Eliot Spitzer & America's Perverse Ethics

[Orwellian_Ghost]

Spitzer & America's Perverse Ethics

By Rabbi Michael Lerner
March 12, 2008

Editor’s Note:
The U.S. news media can’t devote enough time to the prostitution scandal that just forced New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation and gave the ethics enforcer of Wall Street a bitter taste of his own medicine. But the unspoken counterpoint to Spitzer’s dramatic fall from grace is how the same U.S. news media views public calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney -- over war crimes and violations of the U.S. Constitution -- as nutty and unworthy of serious debate.

...

The cross-the-political-spectrum attacks on Elliot Spitzer and the intensity of the demands that he resign his office show just how far the right-wing sexual moralizing has been able to trump any other kind of ethical reasoning in American society.

...

Ethical Perversity

But the intensity of the critique of the New York governor, tied with the demand that he resign, shows more about American society's ethical perversity than about Spitzer.

The President of the United States and the Vice President, working in concert with several other high-ranking officers of our government, lied and distorted to get us involved in a war that has led to the death of over a million Iraqis, the displacement of three million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the wounding of tens of thousands more.

...

Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in torture, wiretapping of our phones, and violation of our human rights and the rights of people around the world. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer voted to confirm as Attorney General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate these crimes.

...

While everyone basks in their own self-righteous demands on Spitzer, we all allow media and elected officials to fundamentally distort our ethical vision and play out our morality on the smallest of possible stages while ignoring the global and personal consequences of our larger ethical failures.

...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/031208a.html

[cornermouse]

1. Take a look back at what was being posted here on DU

when this story broke.