It was apparently a suicide. How strange, and sad. Last July we spoke with her on the phone, back when she was in high spirits about her upcoming legal dispute. Needless to say, it didn’t go well for her, convicted on all counts and due to be sentenced next month to a multi-year jail term. All of her assets had been seized long before under ridiculous civil forfeiture laws.
I think all the members of the team agree that it is time to retire DC Phone List. In case you don’t remember, here is the background, here is the Hill article, and here is my On the Media radio interview.
A sad case of many lives ruined on every side with no benefits for anyone.
What a waste. As I said at the time, this sort of tabloid focus does no one any good. What should matter to employers is how well people do their jobs, not what happens in their private lives.
Politicians are our employees. We’ve no more right to spy on their private lives as your employer does on yours. If they’re doing their job well, passing the right laws and voting against the wrong ones, who gains by forcing them to resign and replacing them with people who don’t?
There are critical issues facing this country right now. Maybe we should consider focusing on them rather than driving people to suicide for private indiscretions.
I think the point here is that at least some of the individuals outed by Palfrey’s list were the very same politicians who railed about “family values” – and supported precisely the same sort of draconian laws that spurred to this whole tragic case.
So yeah, I’m perfectly willing to give the politicians a pass – as long as everyone else involved gets a pass too. Among the many injustices of this case was the vast discrepancy in consequences suffered by participants on different sides of the same activity.
Well at least 3 of 4 agree that it’s time to retire it, I guess. I of the opinion that it should stay up for a bit longer.
I also agree with Kevin’s post.
I think analogizing politicians to employees is flawed because employees don’t pass rules their bosses must then abide by. Politicians on the other hand pass laws that the rest of us must follow. Many of these laws try to control what we do in our private lives (like sodomy laws). If a politician tries to impose his morality (as Kevin said) onto the rest of us by legislating and then in is guilty of violating that morality himself then s/he is more than fair game.
“If they’re doing their job well, passing the right laws and voting against the wrong ones, who gains by forcing them to resign and replacing them with people who don’t?”
That rhetorical question has too many assumptions (for one that there’s such a politician that passes the right laws and votes against the wrong ones) and for another that whomever replaces him wouldn’t do the same. The point is not to expose politicians for the sake of exposing but to expose hypocritic ones.
“There are critical issues facing this country right now.”
Agreed
“Maybe we should consider focusing on them rather than driving people to suicide for private indiscretions.”
I don’t think the DC Madam killed her self for “private indiscretions” but rather for a rather public travesty the DOJ perpetrated on her. There has not been one instance of a suicide of a former client as far as we know.
If a politician is passing morality laws because the people who voted for him want him to, then if he doesn’t agree with them himself, he’s still doing his job. No one agrees with everything their employers want them to do.
The fault here isn’t hypocritical politicians, it’s people who require them to be so to be elected.
Of course the existence of the DC Phone list gives no one a pass. It doesn’t differentiate between those politicians who “impose their morality” on people and those who do not. It doesn’t differentiate from executives or anyone who’s private lives this could ruin.
“If a politician is passing morality laws because the people who voted for him want him to, then if he doesn’t agree with them himself, he’s still doing his job. No one agrees with everything their employers want them to do.”
Well, that’s the next addendum to “Profiles In Courage” right there.
Not to deny the culpability of “the public”, as it were, but public officials choose not just how to vote on this issue or that, but also priorities, the precise content of the laws, and the tenor of the public statements they make. It trivializes the responsibility of leadership to say that essentially no politician can ever be expected to exercise his or her own judgment, much less restraint in publicly inveighing against a practice that they (in Vitter’s case at least) engage in.
As far as your other point – that non-public figures are also potential casualties – that’s a fair point. However, the only way that society confronts the injustice of the system is when that injustice isn’t allowed to be just swept under the rug by punishing only the people that society finds, for lack of a better word, “icky” (despite *their* privacy rights being just as valid as those of the clients).
Or, to put it another way – is it fair that the providers serve jail time, but the clients aren’t even publicly embarrassed, much less prosecuted? And if not, how would you suggest the situation be rectified?