Oh, Eliot Spitzer – tisk tisk.
You naughty boy. Haven’t you learned anything about sex and politics? In case you haven’t noticed over the past several years, they don’t tend to mix very well.
Following a string of Republican sex scandals over the last year and a half – including Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and his New Orleans prostitute, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig and his Minneapolis airport bathroom incident, and Florida Rep. Mark Foley and his predatory chats with underage pages on Capitol Hill – I almost forgot that Democratic politicians are also capable of thinking with the wrong head, so to speak. After all, who could forget President Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky affair?
But let’s talk about these prostitutes for a second. These were some high-class gals, to say the least. According to the New York Times – who initially broke the story – the prostitution ring that the New York governor was involved with, the Emperor Club, provided women to international clients in London, Paris, Miami and other cities, often charging anywhere between $1,000 and $5,500 an hour!
What’s more, The Times reports that the governor was doing the nasty with the alleged prostitute right here in D.C., not too far away from GW, in the neighboring Dupont neighborhood at the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue.
The report goes on to say that in a wiretapped phone conversation between the Emperor Club’s booker and the prostitute that serviced Spitzer, the booker states that Spitzer had a history of asking the women “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” Eeewwwww. I don’t know about you, but that certainly puts a few unsettling images in my head.
During his public statement, which lasted about one minute long, the governor said, “Today, I want to briefly address a private matter. I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family, that violates my – or any – sense of right and wrong. I apologize first, and most importantly, to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.”
Apologies aside, perhaps somebody should inform the governor that, as a public official, such private matters don’t exist when it comes to the whereabouts and actions of your scandalous escapades. Soon enough, the world will know way too much information about Gov. Spitzer’s misguided genitals – just as we all know about Bill Clinton and that disgusting blue dress, Mark Foley and his masturbation habits, David Vitter and his diaper fetish, and Larry Craig’s wide stance. Gross.
Did Spitzer really think that he wouldn’t get caught? Everyone gets caught. It’s just what happens, no matter how hard you might try to cover your tracks. Sen. Vitter reportedly took his used condoms with him rather than disposing of them in the garbage after his sessions, and he still got caught. (Again, gross.)
What really adds insult to injury in many of these political sex scandals, however, is the amount of hypocrisy that causes more and more Americans to further lose trust in their government. Gov. Spitzer may not have been a wild-eyed, right-wing conservative figure, but the very fact that he played an essential role in busting up a New York prostitution ring during his time as attorney general of New York, prior to his governorship, really stings.
Of course, we have to feel bad for Spitzer’s wife and kids, too. While watching the governor’s statement to the press with his wife, Silda, at his side, I couldn’t help but wonder what could possibly be going through her mind.
So I think it’s pretty much safe to say that this man’s political career is finished. His sex life is probably finished too, for that matter- although there is still the possibility of him facing jail time for his involvement with the prostitution ring. So maybe he’ll be seeing some action after all.
The writer, a senior majoring in journalism, is a Hatchet columnist and the Arts editor.
