Tell me again why we should get all worked up over the revelation of the New York governor having paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions of dollars in future debt? Will it save those millions of homes that hardworking folks across the country are losing because of financial industry shenanigans that Eliot Spitzer, as much as anyone, attempted to halt? Perhaps it provides some insight into why oil has risen to $108 a barrel, benefiting most of all the oil sheikhs who our taxpayer-supported military has kept in power? ...
The sad truth is that reporting on major corruption, say the rationalizations of a president who has authorized torture, doesn't cut it as a marketing bonanza. Just days before this grand expose, President Bush vetoed a bill banning torture, and instead of horrified disgust, the president's deep denigration of this nation's presumed ideals was met with a vast public yawn. Torture, unlike paid sex, doesn't have legs as a news story ...
I wouldn't have written this column had I not read the Wall Street Journal page-one news story headlined "Wall Street Cheers as its Nemesis Plunges into Crisis." The article starts out with the crowing statement that "It's Schadenfreude time on Wall Street," and then goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated in the financial world. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.
The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels, quite willing to rob decent hardworking people of their homes. And of course, no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/11/EDBNVHVOC.DTL