 |
| Manhattan skyline from the southeast. 10:00 PM. Photo: Jeffrey Hirsch. |
 |
|
|
| Wednesday, July 10, 2013. Yet another very hot day, yesterday in New York. Although this time there were some torrential showers (not rainstorms like the weatherman predicted). Five minutes or so each. They cleaned the sidewalks and the streets and the temperature dropped a few degrees. But only a few. And I had been telling myself we were going to have a cool summer. Ha ha; the joke’s on me. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
| The talk (where there is talk) of current events in the city are the candidacies of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer. Mr. Weiner is running for Mayor and Mr. Spitzer has announced that he will run for city comptroller. The media is playing it up as a kind of duo au scandale, since both men found/accidentally came upon notoriety (quite unintentionally) in their private lives. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it doesn’t matter because both situations were an opportunity for the public to allow itself to be distracted once again from what’s really going on in our culture, our society. Business as usual.
I don’t know him; I don’t know what to think. One thing you can say about him is he’s very much a man of his generation. I don’t know what to think of a lot of it. We’ll find out later, I’m sure. Mr. Spitzer, who is older by a few years, had the old classic kind of sex scandal. He was exposed by the powers that be whose financial chicanery was well on its way to being exposed by Mr. Spitzer. Checkmate. Actually, aside from his personal private activities, Mr. Spitzer had the public good in mind in his work. That’s actually what got him elected governor. However, the good public drops everything when they hear about any kind of extra-marital liaison that a public figure is having. The idea being that public figures should be pure and holy. At least the reformers. I’m not suggesting that these things are not important because they are ... to the individuals involved and no one else. We already know many if not most politicians are into some kind of hanky-panky and/or are corrupt. That's why they sit at the bottom of all respectability polls, duh. People (or at least the mainstream media) pretend it’s one party and not the other. Well, it’s people. It’s us. As far as sex goes, the internet has changed the public attitude, especially for the younger generations. Children are looking at this stuff on the internet, and unsupervised. Period. Forget about thinking how can you stop it because the genie is out of the bottle. How it affects them, what they are thinking, I don’t know. Not a few of them think it’s funny.
I’ve been told Mr. Weiner is leading in the polls. Even Christine Quinn, who is running for mayor is saying he hasn’t proven he deserves a second chance. When I read that I thought: A second chance at what?’ Evidently the public doesn't agree, however. Or more succinctly, doesn't care. Ms. Quinn is a lesbian. Zzzz. Once upon a time a woman of her sensibilities would have been living by the well of loneliness. Solo. Coming out would have been a major scandal. Instead she's running for Mayor of the city at the center of the world and who cares. Now she's a mainstream politician, kind of like a 21st century Doris Day. No scandal there. Zzzzz So this is what they are talking about in New York with all this heat swarming around us. Someone asked me if Silda Wall Spitzer, Mr. Spitzer’s wife of a quarter century, approves of his latest move. I wouldn’t know because she hasn’t told me, but from the little I know of Silda, I’d guess she would. She knows he’s good at his job and he likes to do it, and she knows that that’s what we all need in public servants today. For all I know the same could be said for Mr. Weiner. But remember I know little. And you dear reader, from the way that information is imparted by media today, may know even less because that’s Show Business.
My friend pointed out that if that rumor is so, the child will not be the first of the Monegasque royal family to have a child born out of wedlock. Prince Albert, for example, has three – two daughters and a son – with women to whom he was never married. Charlotte’s brother Andrea has a son with Tatiana Santo Domingo, and they’re not married. Princess Stephanie has a daughter (besides the son and daughter she had with her now former-husband Daniel Ducruet), and even Grandpa Rainier’s mother Princess Charlotte was born outside of marriage and later legitimized – and then named heir presumptive of the throne. And so it was. None of this is a secret (unless you don’t read or don’t care), nor is it a scandal no matter how hard you try. It doesn’t matter anyway because the Grimaldis aren’t politicians. They have a throne. Which I sometimes think is what a lot of our politicians would prefer, and I can understand why, can’t you? Put yourself in their shoes. Or shorts, or whatever. (Just don't tell anybody.) |
|
|
|
Contact DPC here. |