possible Obama-McCain contest in the general election. My point in the first column was that although identity politics was often a term of accusation — as in “that’s just identity politics” — at least one version of it could be considered rational. Someone who believes that the racial, ethnic, religious or gender identity of a candidate makes it more likely that he or she will support and work for certain favored policies is not performing a base or discriminatory act by voting for that candidate.

Fish continues the column by answering some objections from readers.

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks: Volume 2, Journals EE-KK

Second volume of Princeton’s new edition of Kierkegaard’s Journals is out.

Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks:

Volume 2, Journals EE-KK

Søren Kierkegaard
Edited by Niels Jørgen Cappelorn, Alastair Hannay, David Kangas, Bruce H. Kirmmse, Vanessa Rumble, K. Brian Söderquist, and volume editor George Pattison, in cooperation with the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Copenhagen

Cloth | 2008 | $99.50 / £59.95
696 pp. | 7 1/2 x 10 | 30 halftones.

TABLE OF CONTENT

CHAPTER ONE [PDF File]

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) published an extraordinary number of works during his lifetime, but he left behind nearly as much unpublished writing, most of which consists of what are called his “journals and notebooks.”

Volume 2 of this 11-volume edition of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks includes materials from 1836 to 1846, a period that takes Kierkegaard from his student days to the peak of his activity as an author. In addition to containing hundreds of Kierkegaard’s reflections on philosophy, theology, literature, and his own personal life, these journals are the seedbed of many ideas and passages that later surfaced in Either/Or, Repetition, Fear and Trembling, Philosophical Fragments, The Concept of Anxiety, Stages on Life’s Way, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and a number of Edifying Discourses.

Bruce H. Kirmmse of Connecticut College is general editor and K. Brian Söderquist of the University of Copenhagen is associate general editor of Kierkegaard’s Journals and Notebooks. Volume editor George Pattison is at the University of Oxford.

Eliot Spitzer Loves Life!

Ok, I realize that the topic of politicians doing all kinds of nasty things will be in the air for at least a couple of days until Spitzer resigns, but this article from today’s New York Times is just dead wrong and I will not stand idly by when a rather ingenious argument is being presented as a possible explanation of politician’s desire to violate the rules of decent conduct [shaking fists, smoking a bit of pot, paying the prostitute, reload my gun, posting about Jesus on my secret blog]:

N. R. Kleinfield begins his piece with a rather usual statement: “It keeps happening. Recklessly, shamelessly, cavalierly — as if this time they’re the ones who will somehow manage to get away with it all. But they don’t.”  What follows then is a number of quotations with some comments, quotations that are trying to understand why politicians would be involved with illicit sexual activity – the assumption is, right away, that people in power get much more excited about sex, cheat on their wives, hide their sexual preferences and do the nasty in some strange way, the assumption, one must say, that is not based on much factual data, just some of emotional ‘how many times did we hear about it?’ argument.  Kleinfield then cites this guy: “I think biologists could tell you this has something to do with natural selection — the person who acquires power becomes the alpha male,” said Tom Fiedler, who teaches a course in press and politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School.” Ok then, so it must be biology and evolution and natural selection that is responsible, right? Mr. Jerk himself is clearly innocent, it’s not his fault that he is biologically predisposed to inseminate every female in sight! He is all that is man! Notice how it is not a biologist how says it, but a dude who teaches about “press and politics” referring a biologist who would say it, maybe, I’m not sure, I’m not a biologist – talk about “press” here! Who cites a source like that? Tom Fiedler? This Tom Fiedler?

Next quotation is again telling us nothing really evaluative about the actions themselves, but that “there is a broader anxiety about what is private anymore,” said Paul Apostolidis, a political science professor at Whitman College and the co-editor of the book “Public Affairs: Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals.” “It’s not that politicians are behaving more badly. We’re just learning about it more often.”  In other words, these things have been going on for a long time, and if we didn’t pay that much attention to them, no one would be interested in learning these details. Only, one might wonder, we are learning so much about these things because the public is constantly bombarded with politicians’ cries for decency and morality! We’re told that they will behave like super-moral men and women, that they will raise the standards, that they will clean things up – where does the public expectation that the politicians behave come from? I remember that during Clinton-Lewinsky saga most Russians were quite confused about the whole thing and could only understand it a bit when the issue of lying under oath came up, otherwise, since most of them back then did not expect their politicians to be sexually pure, just effective, no one really thought it was a big deal…

Some more quotes:

1960’s Cambodian Pop, Now: Dengue Fever

NPR’s All Things Considered had a nice review yesterday of Dengue Fever’s latest album, Venus on Earth. I’ve pasted the review below and you can listen to the original broadcast as well as sample tracks from the new album here.

Some of today’s best world music acts spring from the discovery of an obscure passion. For brothers Zac and Ethan Holtzman, it was 1960s Cambodian pop music — Khmer tunes at once delicate and brash, with a carefree innocence haunted by a sense of lingering menace.

Living in Los Angeles with its large Cambodian community, the Holtzmans and their American cohorts were able to recruit an exceptionally talented lead singer, Chhom Nimol. And in 2001, Dengue Fever was born.

The group started out by covering songs that had inspired them, but the tracks on Venus on Earth are all original compositions. They veer between Khmer pop, film noir soundtrack, surf rock and folky, teenybopper hit parade fare, right out of the late ’60s.

Venus on Earth finds Chhom Nimol singing more songs in English, in duo with Zac Holtzman. But for my money, Dengue Fever really hit their stride when they rock out and let Nimol lay into quirky, melodramatic Khmer melodies.

Venus on Earth is more spare, and maybe a little less wild, than Dengue Fever’s breakout album, Escape from Dragon House. This time around there’s room for teenage angst, and even introspective balladry.

There is a thread that runs through the ’60s pop that inspired those old Khmer rockers, and it continues right on in Dengue Fever’s eclectic work. The songs are simple, the hooks strong, the arrangements clever and fun. And that’s the stuff that make us fall in love with pop songs, regardless of genre, era or language.

Spitzer’s Wife: A Human Story.

As the details of the story become available, it is clear to me why Spitzer would be apologizing to his family – tomorrow’s New York Times reports: “…Mr. Spitzer, identified only as ‘Client 9’, had arranged for a high-priced prostitute to meet him in Washington on the night before Valentine’s Day.” Now that is a real gentleman! I am sure he wanted some additional practice before he was going to surprise his wife with a special move or a new sex position. Read the rest of NYT piece here.

A quick question though: Why is the wife everywhere in the pictures?

Apology To The Family First: Spitzer Goes Down…

Some news involving a man in power (just recently entered, actually) and a possible prosecution for soliciting a prostitute. It would be truly sad if it wasn’t so pathetically hilarious – short version? A balding far-from-attractive man gets elected as Governor of the great state of NY, enters office in 2007 – first order of business? Continue with the clean-up of Wall Street? Changing NY state politics “on day one”? Nope, a high-class prostitute in a hotel in Washington DC! C’mmon now! You’re a big boy now! Seriously?!

NYTimes:

ALBANY – Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who gained national prominence relentlessly pursuing Wall Street wrongdoing, has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a law enforcement official and a person briefed on the investigation.

The wiretap captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a hotel room, according to an affidavit filed in federal court in Manhattan. The person briefed on the case and the law enforcement official identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

Mr. Spitzer, a first term Democrat, today made a brief public appearance during which he apologized for his behavior, and described it as a “private matter.” He did not address his political future.

“I have acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family and violates my or any sense of right or wrong,” said Mr. Spitzer, who appeared with his wife Silda at his Manhattan office. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public to whom I promised better.” The rest is here.

One question there, Eliot, why are you apologizing to your family first? you are a public figure now and your “private matter” is actually a violation of the law – it is illegal, you know, to solicit a prostitute, it’s not just a matter of personal preference like, oh I don’t know, cheating on your wife… Why is it that those who yell the loudest when it comes to the moral sins of others are always… wait, I’m not sure if I like where that particular line of thought is going, so I’ll just say the usual: Shame! Shame! Shame! (Don’t want to be accused of self-righteous moralism, do I?)

State Of The Blog: 200th Post (Emelianov Version)

I know, I know, it seems that it was only yesterday that a group of us decided it was time to enter the new world of blogging, but it’s been several months now and I think it’s going well – we’ve gained some readers, made fun of some things, settled into our areas of preference and even lost a valuable member (virtual r.i.p. to the founding member Lou Deeptrek – a pseudonym chosen by a close friend who did not have time or energy to continue posting and decided to commit virtual suicide – sad, sad, sad) – but Shahar and I are going strong, I think (Paco’s posting with some regularity as well)… I don’t have much to say about the ‘state of the blog’ but just that I find it to be an excellent outlet for my interests that have little or nothing to do with teaching philosophy or reading the types of articles and books that takes up most of my free time, so it is certainly cathartic and useful.

Some future goals:

San Francisco Opera CinemaCast: La Rondine

So the promised response to the “Met at the Movies” from San Francisco Opera took place this weekend (and still today and tomorrow – see this post for details) with Puccini’s La Rondine (The Swallow). I suppose this particular production was chosen because it was Angela Gheorghiu’s debut with SFOpera and she’s a big name etc. I have to say that driving 50 miles to pay $12 to see a pre-recorded and edited version is a bit of a nuisance, and I am not positive that I will do it for the other three scheduled “CinemaCasts” – I wonder why no major movie theater in a large city I happen to be living in was included, my theory is that SFOpera has a deal with Carmike Theaters that are equipped with special Digital Picture things that are not present anywhere else… Speaking of digital picture: it was pretty digital, but the sound was still very much like any movie sound, thus the question – why did SFOpera went for a superb image and not a better quality sound?