Corruption is a Slippery Fish

Aren't the headlines painful? New York's governor, Eliot Spitzer, implicated in a prostitution ring. The man who rode a reform agenda into office with a 70% approval rating...the guy who took on the corporate thieves...the guy with the happy family and everything to gain, at this writing, is about to lose it all.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

How excruciating is his fall? Even his political nemesis, that scoundrel Joe Bruno, has thus far refused to pile on. The damage is just too horrific on its own. To toss in more criticism would be like throwing a match on an already raging house fire.

Don't put your trust in the princes of men the psalmist tells us. We are flawed creatures, we humans. It is not a morose downer to acknowledge a universal sinning nature. It is, rather, a more realistic assessment of life together. We're human. We sometimes miss the mark. Enlightened thinkers will admit this truth into life's equation.

To me, the greater crime in prostitution is committed by the pimp and the john. I assume at the prices they were charging, these particular women were not impoverished financially. But, typically, the pimp and john are in a predatory relationship with the prostitute. It is the rich stealing from the poor. It is the strong stepping on the weak. It is the comfortable abusing the desperate.

I had a friend in South Carolina who was a newspaper reporter and something of a deep thinker. During a similar scandal involving a university president and his "assistants," I asked him how this could happen to people with so much power and privilege. He answered by asking me if I had any flaws with which I sometimes struggled. When I acknowledged that I did, he said something that has stuck with me to this day:

"Now, Corey," he said. "Imagine you with your fatal flaw becoming evermore powerful. With power come resources to get whatever you want whenever you want it. But with power come isolation, fatigue, even loneliness. Power does not corrupt. Rather, power makes it all the harder to control the corruption we ourselves carried in with us."

I pray for Gov. Spitzer, his wife and children. I pray for New York. Albany is broken, that is true. But so are the rest of us.