Why Spitzer has to go

I think I can say with confidence that The Dersh is the only person you have quoted to be happily photographed while sunbathing nude on the Vineyard.

Dershowitz said in his recent NYT quote that prostitutes aren’t victims” and they are paid “thousands of dollars an hour.”That may be the case with the ring Spitzer uses, but the NYT story cited above that has details on the ring Spitzer prosecuted indicated that the fee was $250 for sex, with the prostitutes receiving a cut of about one-third of that.With all the reasons NOT to patronize prostitutes — moral issues, duplicity if married, fear of embarrassment, loss of job, prosecution, disease, etc. — I would think buyer’s remorse would loom pretty large. $4300! My wife would be more likely to forgive the transgression against fidelity than the breach of fiduciary responsibility!Bob in Peabody

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“In an age when terrorism needs to be stopped, they’re devoting these kinds of resources to a prostitution ring?”That’s a specious argument on so many fronts. 1. “Terrorism needs to be stopped.” Does it? It’s been a part of history since, well, history. Yet somehow we’ve made it this far.2. Priorities. You can always find something more important than “X.” So by that logic, “X” should never be dealt with. I wonder if Dershowitz uses that argument when his wife tells him to take out the trash. “Can’t — I’m trying to get O.J. off the hook.” What he’s saying is that prosecutors can’t do more than one thing at a time. Or, that he has a mound of garbage in his kitchen the size of the Tower of Babel. Unlikely.3. Prostitution generally preys on some of the most vulnerable members of society. Most of the strippers* at the Foxy Lady, for example, see the same psychologist at Brown (can’t tell you how I know that). For the most part, they are drug-addicted and mentally ill. What’s government’s role? To protect the most vulnerable members of society from people like Spitzer. And, I suppose, Derschowitz.*But strippers aren’t prostitutes, you say? At the FL, they are.

Mike, you certainly know a lot about the Foxy Lady . . .

And only last week I thought that if the Dems blow it this fall, Spitzer would have been the party’s best shot in 2012.Doug

Re: Mike b-1 comment on Foxy Lady strippers seeing “the same psychologist at Brown.” At least the shrink is spared a steady diet of people depressed that they didn’t get into Harvard or Yale.

Couple quick hits:The Dersh loses points for disingenuousness. He is a Harvard classmate, friend and contributor to Spitzer.Tell the next hooker beaten near to death by her pimp for not turning over 80 percent of the take that prostitution is victimless.Spitzer is potentially facing charges for “structuring,” which is the illegal and intentionally clandestine movement of cash to benefit a criminal enterprise.Maybe you can make an argument that Vitter didn’t try to take away people’s freedom but Larry Craig did for those who do essentially what he did. Why hasn’t he resigned?

Dershowitz is a misogynystic narcissist. He seems to be of the school that believes prostitutes all do it because they like the money and they have freedom of choice. Hey, maybe they even LIKE it, right? and they like getting paid for it. Mike B1 is 100% correct about most prostitutes. Most of the 8-9 women killed and dumped alongside highways outside New Bedford back in the 1980s were heroin addicts, had come from abusive households and were turning tricks in Weld Square to pay for their drug habits. But Mr. Dershowitz would have us believe they enjoy it, they like the money and they chose that line of work because of what, the great benefits? Or the chance to be beaten to death by a man, or infected with a fatal STD or, perhaps, to be thrown in jail and further humiliated? Oh, wait, he’s talking about high-class “call girls.” The make a lot of money so they must live great lives and enjoy the sex.

Mike/Anonymous,I can’t believe I’m taking the same side as pro-torture Dershowitz, but just because some people in the sex work industry are exploited doesn’t mean you should make the whole industry illegal. People are routinely exploited in farms and factories in this country, but that doesn’t mean we should outlaw farms and factories. It means we should prosecute exploitation when it occurs.Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never met someone who did sex work who thought their job was a cakewalk. But despite your characterization, plenty of people do sex work to make a real living–not to feed a drug habit. And I bet you those that are dealing with dangerous and abusive pimps and johns would feel a whole lot more comfortable reporting them to the police if they weren’t afraid of being thrown in jail themselves.Treating women as fully capable of making decisions about their own bodies is hardly misogynistic.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is watching how many good, interesting and (even) important stories are being shoved to the side to make room for this stampede of schadenfreude. I suppose what amazes me more than anything else is how publicity hounds like Spitzer think they can get away with stupid stuff like this. I mean, he MUST have people reminding him that when you’re going to run on a “law and order, clean up the mess” reputation, that you must be Caesar’s wife; you cannot even have a hint of dirt on you.Of course, politics is a very dirty business, and I suppose one does not get elected office without getting some mud splattered on yourself. But still, this isn’t political mud, this is just dumb.Unless, of course, for the conspiracy-minded among us…this is all just a coverup. A small sin for the masses to focus on when a much larger sin was discovered in private. Reminds me of that Law and Order episode that was a thinly-veiled swipe at Bernard Kerik’s failed nomination as DHS Director.

Mike, I agreed with the Dersh about Milton. That was ridiculous. News flash: high school kids at exclusive boarding schools have wild, unbelievable sex, the kind we old folks daydream about.

Four boys run a train on a younger (drunk?) girl and it’s “the most senseless use of prosecutorial discretion I’ve seen in a long time”?If that was your daughter, how would you’d feel?And Dersh is probably the first guy to call the cops when his trees get teepeed.

Milton Academy’s official statement: “This behavior … is simply unacceptable at Milton Academy. It was a situation where coercion, either implicit or explicit, was an element of the interaction.”And either way, under the laws of the Commonwealth a crime was committed and justice was meted. It’s always nice to see prominent attorneys castigate officials for fulfilling their sworn duty to uphold the law.As a parent, you should know as well as anyone that children’s (including teens’) brains are not fully developed and their ability to exercise judgment is biologically less than someone just a few years’ older. That’s why we have laws: to protect those who cannot protect themselves. The solution isn’t to say it’s every man (or woman, or child) for themselves. (Except, of course, Israel, which we should all naturally defend to the death.)And isn’t Dersh the guy who wants to have full-fledged animal rights? Yet he doesn’t see that kids are even more vulnerable to other humans than many animals.

Anon at 10:54. You’re right, I was wrong about the class ties with Spuitzer and Dershowitz. This form a 2006 profile in the Globe:Twenty-three years ago, two Harvard Law students were wandering through a gay bathhouse in Boston with their professor. The men were meeting with the bathhouse operator, who claimed to have information relating to drug deliveries made to the house of Sunny von Bülow, a socialite who had gone into a coma, and whose second husband, Claus, had recently been convicted of trying to murder her.“If my mother and father knew what kind of education their tuition was buying, they’d transfer me to business school,” one of the students said, according to the book “Reversal of Fortune,” while the other replied, “If they saw the number of business school graduates that are clients here, they’d send you to divinity school.”One of the students was Eliot Spitzer, and the other was Cliff Sloan, now the publisher of Slate. Mr. Spitzer’s professor, Alan Dershowitz, was handling Claus von Bülow’s appeal, and was the author of “Reversal of Fortune.” It may be a grain of salt to you but it’s still a tasty seasoning.

anon 1:42: Your teenage daughter is gang-banged by five older youths and you would rather let them cop a plea than go to trial? Duh. Going to court only ensures the entire Commonwealth would learn her identity; that the sordid, painful affair gets dragged on for years; you pay tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses; and in the end, who knows what the outcome will be?Faced with that, why on earth would they pursue it? Sounds like her parents were wiser by half than just about everyone else.

Also, Mike, you are inaccurate – they did not merely choose not to go to trial. They said they thought criminal proceedings were unreasonable – big difference.

Roll your eyes all you want. You seem to be forgetting this appears to be a scene the girl was into – it happened on other occasions.I refuse to judge them, including her. The law they broke is flawed and I think it’s wrong to prosecute teenagers for messing around within their peer group. All parents eventually have to come to terms with it: your sweet little angels grow into insatiable teenage horn dogs. If you don’t want them in scenes like that, keep an eye on them. What in the world do you think goes on at private boarding schools???Anyway, this argument has gone far afield from the theme of the thread. Go ahead and have the last word – you’re going to one way or another anyway.

Oh, and lookie here (from Spitzer’s call girl’s MySpace page):”I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own. I am here, in NY because of my music,” she wrote.So much for being a mature, together adult in her right mind.http://tiny.cc/UlPan

So you’ve gone from 1) Dersh was right to 2) the girl was a tramp to 3) kids will be kids to 4) her parents didn’t care to 5) the laws are lousy. What’s next: God commanded the Milton gangbang?Picking up from your most recent excuse: “Used to be … on the books.” That’s the operative term, and a big one.So if the law is bad, you change the law. You don’t hang the police and State’s Attorneys for enforcing them. But that’s what Mr. Constitutionality himself went ahead and did. (And you are too, btw.)