Spitzer’s Passion Play, Delvo’s Passion
March 14, 2008
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer doesn’t have to be with an Asian sex worker for me to talk about him in AsianWeek. The Empire State governor’s fall from grace impacts us more than you think, especially during this election year.
It forces us to revisit the idea of exactly what we want in an elected public official. Do we want someone who doesn’t have to pay for it — with a constituent outside state lines? How about someone who is simply smart enough not to get caught paying for it somewhere? No? Then maybe it’s time to figure out exactly what we’re so offended by in the Spitzer case, filled with enough hypocrisy and irony — especially irony — to satisfy the needs of any number of laundries, Asian or otherwise.
Let’s also keep it in perspective. When I first heard the headlines on the news, it sounded like Spitzer was single-handedly running a house of prostitution. Maybe that would have been better, because then Spitzer would have been a pimp. In some circles, that’s real status.
Alas, Eliot was but a john, who happened to be a high-ranking government official who rose to the top as a crusading, squeaky-clean public moralist.
It really is too bad he’s decided to step down. The public may have gotten more out of him as a public penitent, just in time for Good Friday.
Of course, the bigger problem isn’t gone. High-priced call girls are still doing their thing with high-priced johns. We just don’t know about it yet. And we won’t know about it, because unless it’s someone famous or elected, we don’t care.
But Spitzer pays the price because we want our politicians to be saints. This, of course, is a losing proposition. Politicians are humans. Just like priests. We would like them to be saints too. But as we know, priests come with peccadilloes.
Spitzer also provides a chance to see which we can stomach better: the hypocrisy of our public officials, or our own hypocrisy in general attitudes toward sex and sex workers, especially when it comes to public officials.
Enter Dillon Delvo
When the high and mighty have fallen, a good way to restore faith in public officialdom might be to look at the low and relatively un-mighty.
I offer my friend, Dillon Delvo, 34, a Filipino American who lives in Stockton, Calif. Stockton has been much maligned of late as “ground zero” for subprime foreclosure loans. But it has a more historic designation. At the turn of the 20th century, it was believed to have had the largest Filipino American population outside of Manila. That’s right — before there was a Daly City, there was a Stockton.
When Filipino immigrants came to America, they went to the fields. But their urban center wasn’t the Bay Area; that was too far. There was no Altamont Pass. So the workers made Stockton their home and called their portion of that metropolis Little Manila.
Delvo, along with cohorts like Dawn Mabalon, a Stockton native who’s now a professor of history at San Francisco State University, and Elena Managahas, has fought to redevelop what’s left of that neighborhood under the banner of their Little Manila Foundation. It hasn’t been easy.
During the process, the group bought a historic residence hotel, lost it (Stockton is foreclosure capital of the world, remember), and is working with new owners to continue its idea of a Filipino historical museum. Delvo found himself advocating for the project so much that he essentially stopped working on his multimedia business.
Since he was working so much on behalf of Stockton’s Filipino American community, it seemed natural for him to apply and win an appointment on the Stockton School Board. Some politicos are now trying to convince him to run for an even higher elected office.
This is how public officials are created. They begin as passionate community activists and find themselves thrust to the front. They don’t seek the limelight. It finds them — and not because of scandal.
AAPIP’s PEACH Award
This week, Asian American/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy awarded Delvo the PEACH Award. PEACH is an acronym for Powerful Empowered API Community Honoree, an award established to recognize APA leadership in California’s Central Valley. It also comes with a $5,000 award, made possible by author David Mas Masumot and the James Irvine Foundation.
No one applies for a PEACH. That made the award a surprise to Delvo, but not to friends aware of his constant efforts on behalf of Little Manila and Stockton’s Filipino American community. He’s a great example of how organic the leadership process can be. It’s not about the cold, calculating campaign of a careerist. Leadership comes not out of ego, but out of heart. It’s about compassion, not arrogance. Indeed, previous PEACH winner Blong Xiong went on to become a Fresno City Council member. Based on PEACH winners, how would your favorite politician stack up?
Maybe that’s the problem with elected officials. When it’s no longer a labor of love, when the passion’s gone, ideals are too easily compromised — or prostituted.
emil@amok.com
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