The fall of Eliot Spitzer has been all the buzz here in NYC.  While it's got some folks understandably talking about whether prostitution should be illegal, the public outcry is also a potent reminder of the degree to which we associate sex with sin.

It's right there in the Garden of Eden, really--I don't mean literally, but as a moral archetype.  On one level it's a children's story about our complex relation to sex. Partaking of the fruit of the tree is a source of transcendence and adult self-awareness, giving us the power to create; having children also binds us to work and inflicts blinding pain.

When someone like Spitzer gets caught, for many people the act signifies a repeat of Adam's folly--the assumption that one can engage in sex free from responsibility, as if it's all play for one's own pleasure.  Part of this response is judgment; part of it is envy; neither is particularly favorable to him.  Perhaps if there were a sense that he, a la Clinton, felt our pain folks would be a tad more merciful, but Spitzer's own actions as a moral avenger pretty much seal his fate.

On a lighter note, all the hullaballoo brought to mind one of my favorite songs from last year--the old Tin Pan Alley parody "My Angel Put the Devil in Me" by Murray Gold, from "The Daleks in Manhattan" in Doctor Who Series 3.  The song captures how the music of the 20s and early 30s could be graphically obscene without using a single nasty word.  Listen carefully and you'll hear a musical echo of the biblical Fall as a sexual act, from serpentine seduction to the Tree of Life growing tall to the wistful yet boistrous afterglow.