Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Sex scandals: Media's favorite pastime
By David Ward
Daily Toreador (Texas Tech)
03/14/2008

(U-WIRE) LUBBOCK, Texas — Today, many of you no longer are on campus and have decided to take your Spring Break early and go do whatever it is that you need to do to relieve the stress of making it halfway through your semester.

Some of you may be drinking away your problems - such as grades - on a beach or on a snow-capped mountain. Some of you may be going to shows in Austin, such as myself. And some of you may be sitting around watching television and being lazy.

For those of you that are going to be taking the laid back, easy break, you are in for quite the treat - a new sex scandal.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "Well, that happened on Monday, it is now Friday, there is no way they can pull out more information on a governor who I just heard about for the first time."

Oh, how you have no faith in the sensationalized world of American news.

Eliot Spitzer is the first big sex scandal of the year, and boy, has everybody been waiting for it. As a media gormandizer, I have seen the pattern fall into place just like any other steaming scandal that has happened in the past few years.

First, there is the initial break: The pundits scamper about, biting at the bit for more information they can use to destroy another life. Because, honestly, can you think of a better feeling than cutting the throat of a promising public life career with facts?

Well, I can think of a few things, but they usually cost an exorbitant amount of money.

Then there is the microscopic look at the individual's public life and how he or she got elevated to his or her limelight stance. And my favorite part of it all is usually there is a nugget of irony involved that just makes me giddy.

With Ted Haggard, Larry Craig and Mark Foley, there was their lively stance against homosexuality. It destroyed families across this fine nation, was their rally cry. It was strong, assertive and factual: It was destroying their own families from the inside.

The tasty chocolate center surrounding the Spitzer's case is that while he was the attorney general of the state, he was working to oust high-end prostitution rings around the state. Apparently, he left his favorite alone.

If you've been keeping track, you know of the governor's record of being this "Mr. Clean" character. He was a proponent of stopping corruption on Wall Street, passing wiretapping bills to clean up government practices and - my personal favorite - taking a stance against record companies who participated in payola practices.

All these feats have been highlighted by the stories circulating around the wires for a few days now. As I am writing this, the prostitute Kristen's photo - who's real name is Ashley Alexandra Dupre - just has been released to the public, and you can bet the good ol' boys Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are doing their best to get her on their shows to talk about what Spitzer is really like. I mean really like.

CNN already has done a profile of sorts about Dupre, looking at her MySpace page and citing some of her favorite artists and her reasons for moving to New York and why she is a prostitute. Hopefully, they will cover Spitzer's MySpace page soon. I bet his profile song is "Roxanne" by the Police.

So, if you thought this story was over, just wait; there are more charges and allegations that could come about from this. The way he moved the funds around to pay for these exploits, the owner of the Web site who may be linked to the IRS and, hopefully, a list of other participants.

Trust me, folks, this thing is just about to get good. And thankfully, it was a heterosexual affair, so it's fun for the whole family.

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