The Curious Case Of Client No. 9: An Honest To Goodness Political Sex Scandal

While the world waits to see whether he'll resign or not, media commentators, politicians, and even prostitutes are all theorizing, debating, and psychoanalyzing New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. The (formerly) rising political star with presidential ambitions has been identified as the target of a federal prostitution investigation that may leave him open to several serious criminal charges. It's still not clear whether he will be indicted or forced to resign and the talk has ranged from how to pay for hookers to the rules of impeachment to the Mann Act to Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy. But there's one big question that every single person is asking: How dumb is Eliot Spitzer?

As a former state attorney general, Spitzer was extremely well-versed in the law and (more importantly) how law enforcement works—federal investigation techniques, wiretapping, complex money laundering manuvers. He even prosecuted several high profile prostuitution investigations cases himself, so it's baffling that he would not only partake of the company of ladies of the night, but that he apparently made almost zero effort to conceal his actions. The most interesting revelation is that he was not a high-profile client caught up in a prostitution racket; the call girls were the ones who got caught up in an investigation of him. It was his own bank that tipped off the IRS about suspicious transactions, which eventually lead to the bust of the Emperor's Club last week.

Oh yeah, there's also the hookers. Everyone seems to be delighting in the screenshots of headless torsos and "diamond" ratings and interpretations of antiquated federal laws, but mostly they seem to enjoy the opportunity to call people "whores" in polite company. Because it's about sex, you see, and we have to pretend that it's dirty and evil, even though we all secretly get a big kick out of it because we all realize that the greatest harm done so far is that a young woman was "transported" across state lines for immoral purposes. (Oh, and he maybe liked to bang prostitutes without condoms, but that's a different scandal altogether.) Our dream of a sex-positive governor leading the fight against harsh and outdated criminal laws will probably not come to pass, but we are pleasantly surprised that this case has led at least a few people to ask why prostitution is illegal in the first place.

There's been a lot of comparisons to sex scandals past and how remarkably easy it's been for most politicians to hang on and save their careers, but there's one key difference between those earlier offenders and Spitzer. He paid for it. Cheating on your wife is forgivable, but a tough on crime crusader breaking the law is not. The consensus seems to be that indictment or no (the real unfairness with prostitutions laws is that it's very difficult and rare to prosecute johns, although they pretty much have this one dead to rights), Spitzer will not be the governor for long. That's too bad, because the longer this discussion goes on and the more we realize that anyone can and will pay for sex, the greater the chance that our attitudes and our laws might actually change. Of course, that also means all the horrible "Spitzer Swallow" jokes will continue indefinitely, but we suppose you can't have everything.

· Revelations Began in Routine Tax Inquiry (nytimes.com)
· Spitzer's Apology Video + Did One Of These Ladies Take Down the Governor? (Gawker)
· Spitzer Linked To Hooker Probe (thesmokinggun.com)
· "Why is prostitution illegal?" (slate.com)
· "Have you been a whore?" (wakingvixen.com; see also "The World's Oldest Profession" audio @ wnyc.org)
· "Eliot Spitzer's Whores" (Wonkette)
· Foes push for Spitzer's resignation over link to prostitution ring (cnn.com)
· Washingtons most infamous hotel room for now (Examiner.com)
· Clinton Campaign Removes Eliot Spitzer's Name From List Of Endorsements (radaronline.com)
· Sex scandals in U.S. politics (reuters.com)

Send an email to Dashiell Bennett, the author of this post, at dashiell@deadspin.com.

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