WASHINGTON — I, for one, shall not join the raucous mob in
pursuing this unfortunate man, Eliot SpRitzer. In the 1990s I spent
quite enough time guffawing over the libidinous giddiness of a
well-known elected official, and all it got me was an utterly
unwarranted reputation for being puritanical and discourteous to
the late 20th century’s living embodiment of Abraham Lincoln. So I
shall make no jokes about Mr. SpRitzer.
In passing, however, allow me to file my observation that he
does not seem to be a very happy man. His treatment of past
opponents and defendants suggests as much, and even the transcribed
conversation of his procuress gives hints that the fallen governor
of New York may want to enroll in an anger management program. The
procuress, a Miss Temeka Rachelle Lewis, reports that Mr. SpRitzer
“would ask you [his highly-paid escort] to do things that, like,
you might not think were safe.” Come to think of it, he might also
enroll in a course on sexual hygiene.
Both political parties seem to have sexually obsessed
politicians. The Democrats have SpRitzer and Clinton (Bill, not
Hillary), the Republicans an obscure congressman or two and the
repellent Senator Larry Craig, he being the lavatorian caught
playing footsie in a Minneapolis public lavatory. He refuses to
resign or show any remorse whatsoever. Apparently, this is the
political strategy Craig and various defendants — the adulterous
mayor of Detroit is another — learned from President Clinton’s
response to the Monica Lewinsky affair.
Doubtless, we shall see more of this uncivic insolence in the
years ahead. Yet if both parties have their Casanovas, other news
this week makes clear that the Democratic Party has a surprising
number of racial bigots and in high places. Geraldine Ferraro’s
outburst comes to mind. Moreover, the Clinton campaign’s handling
of it is still more evidence of the racial prejudice within the
party’s ranks.
Responding to Senator Barack Obama’s status as frontrunner in
the Democratic nominating process, Ferraro declared, “If Obama were
a white man, he would not be in this position….He happens to be
very lucky who he is.” Ferraro is a Clinton supporter. She serves
on the campaign’s finance committee. Her indelicacy provoked top
Obama adviser David Axelrod to denounce it as part of an “insidious
pattern,” which it assuredly is. Remember Bill Clinton’s display of
racial bigotry in the South Carolina primary? There he betrayed an
apparently deep vein of prejudice, equating Obama’s racially
untroubled campaign with earlier racially obsessed campaigns waged
by the race hustler Jesse Jackson. For the edification of those of
us who have had to endure the Democrats’ boasts to superior
tolerance, Clinton was brazenly playing the race card with a
constituency that was not supposed to exist in his party, the white
bigots.
Ferraro, who it is now reported attributed victories by
presidential candidate Jackson in 1988 to race, has refused to even
acknowledge the prejudice of her statement. In fact, she has gone
on to say, “Racism works in two different directions. I really
think they’re attacking me because I’m white.” And she concluded
sarcastically, “How’s that?”
This playing to racial prejudice is not just the practice of
Ferraro and Bill Clinton. Key strategists in the Clinton campaign
have been quick to make race an issue in the Democratic
presidential race. When Obama’s people criticized Ferraro’s
insensitive explanation for Obama’s victories, Clinton campaign
manager Margaret Williams hypothesized that the criticism was
raised to encourage blacks to vote for Obama in the impending
Mississippi primary.
Now is this not a pretty picture, the Democratic Party torn by
racial animosity? Yet it might have been predicted. Though in the
1960s the Democrats were far ahead of the Republicans in advancing
civil rights and tolerance, at some point, perhaps in the 1970s,
certainly in the 1980s, unscrupulous Democrats began to exploit
racial divisions. In fact, they have exploited assumed racial
divisions long after race was an issue in this country. They
attributed poverty, crime rates, and other problems to race when
they were the result of family breakdown or educational
disadvantages. They began to use race, and gender too for that
matter, as the means by which they could get elected. In so doing,
they came to need racially indignant constituencies, and now the
Democrats are at each others’ throats over race and gender. Welcome
to the world of identity politics. Meanwhile, over in the
Republican Party, no such incendiary issues are being cultivated
and Senator John McCain is looking more presidential by the
day.
