Daily Office Wednesday
La grosse Pomme, vu du comté de la Reine. (Le nord à droite.)
¶ Matins: A look at this week’s Book Review.
¶ Tierce: Within a little more than a week — Eliot Spitzer’s scandal erupted in public only last Monday — the complexion of American politics seems to have changed, and the change is marked by two speeches, delivered, respectively, by Barack Obama and David Paterson.
And don’t miss a Great American Car Story by the Ganome.
¶ Sext: Women of the world (not to be confused with Women of the World — although most of them probably are both) discuss Eliot Spitzer’s lapses. “Bad manners,” says Nancy Lee Andrews, at one point Ringo Starr’s fiancée.
¶ Nones: Confused about which way is up in FreeMarketLand? This report in the Times, which, for all I know, may be a daily feature, does a fine job of connected all the dots with a remarkably clear coherence.
Oremus…
§ Matins. Lots and lots of Maybes this week. Sometimes I wonder: is it me? Is it the mood that I happen to be in when I sit down with each week’s edition? I don’t think so, of course, but of course I wouldn’t.
§ Tierce. Actually, to use a culinary metaphor, it seems as though the political situation has set, like a custard. One moment, you’re stirring a liquid over heat; the consistency of milk, it splashes about a little in the pot. Then, suddenly, it thickens and stops splashing. This is the tricky moment: if the eggs get too hot, they’ll curdle, and the custard will be ruined. Let’s see how far this metaphor works in reality.
§ Sext. I’m still grousing over my somewhat hot-headed response to last week’s scandal. Trying to tease apart the strands of the Spitzer muddle is a penance of sorts.
— Infidelity is wrong,
— But it is nobody else’s business.— Hypocrisy in a government official, especially in a prosecutor, is intolerable,
— Except where sex is concerned. (See Measure for Measure)— Trying to cover up financial transactions so as to deceive one’s spouse, however, is always and everywhere inexcusable.
— The Mann Act applies to procurers, not to their clients.
§ Nones. Of course, the worrisome part is that all the dots can be connected.