Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
The Alex Gibney film, Client 9, follows the career of the wild-west-esque New York State Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer.
The film chronicles his rise in the political arena as a guy who played hardball with Wall Street by prosecuting white-collar criminals, pushing for regulation and reform of the markets, and taking a strong stance on New York City’s illegal rackets.
The only problem was, his “hard-balling” extended beyond the political arena into a scandalous affair that lost him his governors seat (and possibly a presidential bid) and caused a rollback of the financial reforms he had put into place, which ended up working out well for the taxpayers…
The film makes some pretty strong points, and serves as an allegory for the risks of power. The term, “drunk on power,” comes to mind: when one is intoxicated, one’s judgment is the first thing affected. This seems to apply well to those in the highest of offices and positions of power, authority, and influence. It is baffling how some of the most virtuous people (superficially) get caught up in the very things they fight against.
The film shows us that vice makes no party distinction: bleeding-heart democrats and warmonger republicans all get caught up in the same shit. It references the fable of Icarus, and serves as a warning to those who reach too high. When we, as fallible humans, are given wings, the seeming absolute freedom makes it all too easy for us to neglect the consequences of the actions in our personal lives (the classic: fall from grace). And in the lives of politicians, personally breaking the law is more than just a crime: it is a breach of contract with the people you represent. It is the ultimate hypocrisy, and a slap in the face of taxpayers.
Have you ever listened to you favorite band, and then found out the lead singer is a terrible person? At the time it seems hard to believe: that someone whose music speaks to you turns out to be a lie, or simply the work of a producer. Does that mean we should hate the music, or can we still have a connection with the music, and disconnect it from the personal exploits of the band? The band is obviously made up of hypocrites, but you can still look past it and focus on the homage they pay to something greater than themselves. It goes along with the old saying, “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” What does that mean? It means that sometimes we know what the right thing to do is, even if we are not doing it.
Need a more relevant example? Let’s keep it political:
Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves: true. He was the man that brought us the Emancipation Proclamation. He was also a slave-owner. Are we to believe that the Emancipation Proclamation is meaningless because Abraham Lincoln was a slave-owner? Absolutely not, and to say so is to make an analytical fallacy. This ties in to the story of Eliot Spitzer. He tackled crime, and changed the face of Wall Street. The problem was that in his fight he made some powerful enemies along the way, enemies that had endless amounts of money to wage personal wars. He was found to have been involved in an illegal prostitution ring, and resigned from office. But did this mean his financial reforms imposed on a prosperous but morally bankrupt institution was wrong? Absolutely not! This did not stop republicans from rolling back the Spitzer team’s financial reforms as soon as they got the opportunity.
So what did ArtePolitik get from Client 9? That Eliot Spitzer was the worst thing to happen to Wall Street, and the best thing to happen to the average American investor/taxpayer. Spitzer is a morally fallible character who was led to the dark side like so many other democrats and republicans before him. The Republican rollbacks of Spitzer’s policies were more of an exposure of the political agenda of the Republican Party, and their true feelings toward the average American holder of mutual funds. Don’t believe me? Just look up “late trading.” It is disgusting, illegal, and Spitzer caught some powerful people with their pants down. It dealt mostly with mutual funds and hedge funds, and thanks to the fall of Spitzer’s regulatory prowess, the manipulation of these hedge funds caused a global market collapse, while the rich got richer.
ArtePolitik recommends seeing this film in theatres, partly because looking at the media’s post-affair-scandal “shame photos” look so hilarious on the big screen. All jokes aside, this film is relevant to our times. It debuted on November 5th, and in the opinion of ArtePolitik, this was a week late…
