With Bill Thompson’s concession, the New York City mayoral primary has officially come to a close.   The coda might, in four years, read that Bill de Blasio’s tax-the-rich-until-they-aren’t policy precipitated the diaspora of Wall Street’s bankers. Picture, if you will, Lloyd Blankfein or Stephen Schwarzman spiriting their minions across the Hudson (think: Washington’s troops crossing the Delaware only backwards and hatted by yarmulkes instead of tricornes) towards Jersey City.   Yet despite the majestic imagery, a far more compelling sidebar will endure; Gotham’s voters formally buried the political career of Anthony Weiner – as well as that of Eliot Spitzer – like a mohel spading a foreskin into the earth.

In San Diego, mayor Bob Filner officially resigned in return for the city’s pledge to help defend against multiple sexual harassment lawsuits.  Filner was also required to complete an intensive in-patient counseling program centered on aversion therapy.  Unnamed sources confirm that during the course of treatment Filner was repeatedly aroused by attractive young women while being forced to perform cunnilingus on Gloria Allred.  The unorthodox regimen, according to his supervising therapist, did in fact produce a successful outcome; surreptitiously obtained copies of discharge papers note that Filner is now “practically gay.”

With these principals out of the game, how might the cross-country cock feud survive?  Perhaps the most famous observer of the American political system, Alexis de Tocqueville, may have offered the answer when he noted, “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”   And so the battle was joined by Jason Lee, a Goldman Sachs managing director who was indicted for raping a 20-year-old woman during a party in the Hamptons.  His counterpart, Richard Nanula, resigned as chairman of Miramax Films after video stills appeared on the Web showing him balls deep inside porn actress Samantha Saint.  Nanula may be a lech, but he’s no dummy.  The Harvard MBA was once Disney’s youngest CFO and surmised that by filming the Malibu encounter he could circumvent California’s anti-prostitution laws.  I’m assuming that, at this point on the page, you are concocting your own scheme to legally pay for sex with adult film stars.  But here’s the rub: a third porn actor has just tested positive for HIV, putting the entire industry in temporary lockdown.

History: At the close of the 19^th century, the Ch’ing Dynasty, in a death rattle attempt at self-preservation, sided with the xenophobic Boxers.  Throughout China, foreigners and Christians were massacred by the thousands before an international force took Peking and quashed the rebellion.   Though the Chinese are still trying to kill the rest of us, the deeper issue is the implausibility of this kind of international cooperation in today’s world.  One need look no further than the lack of a unified response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons to appreciate the cynicism and despondency fostered by politics.  What better way, then, to shift our focus and rekindle our collective spirit than for Mr. Obama to get caught with his knickers down?   Because, as Freud so eruditely posited, “Man’s labor, beyond any illusion, is all about getting a little snatch.”