And the irony meter explodes
(posted by Angelica)
According to sex workers’ advocate Juhu Thukral on Democracy Now, ex-governor Spitzer did more than persecute prostitution rings as an NY attorney-general. As a governor, he actively pushed for tougher penalties for, um, those in his current position. You must have a heart of stone if you don’t find a little bit of gleeful schadenfreude in that.
JUHU THUKRAL: Last year, New York State passed anti-trafficking law, and it’s actually one of the toughest laws in the country. And Eliot Spitzer was very important in pushing the law through. We had been working on the law for the last couple of years. But there was a great deal of controversy around certain elements of the bill. And, for example, we opposed a provision that he pushed through—we and a numerous other advocates—which actually enhanced the penalties against clients of prostitutes.
And our perspective is, this is a trafficking law; let’s leave it focused on trafficking and on traffickers. And also, the more that you go after clients and customers of prostitutes, the less likely they are to actually come forward when you have knowledge, for example, of a woman that you’ve seen who’s in danger.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I don’t give a farthing where Eliot Spitzer or any other guy dips his wick — tho Mrs. Spitzer and their kids may well and properly care. But I do care that he fought to send to prison many others who did what he also, for some time apparently, had been doing with his wick.
Schadenfreude in overdose amounts on that one.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Sorry, but non-stone hearts are probably less prone to malicious feelings. Unless “gold” is a kind of stone.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I take ‘heart of stone’ to mean hearts that harbor just about no feelings at all, either malicious or otherwise.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
When I hear the word “Schadenfreude”, it brings truly malevolent images to mind. Nazi commanders grinning upon hearing that the Warsaw Jew who escaped that morning bled to death from the injuries sustained getting past the barbwire… that kind of thing.
Maybe the fact that I first encountered the word in high school while reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and similar histories has something to do with the images it evokes. From what I saw from a quick web search, it appears the word has been used more frequently and less negatively in English over the last ten years. It’s still not a word I’d ever use in that context, though.