The real Kristen

Here is the MySpace page of singer Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the real name, or rather the professional name, of the call girl “Kristen” who met with Gov. Eliot Spitzer at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington D.C. on February 13. She writes a great deal about the hard times she’s gone through in her life, and her slogan is, “What destroys me, strengthens me.”

So now even prostitutes are making that Nietzschean line their motto. Its popularization began with Rosanne Barr 20 years ago.

However, isn’t the original, “What fails to destroy me, strengthens me”? “What destroys me strengthens me” makes no sense.

And here is an article on her in today’s New York Times. Her original name is Ashley Youmans. She ran away from her home in New Jersey at age 17, though now she says she has her life together and loves who she is.

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Mark K. writes:

This girl, like Monica Lewinsky, is an example of today’s young amoral female. In the old days prostitutes used to be “dirty whores” (I read about ‘em) with no pretensions towards art or morality. Today’s young female can climb into bed one day and read poetry the next. And see nothing wrong or incompatable between the two. Screw on Monday and read Teilhard de Chardin on Tuesday. Why not make money off one persona while preserving another one underneath? Sex is what keeps them alive; music and poetry is what keeps them going.

Poetry and music these days purposefully distort old maxims. This is the new type of art—take the familiar and personalize it through some twist. Take Nietzsche and invert him. The Last Man of History—the young amoral female …with a fictitious persona and poetic fake name.

LA replies:

And didn’t Lewinsky quote D.H. Lawrence a good deal? She saw her sessions with Clinton as a grand, liberating, Laurentian love affair.

James S. writes:

And Clinton gave her a copy of Leaves of Grass during their courtship. Or maybe it was after their courtship. They didn’t really have a courtship did they?

LA replies:

That’s right. They’re having oral sex sessions in his office, the most degraded kind of sexual encounter you can imagine, and he gives her poetry!

I celebrate myself, and sing myself …
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

N. writes:

You are correct, the quote is:

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”

Although given the life of a callgirl, perhaps “Kristen” knows of what she speaks.

I would wager she ran away from a broken home, quite possibly one with a stepfather who abused her sexually, based on my admittedly limited knowledge of these things from reading books.

LA replies:

According to the New York Times article, she felt her stepfather was “the only real father she had ever known,” and she legally changed her name to his name, DiPietro. Her legal name is Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro. By the way, I think her original name, Youmans, is a Jewish name.

Christopher C. writes:

Now that a couple of days have passed, my perhaps flawed nature of looking for mitigating circumstances has started me wondering.

Maybe it would be useful to discuss the specific nature of K’s amorality, whether it is from a fall, or improper inculcation, or a rejection, or what. As I sit here today, having read your post and taken a look at some of her scanned sites—a pretty young woman, let us acknowledge—I’m guessing it was a failure to inculcate morality and persistence that led her down this road. Further, it seems a particularly American, Western, failing. I’ve not been too far around the world, and correct me if I’m wrong, but do other, older, traditional cultures permit their young to persist in the tempting believe that all can be fixed, that no sins leave lasting, permanent marks, that some roads can’t be turned back from—at least not fully in the realm of human reputation, of worldly happiness? I think not.

I searched “amoral women” at VFR, and this result seemed worth reviewing, and pondering. IN the entry, called “Modern People as ‘Eloi,’” you wrote:

“A part of Eloihood is the general softening, feminization, cowardliness, and anomie of many young men today, which has developed right alongside the excessive self-esteem of young women. Both these things are the deliberate product of liberal educational philosophies and cultural attitudes. But I don’t think that the feminization of young men can be the major component of Eloihood, since Eloihood affects all ages and both sexes.”

That kind of catches what I’m thinking: that she was taught that gaining independence and respect, and that “the journey is the destination” were paramount ideas to live by, whereas, truly, they are all worthy concepts to an extent but should not be made own idols but put into some perspective.

Now, love the sinner hate the sin. From a public comment situation, I must say I dread and hate the sin of those liberals who will privately and permanently make fun of her as a whore and will never think of her as a serious prospect for marriage or commitment or even dignity of any sort, i.e. no redemption possible, while at the same time publicly defending and excusing her actions as completely valid “empowering” choices.

LA replies:

Christopher C. writes: “… and that ‘the journey is the destination’ were paramount ideas to live by…”

But such phrases epitomize liberalism, which says there is no culture we belong to, no truth above us, no natural order we are a part of. What, then, is there? Personal choices, reached through a “journey” to find one’s “best” choices.

In this connection, I once wrote an e-mail to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead (I don’t know if it’s posted at VFR), pointing out that in an Atlantic article by her on some school program on how to handle and say no to sexual situations, what the program seemed to be doing was the opposite of what it was really doing. I said that conservatives reading the article would think that this instruction was traditional, as it was helping young people say no. But the program was in fact radically liberal, because it was assuming a complete absence of any moral norms, and was telling young people that they must and can design their own morality, based on nothing but their own personal choices, which in turn proceed from what they feel is right for them, by negotiating with their potential partners or non-partners about the terms of their relationship. Because it was presented as a reform effort against promiscuity, conservatives would be fooled into thinking that this radically liberal program, designed to mitigate the worst aspects of liberalism by showing young people how to “choose” their way out of promiscuity, was “conservative.”

Of course, what these young people really needed were moral norms. But liberal society has none to offer.

Mark K. writes:

Nice picture of her here. A pleasant looking young woman. All the more for me to theorize that this is not an old-time hooker but an amoral young female who has no moral bearings (given today’s society). Now some people may say that “amoral” is really “immoral.” However to use “presuppositional apologetics” it is the absence of any and all moral guidlines that defines today’s psyche. People don’t think that what they’re doing is “evil” or “sinful” or even “naughty” because the principles those descriptions apply to are not authoritative any longer. Nietzsche’s “transvaluation” has occurred. It even sounds old-fashioned for the media to use the terms such as “high priced prostitute.”

BTW looking at this girl, Mrs. Spitzer didn’t have a chance in hell competing with this Energizer Bunny…. How Eliot is going to decompress into normal, hum-drum life is beyond me.

Paul K. writes:

I think it was “Conan the Barbarian” (1982) which popularized the famous line from Nietszche. Director John Milius put it up on the screen at the beginning. The twisted version Ashley Dupre uses sounds like the line Angelina Jolie has tattooed on her stomach: Quod me nutrit me destruit (“What nourishes me also destroys me”).

I was feeling sorry for Silda Spitzer until I read that she had encouraged her husband not to resign. Her mother, when asked if she could forgive Eliot, answered, “Don’t you think it’s enough to say we love and support Eliot and let it go there?” She “supports” the man who humiliated her daughter and granddaughters? Is that simply the way nice, non-judgmental liberals speak reflexively? It reminds me of loyal party-man Dr. Lewinsky, who couldn’t muster up a scintilla of outrage about Bill Clinton.

Anyway, I’d like to share some inspirational thoughts that have helped me find strength during this difficult time.

Ashley Alexandra Dupre: “I can honestly tell you to never dwell on the past, but build from it and keep moving forward.”

Eliot Spitzer: “I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

LA replies:

The great Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose would describe those two quotes as quintessential expressions of the type of nihilism he called Vitalism, which conceives of life as a constant adventure, in which one forever moves “forward” or even “upward” in a world without moral truth.

Paul K. writes:

When I heard Spitzer spout his “Vitalism,” the first thing I thought of was Eddie Lawrence’s irrepressible “Old Philosopher”: “Well, lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with dignity and stick-to-it-ness and ya show the world, ya show the world where to get off. You’ll never give up, never give up, never give up … that ship!”

(Doesn’t work if you’ve never heard the delivery complete with brass band accompaniment.)

Really, it’s just too much that Spitzer wants us to think that one day after he’s been caught dirty, he has already derived a spiritual insight which we would all profit by hearing. Such arrogance! Really, the Japanese tradition of seppuku (hara-kiri) makes more and more sense to me. To have these shameless individuals like the Clintons refuse to leave the stage is so revolting.

LA replies:

Yes, he’s just inflicted on himself, his family, his political associates, his party, his state, this sordid humiliating mess, and in the very midst of announcing his resignation, he’s already gone beyond his falling and is declaring his readiness to rise up again. Doesn’t he need to time for the “fall” to happen, for the humiliation to be experienced, for the lessons of his misbehavior to be learned, before he’s ready to rise up again? He said:

“I go forward with the belief, as others have said, that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

This is one of many indications that he is without any remorse for what he’s done. He’s a thoroughly amoral creature (as I’ve said, his eyes are the eyes of a wolf, not a man), he ran into a problem, and now he’ll just move on, unchanged.

Peter H. writes:

Doesn’t the statement “that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” suggest that the best thing for human beings to do is to fall repeatedly, as many times as possible, so that we can continually rise again and achieve ever greater “glory?” This is his absolution of himself. Look for more “fallings” from Mr. Spitzer.

LA replies:

That’s great. And that’s analogous to Nietzsche’s core nihilist idea that the more painful and meaningless and godless existence is, and the more we say “Yes” to it despite its pain and meaninglessness and godlessness, the more “superman-like” we become.

Kristor writes:

Peter H. writes:

“Doesn’t the statement ‘that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall’ suggest that the best thing for human beings to do is to fall repeatedly, as many times as possible, so that we can continually rise again and achieve ever greater ‘glory?’”

Yes. In the doctrine of the Church, this is exactly what Satan does, and preaches. He falls, and falls, and falls again, each fall founded in the prideful belief that he is adequate to recover his former eminence, to rise again. But to err is to inflict a permanent injury upon the history of the whole world, to diminish forever and unchangeably the beauties it could otherwise possibly have achieved. The problem with sinning is that acts cannot be undone. Thus no creature can ever redeem them; no creature is adequate to fix what has already gone wrong with the world he inherits, and which he therefore willy nilly embodies (this is the doctrine of Original Sin), and neither is any creature adequate to repair the damage he himself has done (this is the doctrine of Justification by Grace).

Satan’s error is to think that sin is no big deal; that it can be undone, that he can rise up again, that he can make things better.

LA replies:

I wonder if any website has analyzed Spitzer’s remark as we have done here.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2008 09:12 PM | Send