If you live in a cave and have not heard, the Governor of my state, Elliot Spitzer, just got caught up in a prostitution ring. The specifics are not clear. Without saying exactly what he did, with whom and how much it cost, Spitzer just apologized for doing something wrong.

"I have disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself," he said. "I must now dedicate some time to regain the trust of my family."

Shocked

For those of you who are not from this state, Mr. Spitzer has a really incredible background. He was our attorney general and really did a good job, I believe as good a job as can be expected, of creating fairness and reducing immorality (with respect to a population, not arbitrary interpretations from an outdated book). He came to office with as good a resume as you could expect form a governor. He was also expected to be a bit kick ass. He made no qualms about having a strong hand with out assembly and senate, something badly needed here in NY.

He made a few forgivable political errors this summer. Forgivable, not in that it is OK that he did these things, just that they looked like same old run of the mill political nonsense to me.

But now, this prostitution thing. It was just shocking, I literally could not believe it. How could someone, on the right side of so many issues, with the right foresight on so many things, do something so incredibly stupid. I literally could not believe that this could happen. It would be like finding Senator Obama in a porn video. I just didn't seem to fit.

Disappointed

Don't get me wrong. Thousands of men pay prostitutes. To me, as long as both parties in that relationship are consenting, and hold up their ends of the deal, I dont really think it that big of a deal. Its pretty much been a fact of life forever. I wish we could stop it, but this is yet another thing that wont go away by making it illegal. To be succinct, if you want prostitution to stop, make sure that we are teaching our women how to excel in our society, focus on education and opportunities, explore ways to inure our citizens from sexual images, and lets stop making sex this dirty thing. How? Well I read a couple of suggestions before, i'm sure there are more, both things we can do with regard to legislation but others with regard to the way we work in our communities.

That said, I went from being shocked, to being horribly disappointed in Mr. Spitzer. I don't care if he visited a prostitute every week, that is between him and his wife and family. The utter gall, to expect that no one would find out and the height of hypocrisy about the act that he displayed is what bothers me. He busted up other prostitution rings as AG, decrying how despicable and pathetic they were. The whole reason I laugh at the Republican party with regard to all the folks getting caught up in drugs, sex and homosexuality is for the same reason: they try to stand on this fake higher moral ground only to think they won't get caught themselves while performing the very acts they are railing about.

Now Mr. Spitzer does the same thing and I am disappointed. I am sad because he represented hope for my state to get out of its political quagmire. He represented a trustworthy, data driven, optimistic new face of our government and then displays only political clumsiness and now, outright stupidity.

Angry
And now I am just angry. What an utter waste of time. The rest of this gubernatorial term will wallow in a chasm of inaction, lack of focus and little will get done except the same crap we have seen for the last decade. I'm pissed off because now it doesn't matter who gets elected, if Jezuz himself rises again and runs for governor I will expect nothing (well, if we see Jesus around I'm going to have to re-examine a bunch of other stuff too!). What Spitzer has done was make it so that there is no one who can have a good enough background, a good enough resume, a good enough set of priorities without the possibility of dumbfounding idiocy. At least we knew Bush was a pliable idiot before he got to office.

I realize this is a lot like an emotional reaction to other events in our lives, like accidental death, or unfairness, and loss. And I did lose something, I lost some of my optimism about the possibilities of a great government.

In closing, screw you Spitzer. Step down now, you are done anyway.