Of All People

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer addresses the media with his wife Silda Wall Spitzer at his office in New York, March 10, 2008.
(Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Eliot Spitzer? Mr. Clean? I spend a quiet afternoon in the studio & come home to the shocking news that Spitzer is named in a federal indictment as a man who was spending his hard-earned money on prostitutes. Very expensive prostitutes. (A friend noted, "He should shop around. There must be something out there for for less than that!")

Early speculation is that the investigation was triggered by suspiciously large cash transactions, that were reported by his bank to the feds. They thought he was being bribed, but he was being fluffed. (It's very hard to write about this without making bad jokes!)

The investigation is being run by Bush's politicized Justice Department. As one person noted in a comment at Harper's:

A reader emails with an interesting observation:

Amazing how Senator David Vitter’s name never leaked out of the Justice Department after the arrest of the D.C. Madam, but Eliot Spitzer’s name leaked out of the Justice Department within a week of the initial arrest in the Emperor V.I.P. case.

Vitter, recall, owned up to his dalliance with a prostitute after Hustler called him to ask for comment before publication. Not that employees of the George W. Bush Justice Department would ever act in a political fashion, of course. But it is curious.

Jane Hamsher raises more questions at firedoglake, and doesn't think this one passes the smell test. Glenn Greenwald asks, Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?

I'd like to note that the Bush/Cheney cabal has been screwing all of us for seven years, and we're not getting paid, they are! And they're leaving us with a huge bill, and the streets are littered with the broken bodies of veterans and Iraqis maimed in their immoral war. Those are the people who should be prosecuted, not some poor schmuck getting his shaft waxed.

Initial reports were that Spitzer would announce his resignation at 7:00 p.m. but he didn't. I hope he doesn't. If it's just sex, who cares. Maybe someday the American people will grow up and there will be a book for adults like the popular kids book, "Everyone Poops". Everybody fucks. Get over it.