Entries from March 2008 ↓

Proving that hypocrites aren’t just far-right Republican politicians or holier-than-thou conservative Christian ministers, New York State’s first-term Democratic Governor and former Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has been caught with his pants down.

According to a New York Times investigation, Spitzer has been linked to a joint FBI/IRS investigation into a prostitution ring known as Emperors Club VIP, that offered call girls to well-heeled clients in the US and Europe. The club was raided last week. Reportedly they have taped recordings of a customer, identified as Client 9 on telephone calls, who is alleged to be Spitzer. Client 9 arranged for a prostitute to travel from New York to Washington DC and meet him at a hotel on February 13. Those particulars correspond to a trip made by Spitzer, when he testified before Congress a day later.

In a Monday afternoon press conference where he took no questions and had is wife Silda at his side, Spitzer issued an apology to his family and the public, but called it a “private matter.”

This news comes with considerable embarrassment to a man who built his reputation while Attorney General as “the sheriff of Wall Street” going after misdeeds in the business community. Elected as New York’s 54th Governor in 2006, he came in promising to clean up Albany. In his first year in office however, he has been bogged down in partisan bickering with Republicans in the State Senate, and a sense of paralysis has hung over his administration ever since.

This story is still developing and may very well change as soon as I post this. Not surprisingly, Republicans are calling for Spitzer to resign and business leaders are openly mocking him. As a supporter of New York Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, he would have to be seen as a liability to her campaign, should he stay on.

If he resigns, Lt. Governor David A. Paterson would assume office and make history by doing so. Paterson would become New York’s first African American governor and the first legally blind governor in the United States. He would also be the second sitting African American governor. Duval Patrick currently serves in neighboring Massachusetts. (In a personal connection, Paterson is the former State Senator from my district here in New York and is married to someone I went to college with.)

Stay tuned for more on this story.

It was a little like watching an old friend move out of the neighborhood. Oh, you’ll try to stay in touch, but deep down, you know you’ll never see them again.

After five seasons—five superbly written, well-acted, finely crafted seasons of the best television series I’ve ever watched in my life—HBO’s The Wire aired its last program Sunday night. I must admit I got teary-eyed towards the end.

That a television show got to produce a final episode is an accomplishment in itself, in a rapidly changing television landscape where viewers have so many options and programmers compete against newer on-demand alternatives. Most network tv shows just get cancelled during summer hiatus. Then again, most network television shows follow a tired old episodic format, telling one complete story each week, beginning to end, in one hour. Few of them have been as memorable.

The Wire was allowed to end its run the way its producer David Simon intended, allowing some measure of resolution to storylines that stretched out over the entire five years. In many ways the show ended exactly the way it began, and perhaps that was the whole point of the story. People change but the circumstances stay the same, especially when no one is serious or principled enough to deal with tough issues head-on. It was about corruption, malfeasance, incompetence or indifference across the board, be it city hall, the police and criminal justice system, a labor union, the school system or the news media, all contributing factors to community decay, the rise in crime and drug activity and the loss of hope.

We came full circle in many ways. Bubbles, no Reginald, got the monkey off his back and literally climbed up the stairs to reclaim his humanity, but young Dukie, whose parents were junkies, fell through the cracks and will likely take Bubble’s old place on the streets.

Marlo got off on a technicality, but still doesn’t know how to do anything more than sell drugs. Prop Joe said he was a hard one to try to civilize. He looked a little over-dressed for that street corner. Chris joined Wee-Bey in the lifers club. Little Kennard may join them in the juvenile division.

His victim Omar may be gone but the dealers now have to fear Michael. And who was that with him? Slim Charles did what needed to be done a long time ago to Cheese and united the co-op the way Prop Joe envisioned. The Greeks hardly care so long as they move product.

Det. Sydnor will stay up on the wire after learning his lessons well from Lester, who has retired to marital and miniature toy-making bliss. Lt. Carver is rising up the chain of command and will no doubt try to do the right thing, but with new Commissioner Valchek as Mayor Nerese Campbell’s lap dog, he’ll get stonewalled for sure.

Reporter Scott Templeton got what he wanted, a prize built on lies, as did Governor Carcetti and State Police Superintendant Rawls. Judge Pearlman and attorney Daniels will now fight their battles on a new front. And life in Baltimore continues as we were first introduced to it.

The show said so many things about society but what stuck out most was how interconnected all major issues are. The drug problem exists because police and politicians are looking for easy solutions and quick media hits by going after street-level dealers. They lack both the will and the resources because no one is committed to taking a comprehensive approach to addressing the underlying factors.

When good-paying, middle class jobs disappear, like on the docks, it affects the very fabric of the community. It isn’t just Black people who were forced into a life of crime. Whites too struggled to survive. Knowing this helps explain that Black drug dealers weren’t born that way, they were made by a lack of other options. Stringer Bell could have easily been a legitimate business executive, given opportunity.

Self-serving incumbent politicians trying to hold onto their base by juking crime stats are easy prey for equally ambitious upstarts who call for change. But winning office and making real change are easier said than done.

School systems more focused on state mandated tests than educating students, are ill-equipped to assist students who come with great needs beyond academics. When school offers the only relief from an otherwise hostile home environment, but no one takes the time to care, young ones are left with few alternatives.

If an informed public is the cornerstone of democracy, and the media’s job is to inform, what happens when they miss the major stories or deliberately misinform to satisfy individual agendas? Chasing the homeless murders, they completely missed the Stanfield case.

Sixty chapters of a great novel read over five years. I hated to put it down.

Other reviews:

New York Times So Many Characters, Yet So Little Resolution
Los Angeles Times ’The Wire’
Chicago Tribune ‘The Wire’ comes full circle in its gripping finale

1. Name the one thing you can’t live without.
2. Where is the one place you must see before you die?
3. What meal do you eat when you want to indulge yourself?
4. What do you do to refocus your energy?
5. Who is the person who “gets” you?
6. What time of day or day of the week are you are at your absolute best?
7. What is your personal theme song?
8. What is your scent?
9. What core belief defines you?
10. What is your purpose in life?

Former New Jersey Senator, one-time Democratic Presidential candidate and current Barack Obama supporter Bill Bradley, is raising issues about the murky nature of Hillary Clinton’s financial backing. On PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, he speculated out loud about what they might expect to receive for their contributions in a Clinton administration. Bradley further suggested this made Clinton a weaker candidate against GOP nominee John McCain.

There’s a new HIV scandal brewing in the gay porn industry and while it again stems from barebacking, it is not the usual suspect this time but insteaed a producer in Great Britain. The BBC recently broke the story about a series of DVDs that featured footage from a week-long shoot during which eight British models had sex with each other in multiple combinations without condoms. Four of those who took part were diagnosed as HIV positive soon after.

US gay porn producer Chi Chi LaRue has been campaigning to stop the production of bareback videos and raising awareness of the risks some producers are making their models take.

Domestic violence doesn’t just affect married couples and now New York City residents are getting added legal protection in civil court.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn have introduced the Domestic Violence Civil Protection Act, expanding protection for domestic violence victims who are abused by their past or current domestic partners or live-in boyfriends or girlfriends.

The law would allow unmarried individuals who live or have lived with an abuser, pregnant women who live with the fathers of their unborn children, and LGBT citizens who are abused by their live-in partner, the right to get a civil order of protection in Supreme Court without having their current or former loved one arrested.

Finally, on a happier domestic front, I want to wish a happy 20th anniversary to two friends, Reggie and Mark. If Black men loving Black men is a revolutionary act, congratulations to a couple of revolutionaries.

The Out People of Color Political Action Club (OutPOCPAC), a non-partisan New York City-based political organization, endorsed Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama at a meeting this past Thursday. You can read more here. (Andres and I are both founding members who participated in the vote.)