There’s a scene I really like in King Lear, which is on my mind because it’s bloody windy outside and but for the fact that I have to work indoors, I’d probably be outside in my dressing gown ranting on the moors with the best of them. I don’t remember the scene word for word, but it’s the moment when Lear’s inflated sense of himself causes his fortunes to unravel. His youngest daughter, the apple of his eye, Cordelia, says she loves him as much as she does, no more, no less. Her scheming sisters in the meantime are busy buttering daddy up before doing the Shakespearean equivalent of cutting granddad’s tags and leaving him in a park so they can take his stuff. Cordelia is a real I am what I am kinda gal. To the old man, however, Cordelia’s lack of flowery language somehow doesn’t go down too well: she gets the heave ho, and her sisters get everything else, at least for most of the play. She accepts who she is and it’s for the world to accept that, not the other way around. Enter Eric Spitzer, governor of New York, has a surname that means "pencil sharpener" in German. This is certainly appropriate, given that he has definitely been putting his lead in the wrong shaft, as it were. This week, the governor of New York State admitted having used the services of a call girl ON VALENTINES DAY, before doing something way more important, such as going home to his wife, or something like that. The man was on the political ascent, having taken on corporate misdealing as NY’s Attorney General. His reputation as an Elliot Ness-style corporate corruption buster meant that he had the potential go as far as he liked, perhaps becoming the first bald geeky guy to be in power since Anthony Hopkins in Amistad. And at 47, he's the political equivalent of a foetus. Twas not to be. Spitzer reminds me of an unctuous, sleazy Lear. Lear rejected truth and Spitzer did so for the same reason - vanity. He had the world at his feet, the potential to go further, and instead ended his career in a spectacular belly-flop of hubris, which could potentially damage Clinton’s already ropey campaign to beat Barack Obama to being the first [insert novelty] president of the USA. Furthermore, whereas financial ill-behaviour can sometimes be brazened out, as evinced here at home, or by John McCain’s recent problems, sex is a different kettle of fish, particularly in the States. Bill Clinton nearly went that way, but got away with it because it was essentially a personal matter and the case against him was partisan. Spitzer, on the other hand, was using prostitutes, and will end up paying for it in every sense.
