1115.org

I know two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’m very much afraid I’m going to wrong you again, you poor downtrodden thing.

The problem is that I simply can’t abide whining from those who have no bloody right to whine. Not even world class whining. And Riza’s is pretty world class, I’ll give her that.

The British woman at the centre of a scandal that could force Paul Wolfowitz to resign as president of the World Bank has said that she is a victim of the controversy and that she was forced to change jobs against her wishes because of their romantic relationship.

Shaha Ali Riza, a bank official who was moved to the State Department with a large pay rise after Wolfowitz’s appointment, revealed her distress in a memo to an investigating committee.“

I have now been victimised for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interest,” she wrote.

I believe it is Riza’s contention is that she has been victimized by the World Bank and by the international media for the crime of agreeing to be professionally penalized for loving a man who came to be her boss. Nice try, ma’am, but the rest of the world isn’t quite as dumb as Wolfie has always led you to believe. (Unless, of course, it’s the other way around.)

You were forced to change jobs because of your romantic relationship with Wolfowitz. And whose fault is that supposed to be, my dear? Who victimized you here exactly?

You better direct all that fury of a woman wronged at Wolfie himself, shouldn’t you? You have been thrust uncomfortably into the public spotlight only because he felt compelled to lavishly compensate you for sleeping with him by dipping too deeply into World Bank funds. It is important that you recognize that he would have easily got away with compensating you generously. But no. He had to go with lavishly, he had to pull the equivalent of dipping into the office petty cash (and no doubt a few hundred thousand is indeed petty cash for World Bank head honchos and their romantic interests; once you get comfortable thinking in terms of billions, it’s really hard to relate to how ordinary people think of a few hundred thousand) to leave something substantial on your dresser for every time he boffed you.

I know I have already wronged you enough. So I won’t wrong you any further by alleging that none of this can have been news to you. By alleging that Wolfie must have asked you — just before or just after or even during, since maybe that’s what turned you on — how much you wanted him to soak the bank for. I don’t need to allege anything, do I? Because poor dear Wolfie has already told everyone pretty baldly that these were uncharted waters for him. He had no effing idea how much he could soak the Bank for, or how. You, on the other hand, were an effing expert, weren’t you?

Riza, a Libyan-born British citizen who was educated at Oxford, had worked for the World Bank for seven years when Wolfowitz became president. She had been his girlfriend for several years but bank rules forbid office romances.

And everyone has always known that, right? But you and Wolfie decided that he should take the damn job anyway. And now it’s everyone else’s damn fault that you had to be seconded outside the bank? If you hadn’t lusted for Wolfie, and Wolfie hadn’t lusted for this job, you could have kept plodding away at the bank making substantially less than you do now. Too bad your life went to hell in a hand-basket the way it did. But maybe you should just step up to the mike, and explain to everyone just who victimized you and how (I’m so proud of myself for not saying “in what position and how many times a week”!)?

When she was transferred to the State Department she was awarded a pay increase of more than $60,000 to $193,590, more than the salary of Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state.

So how much does that $60,000 translate into per boff, Ms. Riza? Suppose we say three times a week, and an extra one on weekends? And let’s round that off to 200 times a year. That’s a nice little $300 per, surely much more than the market rate for fifty-somethings?

Riza has told friends she is being used by employees of the bank to get at Wolfowitz, a former US deputy defence secretary who was one of the architects of the Iraq war.

In her memo to the bank’s committee, Riza complained about “vicious public attacks” and “personal pain and stress that my son and I have been subjected to, and the damage that this whole episode has caused me professionally, personally and psychologically”.

Being used by employees of the bank to get at Wolfowitz? Maybe. But you didn’t exactly have to make it so easy for them, did you? Surely it must have occurred to you, Ms. Riza, that when you’re boffing Caesar, you can expect to be held to Caesar’s-wife standards of conduct? So surely you’re just getting what you deserve, for choosing to do what you did? In full public view too, and shame on you for that.

And how the eff did your son come into this, anyway? Your grown son, right? Who wasn’t even boffing Wolfie? Oh shit! Don’t tell me! Is that what he’s been paying you for?