Law & Order: Eliot Spitzer Re-Enactment Unit

Less than one month after the Eliot Spitzer "Client 9" scandal broke, Hustler made a porn parody of it. So you can say this about porn: even if it no longer drives technology, you can be sure that the turnaround time between event and attendant testicular reaction to event is still very quick. Should this movie be reviewed on its own merits, as a story of a public official who can't keep his pants on, or should we think of it as a porn adaptation of real, though tawdry, events?

It seems that "Girls Gone Wild" career slimeball purveyor Joe Francis has decided to insert himself into the Eliot Spitzer/Ashley Dupre story, which some of you may have forgotten about already. But what took him so long? Oh, that's right—he was in jail. Well, he's out (for now) and suddenly remembers that there was a girl riding around on his GGW fun bus five years ago that looked a lot like America's Most Famous (for now) Hooker. Joe was prepared to offer Ashley $1 million to pose nude, but since he claims to have even more nudity and girl-on-girl action in his "archives" he'll make money off her the old fashioned way instead. (Even though he suddenly thinks she's not that hot anyway. Classy!)

Ashley who? It looks like New York's governor hooker scandal has finally gone from Stage One (shock and outrage) through Stage Two (lurid fascination) and is now firmly in Stage Three: "What does it all mean?" Everyone is bored with Eliot and his escort, and the tri-state area has moved on (or back?) to New Jersey's bisexual gubernatorial threeway scandal. So the rest of the media is now free to pump out feature stories and editorials that deal with "the big picture": sex work and prostitutes, who they are and what they do and why the rest of use can't stop hiring them. Everyone's an expert on sex work all of a sudden, and they're going to teach us all about it for at least another week or so until they likely go back to not caring again. Another exhaustive link roundup is after the jump, though if you're not included in it don't worry: if you're one of the two dozen or so Americans who haven't yet been personally interviewed about this story, we'll be happy to put you in touch with a desperate newspaper editor somewhere who needs your help.

Today's Gubernatorial Sex Scandal Update: The Apotheosis Of Ashley

Eliot Spitzer who? National media already seems to be over the "Love Guv," but they can't get enough of the hooker who unwittingly brought down his administration. From the two million people who maybe listened to her "music" to the high school friends lining up to talk about her old locker to sniveling con artists who actually want credit for pimping her out ... everyone loves Ashley! Who cares how old she really is? Even Penthouse and Playboy both naturally want to see her naked. It's good thing that prostitution isn't legal, though; otherwise all those other media whores wouldn't have anything to talk about. (nymag.com + iht.com + nypost.com + Gawker)

Eliot Spitzer became of the Governor of New York by running as a hard-nosed former prosecutor who cleaned up Wall Street and organized crime and was now going to clean up his state capital. Now, involvement with organized crime may end his political career. The New York Times is reporting that Spitzer told his staff today that he was "involved" with a prostitution ring. His involvement may or may not be related to the bust of an online call girl ring that made all the headlines last week. His brief cryptic statement on the matter left most questions unanswered and speculation and rumors continue to run rampant. Maybe he'll stand up and announce that if even a married Governor of one of the largest states in the nation can frequent call girls without hurting himself or anyone else then maybe prostitution isn't such a horrible thing and maybe we as a society should re-think our attitudes toward sex work and rewrite our law books to treat this industry and its workers more fairly. (On second thought ... nah.)

· "Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring" (nytimes.com)
· Online Hooker Ring Busted - March 6, 2008 (thesmokinggun.com)