letting her get rich after being used for a Spitzer sting will set a very bad precedent

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The Jersey whore who has become famous overnight has been offered enormous deals from Hustler, Penthouse, is making money from the downloads of her sluttish, normally untalented song.

Why should she get rich for breaking the law. The FBI used Spitzer's dalliances with her to break him. But there are laws against her prostitution and now she looks like she'll make a fortune off her notoriety. Aren't there laws against this?

Frankly, I oppose laws against prostitution. It is a behavior, like drug abuse, that can ruin people, but so can drinking alcohol or gambling. We have too many crimes on the books.

But since it is a crime and since this woman was used by the Bush admin FBI to bring down a Democratic leader with presidential potential, I don't want to see the woman rewarded. I want to see her receive equal justice.

Failure to give her the full attention of the law, failure to prevent her from being massively rewarded, will create a precedent for future gotcha setups by rogue government agencies that have been taken over by partisan leaderships.

I should be clear. Spitzer was an ass and a fool to do what he did to his family, his career. But that's just part of the picture.

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Update: After reading 30+ comments, mostly disagreeing with me, here's where I lay this out a bit more, having had some more time to think about it.

The TV news had just announced that Hustler and Penthouse were in a bidding war, exceeding a million dollars. My posting above was almost a kneejerk reaction to it, certainly only partly formed. So here's a longer take on it.

I see Spitzer as a tragic hero-- one who has taken on and beaten some of the most powerful corporate tyrants and criminals, who has incurred their enmity and revenge. This girl who was a pawn has the potential to become a celebrity, a star.

No, I'm no Simon, from American Idol, though I've run a record company. But I don't want girls to think that if they're lucky, they can live in fancy NY city digs, make tens of thousands a week, become millionaires, if they become .... whores. Oh. You don't like that word, not nice enough. How about boy toys, pay for play boy bling, love kittens... whatever. She sells her body to a guy old enough to be her father-- perhaps not as despicable as a general who lies for his commander in chief, like Colin Powell, or Bush appointees who de-regulate or ignore regulations in industries where failure to regulate leads to death or environmental damage. These people are also whores. I used the word whore because it IS an ugly word, and that is what the young lady is. 

But Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky led to a generation that was enamored with and fascinated with oral sex. Not necessarily a terrible thing, but clearly an unintended consequence of the mediaization and publicizing of the circumstances of Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky.

I don't want to see a new generation grow up romanticizing and glorifying the success and fame of Eliot Spitzer's whore. Already, I'm sure that the body workers who serviced the other numbers on the list on which Spitzer was number nine, are disappointed that THEY have not been so "lucky" to be THE ONE to get all the attention. I expect soon enough, other women who serviced Spitzer will come forward, trying to jump on the Penthouse, Hustler, celibrity gravy train.

I would rather the narrative be that this women was a victim, that she was used by Spitzer and the FBI and the pimps who sold her services and that she was a loser in the deal, that selling her body, her self esteem, her integrity was a losing proposition. That's the message I'd like to see become the predominant narrative that unfolds from this story.

Yes, I do agree that prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes should register, get checked regularly for health and there should never be circumstances where sex slaves, like today's MSNBC is exploiting for it's titillating nature, as a tie in to this Spitzer story, are abused against their will.

I don't want teenagers, glued to their TVs following the latest personal failings and crises of Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, to see Miss Ashley Alexandra Dupre as a heroic, inspiring role model.

Letting her come out of this as a winner will do exactly that. I don't want parents to have to go through living with the fact that their daughter is an exotic dancer or prostitute because Ashley comes out being rewarded for her behavior.

I don't want the FBI to discover that it has thousands of willing, enthusiastic volunteers who, for some easy government money, will approach wealthy or powerful men with weak will power. I don't want pimps to be able to glamorize whoring and make it seem more attractive and enticing to kids who are already struggling with broken families, mental illness and drug abuse.

The media and the justice system have an opportunity here. If things continue as they are going, then Ashley Alexandra Dupre will get her moments of fame, take the money, and hopefully not be duped, used and prostituted in other ways. I'd rather see an outcome that portrays her as a loser, as a tramp who made bad choices, sold her integrity, her self esteem and dignity. Failure to portray her as a loser will make it far more likely that many more young women, even teens, will follow her path.

There's definitely something to allowing people to do what they want. But when a person who makes questionable choices that will affect her and her relationships for the rest of her life becomes a public person, things change.

If the media are going to have an affect on the judiciary system that makes choices on how to handle this woman, then here, my choice is to lean towards thinking about how this will affect our culture, our children and their future. I say Ashley Alexandra Dupre should be charged with prostitution and part of her sentence should be to do public service announcements about what's wrong with prostitution. I say part of her sentence should be to use the money she makes from Penthouse or Hustler to educate young people about the dangers and risks of selling one's body for money. Pay her a decent salary for the next 20 years or so to warn people away, to dissuade them from doing what she's done. That would be a way to turn this story into one with a positive outcome. And if the FBI broke usual rules to bust Spitzer, outing him, then punish those who were in the decision loop for doing so. John Conyers should investigate the circumstances of the FBI and bank investigations.

The fact is that "body workers" prostitutes, Geishas, courtesans, etc., have been a part of cultures for a long time. I'll say it again. Selling sex should not be illegal. We have too many crimes putting too many people in jail. But even if it was legal nationwide, I wouldn't want to see Ashley Alexandra Dupre turned into a celebrity who would inspire a generation. There is a serious risk of this. I realize there are other ways of looking at this, as commenters have proposed. But it's not just about Ashley Alexandra Dupre. It's not just about Elliot Spitzer, who deserves his fate.

This is not simple stuff. People want to know about who Spitzer dallied with. It makes sense for the media to fulfill that desire by the public. But we, the media, can take a stand on the narrative, or we can just serve fresh, red meat, for the audience to digest raw, or as they choose. My choice was to take a stand.

 

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

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Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

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To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

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