Why do smart people do dumb things?

Why do we all take risks that we know are not worth it? The list is interminable: smoking, drinking, super-sizing your order at McDonalds, going to McDonalds, unprotected sex, promiscuity, cheating on your partner, drugs, not going to the gym, ignoring your mother’s phone calls, speeding around Barcelona on a motorbike, going at 160 km per hour on the highway when the speed limit is 110 . . . .

Why is it so good to be so bad?

Bill Clinton had his Monica Lewinsky. Sarkozy has his Carla Bruni. And now Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York, has his Emperor’s Club V.I.P. People are calling for his resignation after it was made public that he was “Client-9″ at a high-class prostitution ring with a taste for petite American brunettes. According to prosecutors, the Emperor’s Club operated in London, Paris, Miami and other cities, and charged between $1,000 and $5,500 an hour.

Spitzer, better than anyone else, should have known better. As attorney general, he made his career by angrily and enthusiastically hunting anyone and everyone that committed a crime, including members of prostitution rings, which he denounced as rife with human trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering.

Now it seems that the sheriff was also an outlaw.

I’m trying not to judge him. As Britney Spears famously explained, “I’m not that innocent.” I’ve made my share of mistakes. I have my “bad boy” streak. Part of getting older is coming to grips with one’s own imperfections . . . realizing that youthful idealism is refreshing, but at the end of the day, we’re all very flawed human beings full of contradictions and hypocrisies that cause pain to ourselves and to our loved ones.

Good people do bad things.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck.

(By the way, the reference to “the spirit is willing . . .” is from the New Testament (Matthew 26:41), where Jesus tells his disciples on the night before he was crucified: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The point is that Jesus himself was struggling with temptation, but he overcame it, unlike the weaker disciples.)