Bad American

No really! This big!

New York Post

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer has gone into therapy in the wake of the hooker scandal that swept him out of office, a Spitzer insider told The Post yesterday.

As part of the therapy, Spitzer will explore whether he has an addiction to sex, the source said.

From my post of March 10:

Right now Keith Olbermann is asking why Spitzer is still Governor of New York.

His guest, Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice, seems to think that violations of the Mann Act (transporting a woman across state lines for sex, carries a 20-year max fine) are making Spitzer try to cut a deal with the Feds that might offer his resignation in exchange for some leniency.

Barrett points out that Spitzer had a long and storied career as a prosecutor and tough law enforcer who had actually prosecuted high class call girl operations as well.

Also, Spitzer nailed people with e-mail chains and now has been undone in the same way. “It’s almost as though he wanted to get caught,” Barrett said.

So are we to expect that Spitzer will soon check into some kind of celebrity clinic for ’sex addiction?’

Apparently “soon” was 11 days or less.

By the way, how does one ever get ‘cured’ of a sex addiction outside of some form of castration? And even then, would your subconscious force you to dream about it?

Would there be some kind of chart detailing a decrease in the number of sexual encounters over time? Or would just having as much sex as you want with your wife indicate some kind of ‘cure?’

Or, maybe, this has as much to do with how a person’s ego handles power and/or uses sex as a substitute for a healthy self-esteem?

In that case, I suspect that millions of Americans are sex addicts.

But the really funny thing is that unlike many other psychological disorders, no one ever seeks treatment for sexual addiction until they get caught in some embarrassing incident which costs them something tangible.

And why is it that only men seem to need this ‘treatment?’ When is the last time you heard of a woman checking into counseling for sex addiction?

Power corrupts and absolute power apparently makes men very sex crazed.

Fear not Eliot Spitzer and everyone else with this, um, problem. Capitalistic science is working on sexbots who will look and feel just like real women and have sex with you. Whether having sex with robots will count as ‘cheating’ (then so would a host of other non-penetration sexual activity we won’t get into here), certainly the first company that can successfully market such a ‘toy’ will be rolling in profits.

Until the first malfunction. Just let your imagination run wild.  Remember Westworld?

Could be very ouch-ie.

But you know, medical science, in the service of men’s sexual needs (like Viagra) can work wonders. I’m sure we’ll see sexbots marketed long before we have any more cures for the common ailments that kill us.

But it will be too late for Spitzer and his brothers in. . . arms.

. . . is brought to you by Soylent red and Soylent yellow, high energy vegetable concentrates, and new, delicious, Soylent green. The miracle food of high-energy plankton gathered from the oceans of the world.

Drudge links and headlines the MSNBC First Read news blog which I wasn’t aware of until this morning. Not a bad compendium of things political and much to comment about. The “bad week” entry is already a few takes down the list.

The First Read headline refers to the three campaigns but probably could be broadened to many Americans due to the imploding economy and its effects on Main Street which I get a ring side seat to view every day from my window.

The Pain Dealer reprints an article about the troubles at Borders book chain, linked here from the London Telegraph.

Borders, which has racked up losses of more than $300m in the past two years, has appointed JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch to find a buyer or strategic investor.

The business, which has seen its shares fall from $23.41 last May to hover above $5, has a current market value of $313m in spite of annual revenues in excess of $3.8bn.

There’s some speculation that Barnes and Noble or even Canadian chain Indigo may swallow Borders but good luck getting the deal pulled off in what is fast becoming a very soft market for full price retail booksellers.

Which is, of course, somewhat music to my ears and yet my business is also off.

America isn’t awash in readers anymore and while people may not be willing to shell out $29.95 for a new hardcover, would they be willing to pay $7-10 for that book at a reseller? Or is $15 at Sam’s club enough?

It’s news like this that makes me hang in there. Who knows where we’re going? When people can no longer easily afford cable movie channels (or cable) or other forms of entertainment, perhaps they’ll discover the cheap thrills from a good book, bought at your local book reseller and buyer.

At least we know books and reading will not die in the way Ray Bradbury envisioned in Fahrenheit 451. Not from repression, but from ignorance and boredom.

But discretionary spending does seem to be going into the toilet at least from where I sit. Other retailers are also biting big bullets this quarter and the expectations only seem worse as the year goes on. Everyone from Sears to Wal-Mart is hurting as the cost of getting goods to market rises inexorably, payrolls shrink and the dollar’s buying power implodes. Wal-Mart will survive the year, Sears, which at one time helped my father raise a family, may not.

For the luckless soldiers of the empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a new number coming up on the very near horizon, perhaps this week - 4,000 deaths in five years. And no one wants to be casualty number 4,000. Dying in a useless war for geopolitics is bad enough but who wants to be singled out as special for being the 4,000th victim of George W. Bush’s legacy?

This seems to be a very sad Easter holiday coming up all over the world. When you think of the real pain real people are experiencing in this economic downturn, the obsessive coverage of candidates and celebrity continues to take on a more odious tone. Nero supposedly fiddled while Rome burned; it seems that most Americans continue to rather follow the exploits of LeBron James and Paris Hilton than turn their needed attention to the wreckage of their country.

I visited my mother this morning who continues to recover from her foot amputation in a local community care facility. Due to complications in recovery, she’s been there since just before New Year’s Eve. Hopefully she’ll finally be coming home next week.

It’s hard to be in an ‘up’ mood after visiting one of these facilities which are scattered all over the country. Most of the time, when I get there in the morning, the staff has wheeled several of the inmates into the middle hub area where the hallways intersect. There they sit for no discernible reason other than, perhaps, to get them out of their rooms for an hour. Many are suffering from Alzheimers or other mentally degenerating illnesses. Others are simply beyond depressed. Often they reach out and call to me for help as I pass by.

It’s heart wrenching. I am often reminded of what Sister Mary Harriet, my junior high match teacher at Notre Dame Elementary used to make us pray for - a happy death. Being 13 at the time and with no real view of our own mortality, it seemed like a loony thing to pray for. Now I see the wisdom in her intercession.

I once saw one of the inmates (that’s what I call them for they do try to escape and are foiled by staff and security systems) being gently harangued by her family who had put her in a place she did not want to be. The woman’s son, his wife and their kids were huddled around grandma’s wheelchair trying to convince her that this was as nice as any place to be brought to die. After all, it’s what we do in our capitalist society. We could pay for in home care assistance for everyone, but how would the entrepreneurs that run the lucrative for-profit convalescent industry make their Wall Street sales projections?

Anything else would reek of socialism and we can’t have that.

Of course sonny and his wife probably did a pretty thorough job liquidating everything grandma had ever worked for in her life so that Medicaid could shovel enough money at the care facility to keep the old woman out of the way of her family until she kicks off. No one needs the downer of a momento mori hanging around in a culture that worships youth, beauty and material success.

I often wonder if, when things get really bad, we’ll see the ‘ethical suicide parlors’ from the movie Soylent Green so people who are no longer able to turn a buck and stimulate the economy can do their patriotic duty to capitalism and off themselves. I suppose when Medicaid finally suffers Grover Nordquist’s dream of drowning it in a bathtub and quits paying the for-profit death housing industry, we may see those parlors.

I want scenes of amber waves of grain and something nice by Roxy Music playing when I’m strapped to the gurney. Remember the old man telling Charlton Heston - “Why, in my day, you could buy meat anywhere! Eggs they had, real butter! Fresh lettuce in the stores. . . “

Actually no. I’m not going to die in one of capitalism’s death houses nor am I going to burden anyone with wiping my ass. When I look at these literally godforsaken people sitting there in the morning in various stages of confusion, pain and distress, I reserve the absolute right to check out at a time and place of my own choosing before I get anywhere near that stage.

And I bet a lot of you feel the same way but you wouldn’t dare talk about it around any of your good Christian relations.

Look, I know its a downer but you never know when you’re going to land up being impaled by a bus and saved by our miracle medical system which will save your life as a paraplegic and then bill you out of everything else you’ve ever earned as a result.

Remember Richard Dreyfus in Whose Life is it Anyway?

And isn’t it funny how we hardly ever see either Soylent Green or Whose Life is it Anyway on cable movie channels or broadcast TV?

Such downers. Or prescient. Take your pick.

Ok, I’ll stop. It’s funny what kind of musings can run from a title seen on Drudge. I’ll try to find something ‘up’ later in the day.