In different ways, liberals and conservatives both pine for the 1950s. Liberals mourn the loss of the egalitarian economic arrangements that characterized the postwar decade — the strong unions, the growing middle class, the 90 percent top tax rate, the Keynesian consensus.

On Thursday July 11th, 2013, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer who was forced out of office because of being caught up in a prostitution scandal, 5 years ago, in 2008, infamously known as client number 9, has made it one step closer to completing his political comeback in New York.

Panem et circenses (Latin for bread and circuses) was a term coined by the Roman poet and satirist, Juvenal, in the first century (C.E.) as a metaphor for the efforts by Roman politicians to appease discontent and essentially distract citizens from the present woes which resulted in their discontent in the first place.

It was not an uncommon practice around the turn of the millennium for Roman officials to give out free wheat to citizens and put on a spectacle to distract the populous and gain political power: