Author: R J Adams

When Eliot Spitzer resigns his position as New York governor today it will be the end of his career in politics. Much of the blogosphere is debating the rights and wrongs of his wife standing with him while he acknowledged his assignations with high-class prostitutes, but the argument goes much deeper than that.

It throws the whole concept of American morality into question.

While we have a right to expect our politicians to practice that which they preach, the biblical ethics forced on society by right-wing powers in this country are so ludicrously outdated as to be obsolete. Struggling to maintain a set of ethical rules dating back thousands of years results in a constant stream of public figures, both from politics and religion, falling from grace in a fashion that makes a mockery of the morals they swear to uphold.

Hardly a week goes by that some unfortunate soul is not caught with his pants round his ankles, performing ‘lewd acts’ – whatever that is supposed to mean – with a man, or woman, or animal, definitely not his wife.

Interestingly, another news item to hit the headlines this week has not been connected to Spitzer’s demise. But it should be.

A recent report has noted that an incredibly high percentage of teenage girls in America are infected with sexually transmitted diseases such as clamydia, human papilloma virus, and herpes.^[1] One in every four white teenage girls between the ages of fourteen and nineteen are infected, and nearly half (48%) of black girls of similar age.

The reason is so obvious it hardly bears explanation: ignorance.

Lack of proper sex education; moralistic emphasis on abstinence rather than condom use and proper birth control, and the high-handed approach that US girls just won’t have sex if they’re properly brought up and attend church regularly, are all causes of this unhealthy explosion in disease.

The plain fact is that teenagers will have sex. It’s not possible to stop it because it’s a natural function controlled by hormones. To demand youngsters abstain totally until marriage is not only stupid, it’s plain cruel. Perhaps, in a perfect society it might be feasible, but America is one of the most imperfect society’s on the planet. It runs the length of the spectrum from High Church to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, yet American values demand all its citizens adhere to the same moral standards, as decreed by those who regularly flaunt them, and occasionally – like Eliot Spitzer – get found out.

Mister Spitzer may, today, be wishing he was born French. The French have a much more sensible approach than Americans, or even the British, to morals and ethics. French politicians are expected to perform their duties well, but how they entertain themselves in their spare time is seldom cause for headlines in Gallic newspapers. While President Sarkozy’s recent, steamy, love affair with Carla Bruni caused a few Parisian ‘tut-tuts’, it was more out of boredom with the whole business rather than any sense of moral indignation.

To compare the United States to Europe is to step back in history over one hundred years, to the time Queen Victoria ruled Britain. Then, moral values were biblically pure, as they are in America today. In practice, however, everyone was ‘doing it’ just as much as they ever have since before man first jumped down from the trees.

Today, morals have fallen more into line with reality throughout Europe, though certain nations like France have proved more openly forthright over the issue than others.

America has remained a closed society for years, unaffected by the apparent immorality of the outside world. European visitors find it quaintly amusing that female breasts are fuzzed, and even mildly ‘blasphemous’ comments bleeped out by US TV channels.

It all begs the question: who is right? Have Europe and other secular nations descended the long road to hell and abomination since the nineteenth century, or is America just wallowing in a time-warped pit of its own self-righteousness?

To answer the question it is necessary to define ‘morals’.

Websters defines ‘morals’ as ‘modes of conduct’; rules by which we conduct ourselves. That suggests a rule can be made to which we, as individual human beings, can all adhere.

Nothing is further from the truth. Eliot Spitzer, his long line of precedent politicians and churchmen, and our sexually infected teenage girls are all living proof of that.

Morals are nothing more than a curtain, a veil we draw to obscure our true selves. The occurrences behind the curtain go on as they have since time immemorial, but we pretend they’re not there.

Once in a while, the curtain is lifted, or the veil rent, revealing the true hypocrisy – not of the accused, but of the moral code our minds have convinced us we all happily live under and obey.

Eliot Spitzer’s frolic with a prostitute is a matter for himself and his family. He should resign, but not because of his assignation. His crime was one of pretense. He made a virtue of attacking the actions of others while underhandedly mocking the morals he pretended to uphold.

Prostitution is illegal in this country, as in certain parts of Europe. Yet it is one of the most flourishing and oldest professions on the planet. It has survived, despite moral persecution, because it supplies a universal need, yet it is seen by the moralistic right as a flagship, the hallmark of evil and corrupt immorality in this country.

In truth, the only reason for outlawing it is to keep our moral veil in place.

Meanwhile, that veil will regularly twitch, revealing more and more Eliot Spitzers, fallen politicians and clerics, and teenagers infected by sexually transmitted diseases.

^{[1] BBC News – “STDs rife among US teenage girls.”}

Filed under: Moral low ground

There are many in the US, including some Sparrow Chat readers, who support Hillary Clinton’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination, but her campaign has not proved the runaway success it was once anticipated to be. Much of her persuasion lies in the experience she holds over her major competitor. Or, at least, that’s what she’d have us believe.

In fact, there is little difference between Obama and Clinton when one considers working political experience. Clinton expands her resume by quoting the time she previously spent in the White House. Being First Lady, however, is hardly a suitable curriculum vitae for president, and cannot remotely be considered serious ‘political experience’.

For sure, she gained a certain involvement during her time as First Lady – by access to the Washington elite. The US Establishment welcomes First Ladies with open arms. Hillary Clinton wooed the Washington Establishment for eight years while her husband was president. She became a part of it, and still is.

That fact was displayed recently in the arrogant and conceited suggestion, by both her and Bill Clinton, that Barack Obama agree to become her running mate for Vice President; that he step aside and allow her to be nominated.

The Washington Establishment is awash with arrogance and conceit. Little wonder, then, she misjudged the character of an outsider.

Barack Obama is not part of that elite – at least, not yet. Neither is he prepared to give up his lead in the campaign in order to secure Clinton’s nomination.

It was yet another bad miscalculation by Hillary Clinton; one of a long list that have left her struggling to stay in the running against Obama. Experience may, in her eyes, be an important criteria for choosing the next US president, but a plethora of mistakes, miscalculations, and bad judgments belie her claims to be the right choice.

Frankly, I have no doubt who I’d rather have answering the White House telephone at 3.00am in the morning.

Filed under: Clinton’s cock-ups

1997 was the year a sheep named, “Dolly” was cloned; six billion pairs of eyes turned skywards for a first-ever glimpse of Comet Hale-Bopp; an earthquake near Ardekul, in northeastern Iran, killed at least 2,400 people, and just one week before that dramatic event the Right Honorable Anthony Charles Lynton Blair MP became prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

While the cloning of Dolly was probably unrelated to Tony Blair’s ascension, perhaps we all ought to have paid more heed at the time to the implications of the other two major events, given what transpired over the following decade. But then, hindsight is a wonderful thing.

When Blair first appeared on the political scene in a big way, he was hailed in much the same way Barack Obama is storming America today. Long gray years of Margaret Thatcher, followed by an even grayer John Major, had a depressing effect on the British public. Blair’s cheery, good-natured, smile was a ray of sunshine after a prolonged bout of chilling, winter rain.

To many in America Tony Blair is something of a hero. His staunch support for that country throughout the Iraq War, often at the expense of his relationship with other European leaders, and a friendship with George and Laura Bush, fooled many in the United States into believing this was a truly great and compassionate man.

His political legacy at home tells a somewhat different story, particularly in the later years of his premiership. Just as Margaret Thatcher began as a promising leader and degenerated over the years, so Blair allowed the power of the position to overtake his better judgments. His decision to move the Labour Party from the left and into the center of the political spectrum, was one of his greatest disservices to the British people. It opened the door to a corporate invasion on scales only previously seen in the United States. The Labour Party, previously the defender of the working classes, became a pawn of corporate power leaving the populace with neither voice, nor choice, as both major parties now occupied a near identical position on the political spectrum.

In one fell swoop, Blair demolished a British political system dating back almost a century and replaced it with an American model. All that remained was for the prime minister to become President of the UK, and this Blair set forth to achieve, with alacrity.

He knew there was no way British society would accept an official title, but methodically he drew the reins of power ever closer to his chest, and mimicking the actions of his buddy across the ocean, gradually and slyly became president in all but name.

Like George Bush, he manipulated his parliament into voting for war against Iraq. There can be little doubt the frequent trans-Atlantic visits resulted in much secret discussion on the future of two nations’ fortunes once Iraq was subdued; how the spoils would be divided, and the personal rewards that would become available to both leaders.

When the time came for Blair to relinquish his political post, he chose his moment with great care. Iraq was bogged down in turmoil, his majority in parliament – and hence his power in government – was about to be slashed by a public disaffected by four years of useless and unworthy war.

Blair was still only fifty-four years old and a lucrative career awaited him, not in his home country, but in the land he’d sold out his European neighbors to woo – America. No sooner was his resignation in the mail, than Tony Blair upped sticks and moved to the United States to begin a series of lecture tours that have since reaped him millions of dollars.

Blair’s religious convictions were always kept well under wraps during his time in political office. The British are adamant about the separation of politics and religion and would tolerate no intervention of ‘God’ in their parliament. Once, when Blair was asked in an interview about his Christian faith, his director of strategy and communications, Alastair Campbell, leapt forward and abruptly responded, “We don’t do God.”

On leaving office, however, Blair lost no time in converting to Roman Catholicism, the faith of his wife. Unlike ordinary folk, who visited their local priest over such matters, Blair’s ego led him straight to the top – Pope Benedict XVI, who arranged for none other than the British Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, to be responsible for Blair’s conversion.

Like George W Bush, Blair has admitted to praying and receiving guidance from God over the Iraq war.^[1] Obviously, the Christian God has a real down on Muslims generally, and Iraqi Muslims in particular, having made it clear to both leaders that wreaking apocalyptic suffering on that nation was the right way forward.

Of course, it has to be remembered that God had already inflicted a huge earthquake on Iranian Muslims to celebrate Blair’s prime minister-ship in 1997, so perhaps this latest divine endorsement was not totally unexpected.

It would appear that faith, along with his egotistical power-lust and a demand for wealth, is now driving Tony Blair full-bore. Convinced he has a role to play in uniting the Abrahamic religions he has wangled a part-time job at Yale University teaching, of all things, “Faith and Globalization”. Part-time it maybe, but experts agree it will net him around $200,000 plus a generous expense account.

Yale has an attraction for Mister Blair; his son Euan is currently studying for a Masters degree there after obtaining a generous $100,000 scholarship. Of course, Yale is George Bush’s old educational establishment, which may account for the ease with which both son and father Blair obtained their positions. After all, those Bush/Blair cosy weekends must have produced some rewards, as already suggested.

The peak of Tony Blair’s egotistical endeavor has to be the “Tony Blair Faith Foundation”. In between teaching at Yale; his $150,000-a-time US lecture circuit; envoy to the Middle-East for the Quartet nations (a supposedly unpaid appointment) and advisory positions with the finance houses of J.P. Morgan and Zurich (which each earn him more than $4 million dollars a year), Tony Blair is forming a new charity this summer to ‘bridge the gap’ between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Interestingly, the director appointed by Tony Blair to run the foundation is none other than Jeremy Sinclair, one-time British Tory loyalist, a founding partner and now chairman of advertising agency M&C Saatchi.^[2]

Sinclair was responsible for the British Tory party’s notorious ‘demon-eyes’ campaign against Blair in earlier years……

        

…….. so it is somewhat ironic he should now be holding such a position.^[3]

It seems likely Blair’s manic ego may have caused him to overstep himself on this occasion. Perhaps he just doesn’t realize how much he is despised by Muslims for his role in the invasion of Iraq, and his support for the US alliance with Israel.

If Mister Blair is hellbent on building a bridge between the three Abrahamic religions it is unlikely the majority of the Muslim world will rush to support it.

While he may find Jews prepared to buttress the structure, with no foundations at the Islamic landfall Mister Blair will likely find himself staring at failure from the end of a very long jetty.

There have been a number of political leaders throughout history who have jettisoned their parties in favor of the opposition. Tony Blair has managed to go one step further than that. After dragging the Labour Party, kicking and screaming, to the center of the British political spectrum, he then proceeded to engage himself with the cream of right-wing, conservative society. Among his many close friends are George Bush, Richard Murdoch, Ehud Olmert, Nicholas Sarkozy, and most of the US Republican party. It may not be far from the truth to suggest that Tony Blair, in the space of fifteen years, has moved from left of center to neo-conservative.

Few, in history, have managed such an extreme exhibition of political acrobatics.

^{[1] BBC “Blair ‘prayed to God’ over Iraq”, March 3rd, 2006.}

^{[2] Jeremy Sinclair profile, M&C Saatchi, 2006}

^{[3] “Demon eyes’ guru joins Tony Blair project”, Sunday Times, October 14th, 2007.}

Filed under: Blair’s business