There was some action Thursday at two of New York's top non-inclusive clubs, the Harvard Club and the Harlem Club.  But it's not like you missed anything because you aren't qualified to join either. 

At the Harvard Club seems a couple of its members, Master Eliot Spitzer and Master Lloyd Constantine are having a bit of a scrap.  Eliot doesn't like what Lloyd has written in his soon-to-be-released book about how if Eliot had only listened to Lloyd, Client No. 9 would still be in charge . It's called "Journal of the Plague Year." Since nobody's ever wrong in the Harvard Club (by dint of divine entitlement) the silver spoons are flying, with the ex-governor spittle-ing:

“What Mr. Constantine has written is little more than a self-serving and largely inaccurate interpretation of events mixed with unfounded speculation. That such a close adviser and confidant of my family and member of my administration would choose to write such a book is a fundamental breach of trust.”

Ain't that so classic Spitzer? Grandiose presumption, turgid syntax, zero self-awareness, moralization, victimization, the whole nine. It sounds like he's going after Dick Grasso again.

For Constantine's part, it's like Tojo blaming Hirohito for Japan's annihilation.  Constantine was front and center on Spitzer's cavalcade of clueless, partnered lawyers playing managers of a $132B a year operation.  Which is not to say these people don't make good lawyers, maybe they do, only that screwing up the state in record time was a collective effort--and that managing the state was/is way, way over their arrogated little heads.  We could list it all, chapter and verse, but what's the point?  

Meanwhile, further uptown there was another Summit of the Harlem Club, where (also by dint of divine entitlement) they're never wrong either, and have also pretty much destroyed everything they touch, like crippling two-thirds of New York's representative democracy.   And that they're even discussing Paterson-options--as if he has any--is an indictment of either their judgment or their cupidity.  But this is exactly how they got into the mess they're now in, and exactly how they're not going to get out of the mess they're in now.  We could list it all here, chapter and verse, but like with Spitzer's blazing trail of destruction, there's no use.

Yet there the somber solons of Harlem sat, preening in civic gravitas. Like Nero's bucket-brigade, attempting to rationalize "their" governor's inveterate public lying and five contemporaneous investigations--three of them criminal--while implicitly denying the immediacy of the state's disintegration through an explicitly race-based prism. One thing that sure wasn't discussed was some form of Sherr-una's law legislation to keep that woman's nightmare from becoming somebody else's. Nor did they consider or care that photographics like this are GOP--mailer fodder--on themes like this and like this--for all New York Democrats.  They probably tell each other that the Republicans wouldn't dare.

The Harlem club says that they only want to ensure that the governor gets his "due process," evoking some epic constitutional thematics as if the question is whether the governor should be thrown immediately--without trial--into prison rather than resigning state office. No doubt they conjure "due process" as the E-Z Pass of political self-preservation. And that either New Yorkers are stupid enough to buy that or that they're stupid enough to genuinely believe themselves--or both. This "due process" red herring is nothing but a gussied up version of the Kevin Parker rationale: After chasing down and attacking a New York Post photographer, accusing the photographer of instigating it to a literally whipped-up Brooklyn crowd, then after arrest declaratively stating: "I am a victim and this is a miscarriage of justice."   So give that man his "due process," he really, really needs it.  

But ultimately what the Harlem Club says or does really doesn't matter, they're like a color-coded country club or maybe like network news, nobody pays attention to it any longer save themselves, the MSM and senior citizens.  And it's probably all good because each ducat in political capital they waste on this governor is one less ducat of political capital they have to screw something else up at a later date.  And the longer the governor stays in office, the more they bleed.

So hopefully the Uptown guys really had at it Thursday night at Sylvia's. (Serious soul-food fans: if/when in DC you need to go here!). 

At the end of the day, the common core principle of the Harvard and Harlem clubs--and seed of their respective self-destruction--is that both presume to have some kind of proprietary ownership of New York State; the Harvard Club's ownership was based on some platonic notion of the self-anointed philosopher king(s) while the Harlem Club ownership is based on historical grievance or accounts payable.  And given such metaphysical investment, each had a suicide-murder pact with themselves and New York State.  In other words, keeping Paterson--or Spitzer--in office is far more important than the state incinerating.

The final unifying theme of the Harvard and Harlem clubs is that both despise--and blame--Andrew Cuomo for the all the crap they've gotten themselves into. The Spitzer people going so far as labeling him "an animal."

As to whether Paterson should stay or go, or who's to blame, Michael Goodwin of the New York Post puts it this way:

While voters are hardly innocent -- we did elect Spitzer and Paterson -- we don't deserve to be punished by their presence any longer.

Nor with their club members either.

Submitted by: John Ross