Given Eliot Spitzer’s self-righteous zeal, it is hardly surprising that America is enjoying a fit of Spitzenfreude, as you call it (“The Hypocrites’ Club,” March 15, 2008). Upon discovery of his many tawdry transgressions, a smug zealot like him deserves every abuse, no doubt. But it is interesting to observe that Spitzenfreude is hardly an American phenomenon. By now it is international, too. As witnessed by a quick search on the World Wide Web, the gleeful news about his fall from grace can be found all around the globe. But the message that comes out of all the hoopla abroad has a subtle edge that you miss in your article: it points at America’s own foible with hypocrites of all sorts. It is the country’s outlandish Puritanism that hatches many a creature like Eliot Spitzer. For every exposed bigot, there are dozens yet to discover and pillory. And America will keep spewing them at a furious rate as long as it remains in the grips of petty religious moralizing sanctioned by forbidding law.