as i was telling international wabes, who is on assignment in the UK and has no new yorkers to chat with about our governor and his ladies of the night, we spent quite a while trying to guess what this morning's post headline would be (a time-honored local sport). as usual, the news corporation came through with the earthy brevity that so endears them to me: it's HO NO!
i'm less pleased with the silda wall spitzer pic that accompanies the online version of the piece; ridiculing spitzy himself is one thing, and gawking at his wife is quite another. my heart went out to dina matos mcgreevey (aka the former first lady of new jersey) last night when she spoke, on larry king live, of how reporters hounded her after her husband's scandal. these ladies' situations are fascinating, but can't we, like, not compound their epic shittiness?
Letterman cracked me up, inside joke style, with this entry on the inevitable list of excuses: "Have you ever been to Albany?" Yep, yep: dead as a doornail, that town is, except when Siena (Stanford's mid-major nemesis, you know) goes to the tourney (as they will again this year). And even then the pulse is rather weak and erratic.
ReplyDeleteAlso: there are publicly-expressed worries about the budget getting done on time. This comment is for those from out-of-state; everybody in New York knows that the budget NEVER gets done on time. It is usually three months late, in a good year.
The consensus I'm hearing is that people are not angry about him and the lovin'. (Personally, I prefer the Daily News header -- "PAY FOR LUV GUV" -- to the Post entry. Of course, the Post won the all-time prize with "VOLCANO!" when the water main blew near Grand Central a while back.)
The whole hypocrite deal isn't the big deal either--tho' it is running a very close second. Nope: people are pissed off about how stupid the man turned out to be.
So you are a hot-shot prosecutor, taking down everybody in sight. (Including, well, prostitution rings.) And you think you can make a phone call on your own phone to somebody running (a) an illegal interstate, and international, operation which (b) advertises that very fact on (c) THE FUCKING INTERNETS?? Like, wow, dude.
call me old-fashioned, but the hypocrisy thing is a big deal to me; as others have said, this is a guy who made his bones roasting other people in prostitution cases. you live by the sword, man, you die by the sword: i think he should lose his job. i actually also love the fact that a john might get prosecuted for once (even though, in an alternate universe, i wouldn't scream if prostitution were to be legalized).
ReplyDeleteaside, on spitzer's relationship: as joe pointed out, one of the other biggest deals (if it's true) is the anecdotal bit about unsafe behavior. cheating AND having the nerve to risk your faithful wife's health? shitty factorial!
Best headline of the day here was "Mr. Clean caught with vice girl." The "vice girl" part was what got me.
ReplyDeleteI shared your "HO NO!" story with a woman next to me at the archives today, who turned out to be from New Jersey. She was full of political conspiracies, Spitzer getting smeared because he went after all the Republicans on Wall Street, it coming at a perfectly bad time for the Dems, etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot more than I probably should, but when one has 1.5 hours on the Tube (which was literally smoking today on the evening commute, awesome), such things happen. I think, if it were an affair, it would be dirty, but it might not end him - no Feds, it is then a "private matter". And then I wonder if that isn't part of the mess - was the logic that paying for sex wasn't as much of a betrayal to his family as just having it? Interns or girlfriends talk, prostitutes don't? But the part of me that shares the sputtering shock of the media about the whole thing feels that mostly about partnership, marriage, and that, at the end of the day, he did an awful thing in their private lives by making this particular choice. And she has to be on camera for it.
As for the hypocrisy, I don't see how he'll be ABLE to do his job, much as I liked him in the abstract initially and think he wouldn't have been a bad governor, in the end. But I also think the Republicans in Albany should stand down on their bizarro impeachment business.
Oh, American politics -- you are so much better than the abducted children and gory murders and inscrutable football jargon that greets me every day. Well, not exactly better, but at least I know the players.
One thing I've found in my travels: Senate Republicans are, by and large, malleable sorts that, while conservative, also have the capacity to see the other side. House Republicans have this capacity to a lesser extent, but are probably hemmed in much more by party unity concerns.
ReplyDeleteBut it you want to see conservatives bring the unfiltered crazy, look at state legislators. They are, for the most part, nuts, rabidly conservative, and bone stupid. (The higher-ups who have their hands on the wheel, thankfully, are a little bit smarter than this, but not by much.) Of course, Democratic state legislators are lesser versions of their Washingtonian bretheren/sisteren, but they don't quite have the lack of faculty that GOP types do.
Thusly, Mari: the Albany GOPers (or the rank and file, anyway) would never back off impeachment even if you paid them. And not in this environment especially, when even Democratic pols are sharpening the knives.
Case in point: Kristen Gillibrand, frosh congresswoman from a beet-red district (where I grew up). She said that Eliot should go. If she wanted to climb up the ladder in the Democratic Party, the thing not to do would be to piss off the Governor. If she greenlighted a statement which basically trashes Eliot, any remaining power he had in the state must be completely and totally gone.
And so: from what I'm sensing, the only thing that is holding up the resignation is the idea that Spitzer couldn't just resign and throw the new guy into the pool -- once Paterson adjusts to the water temperature, Spitzer will depart.
(P.S.: the only good thing about this? People get to see a picture of the State Capitol in Albany. Say what you will about the town (DULL AS DISHWATER). But that building kicks other state capitols' collective ass.)
(P.P.S.: Eliot demanding unsafe sex? Concur with Lauren eleventy times over. Ewwwww.)
(administrative note: my apologies to those of you who didn't get to see the photo of my sister and her bowl of borscht in front of a picture of the governor at carnegie deli. it popped up on a wall street journal media blog yesterday and started getting hundreds of hits, and i freaked out and thought the internets would think i was a terrible person for posting it, so i deleted the file and removed the link. i'm neurotic like that.)
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