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One of my earliest Jewish memories was going to see the film Quiz Show when it came out in 1994. At the time, I didn't know much about the quiz show scandals that had rocked American television in the 1950s. Which was probably a good thing, because, having since learned more about them and in particular about the almost euphoric reverence Americans had had for television before them, I probably would not have gone.

What I remember most about that celluloid treatment of the story of Herbert Stempel and Charles Van Doren was the final scene, at the Congressional hearings the scandals made necessary. In the scene, Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes) finally admits to having been in on the fix of Twenty One. Various members of congress applaud his courage in finally coming forward.

And then, one congressman from New York, "a different [and less patrician] part of New York" than Van Doren, refuses to go along with the acolodates. Instead, he vigorously castigates Van Doren, saying he deserves no praise simply for "finally, at last, telling the truth."

A few weeks ago, I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon an episode of American Justice dealing with the quiz show scandals. Herbert Stempel was being interviewed, and I was shocked by what he had to say of his life, and what Bill Kurtis had to say of Van Doren's life, following the scandals. It is well known that Charles Van Doren lost his position on the Today show as well as his position as a lecturer at Columbia University. But he was eventually able to re-establish a respectable, white-collar career, eventually even becoming an editor of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

Herb Stempel, on the other hand, was permanently tarred by his involvement in the scandal--and not for having benefited from the fix. Instead, as he told American Justice, every time he went in for a job interview after that, he was immediately identified not as the man who revealed Twenty One's shenanigans, but as the man "who brought down Charlie Van Doren." While he did eventually become a social studies teacher in New York, the taint of his involvement in the scandal never left him as it eventually did the better-heeled Van Doren.

I thought of Quiz Show today while watching coverage of Eliot Spitzer's resignation as New York governor. In many ways, the scene was redolent of the '90s--a Democratic politician and former attorney refusing to admit culpability for something he very plainly did, avoiding any language that could be used against him at trial--but for me it evoked Quiz Show a lot more, because of the clear class biases that surrounded what coverage I saw of it, and what I expect to happen as a result of it.

The News Hour with Jim Lehrer had three attorneys, one of them David Boies of recount 2000 fame--discussing what was like to happpen to Spitzer now that his involvement in a prositution ring has been revealed.

One of these attorneys discussed the interstate aspect of Spitzer's solicitation. He said that, in the District of Columbia, it's unlikely for a john to be prosecuted unless he is nailed in a police sting. Basically, in the nation's capital, you have to proposition an undercover cop to get into any trouble for solicitation. Undercover stings take place almost exclusively in the context of street prostitution, not call girl operations or "escort" services. Which means, essentially, that the police nail the kind of men who solicit low-class prostiutes but not the kind of high-class hookers who serviced Spitzer. The chances are therefore slim that Spitzer will face prosecution in D.C., where at least some of his assignations took place.

As appalling as this was to hear, I then got to listen to David Boies essentially say that Spitzer did not deserve prosecution for his involvement in a high-class prostitution ring--that being forced out of the governorship was punishment enough.

The worst part of this, though, was when one of the attorneys suggested that high-profile people suffer worse consequences for their crimes than other people. I guess this attorney must have been out of the country when Johnny Cochran told a Los Angeles jury that "if the gloves don't fit, you must acquit."

I am horrified that Spitzer will most likely not face prosecution for what he did. Part of my horror stems from the way I view prostitution. I do not see prostitution as a "victimless crime." To me, prostitution has a very obvious victim--the prostitute. I do not believe that an act of prostitution is ever a truly consensual sex act. And in fact, this is the way some governments (though, sadly, not our own) world treat prostution. In Sweden, for instance, it is illegal to purchase a prostitute's services but not to sell those services.

But I am angrier that Spitzer's social class and (former) political prominence may shield him from the consequences of what he did. I don't know where the idea comes from that the high-class, white-collar consequences of disgrace and loss of prominence are somehow equal to the much more real consequence of jail time. Admittedly, johns in the District of Columbia rarely go to jail, but rather to something one of the News Hour attorneys identified as "john school" (what that could possibly be, I cannot fathom). The message D.C. is sending is pretty simple: pick up a hooker in your '83 Bonneville and you will be punished. Call Empire Escorts for horizontal company in your Watergate suite on a lobbying trip, and you won't.

This to me is the discrepancy at the heart of that line in Quiz Show. It's stupefying how little the world has really changed in 50 years. We still don't hold the wealthy, well-connected, and powerful to the same standards of behavior we expect of the general public. We let Paris Hilton out of jail on the flimsiest of excuses. And we let men get off scot free for soliciting hookers just because they do it in an Armani suit, via a Blackberry.

Somewhere in New York, I'm sure Herb Stempel is shaking his head. And I'm shaking my head with him.