Excusing Spitzer
“As predictable as a college freshman telling me that the ’A’ sewn on Hester Prynne’s dress symbolizes puritanical hypocrisy were the commentaries about the puritanical hypocrisy of the prosecution of men (like Eliot Spitzer) for engaging the services of a prostitute.
“The charges of ’Puritanism’ echo those made during the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair, and feature such notables as Huffington Post’s Chris Weignet asking us to ’get beyond our puritanical roots’ in a commentary titled ’In Defense of Hookers.’ The Economist saw the Spitzer affair as the latest example in American history of ’Puritanism deranging the law.’
“Legal and ethical scholar Martha Nussbaum, whose feminist ’caring’ ethic fills college anthologies, begins an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial, ’Eliot Spitzer, one of the nation’s most gifted and dedicated politicians, was hounded into resignation by a Puritanism and mean-spiritedness that are quintessentially American.’ She then expresses her ’caring’ for ’sex workers’ — the latest group of the oppressed in the Marxist universe of the American university.
“The Chronicle of Higher Education appropriately gathered such commentaries in its March 28th issue, appending a note by Robert Laslsz about the ’perennial hot-button issue’ of the legalization of prostitution. He comments, ’What’s different about the present discussion is that there’s now economic, anthropological and sociological analysis of sex work upon which to draw.’
“Yes, indeed, thanks to all those research grants!”
— Mary Grabar, writing on “The Letter ’A,’ Spitzer, and the Misrepresentation of Puritanism,” March 30 at Townhall.com
Forbidden words
“Laissez-faire. It’s a policy that made Starbucks vastly successful. But don’t try to put that phrase on a customized Starbucks Card.
“The cards are supposed [to] be personalized to reflect customers’ tastes and uniqueness. They are available in a range of colors, often given as gifts and used by regular customers who prefer to prepay for their java.
“But when my friend Roger Ream, president of the Fund for American Studies, received a Starbucks gift card for Christmas, he found there was a limit to how personalized a card could be. His card required him to customize it on the company’s Web site. So he went to the site and requested that the phrase ’Laissez Faire’ be printed on his card. A few days later he was informed that the company couldn’t issue such a card because the wording violated company policy.
“Starbucks’s company policy is this: ’We review each card before printing it to make sure it meets our personalization policy. We accept most personalization requests, but we can’t honor every one. Some requests may contain trademarks that we don’t have the right to use. Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate (such as threatening remarks, derogatory terms, or overtly political commentary) or wouldn’t want to see on Starbucks-branded products.’
“Is the phrase ’laissez-faire’ threatening? Only to officious bureaucracy, I would think. So, it must be that the phrase is considered to be ’inappropriate’ by corporate Starbucks.
“But why should it be considered inappropriate? The phrase itself is an imperative. It’s French for ’leave us alone,’ more or less.”
— David Boaz, executive vice president of the Cato Institute, writing on “Starbucks and ’Laissez Faire’ ” in Monday’s Wall Street Journal
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