On Spitzer

This blog has focused a lot recently on the neuroscience part of the rooting. Because I'm a geek. But, my interest in mucking about with neurons and synapses and dendrititic spines is two-sided. At least.

The motivation for stepping out the door onto this journey was deep curiosity (mixed with gin and fear) about how do that dance with your child that roots them and frees them at the same time.


This kid. Growing in my wife.

Then along comes this implosion of a life, Elliot Spitzer, the first major public figure to go black hole since I became a proto-father, and it captures my attention like the glowing tip of a branding iron.

How were these two people, Elliot and Ashley brought together for their rootless encounter in that hotel?

Spitzer's biography is widely known but crucially incomplete. But from the young woman, beyond some music, she is a a few inert photographs and the crippled biography.

But, my path has not been easy. When I was 17, I left home. It was my decision and I've never looked back. Left my hometown. Left a broken family. Left abuse. Left an older brother who had already split... I have been alone. I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless.

But, I survived, on my own.

- from her MySpace page

Contrast the real life story with the story spun on the emperor's club website:

We specialize in introductions of: fashion models, pageant winners and exquisite students, graduates and women of successful careers (finance, art, media etc…) to gentlemen of exceptional standards... Each of our companions is a product of an exceptionally fine background and a success in her right.

I don't pity her. She made her choices and wears "survivor" like a mantle. But, as an aside, why did she have to survive THIS particular thing?

I reserve my pity for the lost Spitzer boy's self-loathing.

People think it was hubris and that he must have been a fraud, but that’s not right,” another aide said of the former governor. “He was a very good man who lost himself... He couldn’t meet the expectations of the public or the expectations he set for himself.

- from Sifting the Wreckage for the Real Eliot Spitzer in the NYTimes

He was clearly a man who left a trail of alienation and misery.

Two people, together, in that hotel room. Never two people more alone. Did they think this was the best they deserved? A financial transaction and physical coupling? When did he come to believe that this was what he was worthy of? It feels, from what I've read, that it was a long time ago.

And how do inoculate our kid from that lonely ignorance of the goodness in the world?