An interesting and wholly unexpected scenario here in 2008. I can only wonder how many months/weeks/days it'll be before the barely-in-the-closet bigots up-and downstate start sniping at Governor-To-Be Patterson.
LM, it'll take them seconds before they attack Patterson.
Make sure you have a stopwatch with you as you watch Patterson's swearing in.
But that clubhouse's power had been on a precipitous slide...
What? Are you saying that Adam Clayton Powell IV has not been living up to expectations??
I think we have all made it perfectly clear that sex and anything involving it is far more detrimental to a politician's career then lying, and invading and occupying a country to the tune of one million dead.
And oh yeah ripping up the Constitution and doing a little jig on top of it.
Unless Bush and Cheney are fucking one another, Condi or a callgirl(or callboy) on top of the heap of ashes of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the tattered Constitution or the hundreds of billions in waste, they are in for smooth sailing.
America, kill as many people as you want, just don't fuck any of them.
When they come to issue the next edition of Webster's Illustrated Dictionary, Spitzer's ugly mug should be next to the "Asshole" entry. His poor wife, having to 'share' all those women with him for that length of time. Talk about feeling dirty.
Still, I agree. I wish the MSM/Americans would focus on the crimes of the Bush Syndicate with the same tenacity and moral outrage.
It's too bad that it took someone else's spectacular public flame-out for Paterson to become governor. Nevertheless, I'm glad he got there.
The "dangerous" activity that Spitzer was paying for was bare backing.
He put his wife in serious danger.
Bastard.
wengler. he prosecuted other prostitution rings while he was seeing this one.....nothing should or can ever be said to defend him, he is no better then a mobster...worse infact because they are at least honest
Congrats to Governor Paterson. They might be hoping for another Dinkins to kick around. That doesn't mean they're going to get one.
Thanks, LM, for mentioning Siegelman.
Save the outrage, folks, for more deserving targets. I'd a loved it to see the Senate and the Assembly try to impeach Spitzer--much more than watching his simpering capitulation to the Justice Department, which is obviously politicized to such epic proportions that instead of pursuing real crime it is merely targeting Dem up-and-comers.
Spitz was a hypocrite, no doubt. And the scandal is real, the act is sad (for him, anyway--if he wasn't a Governor and a former prosecutor, I wouldn't give a shit). But there's a double standard here, and the Repubs just played with the law enough--using their privilege of power--to subvert the will of the people with a lame low-blow.
baltogeek: let his family sort that out. one of the reasons you pay so much for one of these escorts is because they are clean. (also because they are discreet. guess that didn't work out.)
oh yes, while all y'all are freakin' on Spitz, Bush just fired the head of centcom because he isn't sufficiently insane.
so choose your targets more carefully.
I can only wonder how many months/weeks/days it'll be before the barely-in-the-closet bigots up-and downstate start sniping at Governor-To-Be Patterson.
Hours/Minutes/Seconds.
"New York State will see something I thought I'd never see in my lifetime, an African American in the governor's seat"
At least something good coming out of this mess.
:-|
hey #6 is out...duke of westminster i beleive....we some one here staed at least one forigin VIP...who was that again?
Actually, I think this is a huge win for NY. When the Spitzer scandal broke, a colleague who long worked in the NYC school system e-mailed me in sheer delight that Patterson might become gov.
She's now over the moon. Seems like Patterson has the chops to LEAD New YOrk state, not BULLY New York state. Her take on Spitz was he was the Democratic version of Guiliani--a bully to the core.
According to her, Patterson is SMART, affable, can be seriously wonk-ish, and has so much Elvis that he makes Bill Clinton look like a wallflower. If this is even half true, the contrast to Spitz is going to be stunning.
And again, it looks like he's the right pol to lead NY. I, for one, would like to see real leadership instead of "rulership" (like Bush, etc).
"Oh, the times, they are a-changin'...."
That was my Dylan impression. I'll stop now.
Congratulations to Governor Paterson, and good luck.
"An interesting and wholly unexpected scenario here in 2008. I can only wonder how many months/weeks/days it'll be before the barely-in-the-closet bigots up-and downstate start sniping at Governor-To-Be Paterson."
Some of the upstate ones (and a couple on Staten Island) are probably already cleaning their guns at the thought of having a black President and Governor at the same time. And when America's racists are worried, it gives me a little hope that things are taking a more positive turn.
"The "dangerous" activity that Spitzer was paying for was bare backing."
I was wondering what the "not safe" activity the hooker discussed was (it was either that or heavy S&M). I guess part of those hefty fees were going to weekly STD tests and birth control pills for the "girls", but man, what a stupid risk for someone in his position to take.
Allow me to engage in some ridiculous and completely unsupported speculation...
This whole thing is a setup by Spitz to get the goods on Bush's illegal spying operation. He suspected the he was being wiretapped, so he arranges to get 'caught' in a way that cannot be done legally. The Feds either have to admit that they broke the law, or drop the case under suspicious circumstances.
Pretty wild and implausible, eh? 
"She said your debutante knows what you want, but I know what you need ..." --Robt. Zimmerman
Soon-to-be-Gov. Patterson (& that's not the "Basil" in the headline, LM) is far far from an Elvis type from what I've seen. Low key & smart as a whip are 2 good qualities to have going in, but they might make him an easy target in our current climate. As I recall, David Dinkins' "decency" came to be considered a liability.
As for Spitzer, I don't think he's all that unusual for a politician. I'd assumed it was just urban legend that political figures have a taste for the occasional trussing up & close encounters of the yellow kind when they get with pros behind closed doors, but I've since heard from a few such professionals that it's no legend.
They might want power on the public stage but they need base humiliation in private ... just ask Nelson Rockefeller, he's right under that glass table in room 641.
Makes you wonder if Spitzer, Larry Craig & the all others (& what a crowd that's become) actually find the public roasting they've gotten oddly satisfying.
Great post, LM. Seriously, though: It's *DAVID* Paterson.
Wengler: Unless Bush and Cheney are fucking one another, Condi or a callgirl(or callboy) on top of the heap of ashes of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the tattered Constitution or the hundreds of billions in waste, they are in for smooth sailing.
Two words: Jeff Gannon.
Balto: And here I thought all this time that the freedom to have unprotected sex was one of the bigger benefits of a trusting, stable, long-term monogamous relationship. In other words: why was Spitzer paying for a service he might have best gotten in his own bed?
It makes no sense. Although I recently heard that one-third of all American marriages are sexless. (Personally, I'd find that unendurable, and consider it righteous grounds for divorce -- but that's just me.) It's possible his may have been one of them.
Obama: There is no "safe," unfortunately. AIDS tests still take weeks/months after exposure to show up positive; even if she's getting tested every couple weeks, the time frame is long enough that even an ethical hooker could have exposed hundreds of men before she finally gets the news.
And there are a few STDs (papalloma virus among them) that aren't prevented by condoms anyway. Not to mention oral herpes....
Bottom line: even clean whores aren't, and even condoms won't fix everything (though they're a huge start). But barebacking -- I mean, how stupid do you have to be?
Infodog: Back in my LA years, my best girlfriend was the city's top dominatrix. She worked over movie moguls and oil barons for what would be $500 an hour in today's terms.
And yeah, she'd be the first to tell you that it was having all that power that drove them to it. For their own sanity, they needed a place -- her place -- to just drop all the responsibility for millions of dollars and thousands of people, and let go and give in to somebody else's demands for a while. It was a huge relief for them. She saw it as a sort of Zen balance thing: an extreme form of overcorrection for people who had extreme amounts of power.
But the wording of the message suggests that's not what Spitzer was there for. The agent makes it pretty clear that he was asking for high-risk but otherwise fairly vanilla stuff, which suggests Balto's probably somewhere near the mark.
My God—sorry for that goof !Had too many Paterson's on the brain! Thanks for the heads-up.
“They might want power on the public stage but they need base humiliation in private ... just ask Nelson Rockefeller, he's right under that glass table in room 641.”
It could be just my age and my New York-centrism but the whole Rockefeller's-end saga was quite a tittering big deal here in town. “Rocky” had lost a shitlload of downstate crossover goodwill over his flip defense of the ass-backward mishandling of the Attica riots and around-the-way much ill will was wished upon him.
He was though, known as a garrulous bacchanalian, a full out voluptuary who lived hard and high. And while it wasn't reported on because of his cozy relationships with local press, it was a known fact that he was fucking any and everything perfumed, with legs and a point of entry in it.
When word got out about his death, what the tabloids didn't report out of deference, real people found out through back channels which soon spread to the tabloids. Rocky was boning his aide/researcher/curator, the young (26!) Ms. Marshak at his townhouse four blocks from my high school. Initial white-washed press reports were that he'd died at his office crosstown. That was later revealed to be bullshit and it would also be revealed that Rocky was ass-nekkid when found with a panicked Ms, Marshak—who instead of dialing 911, called her friend, a young Black reporter for NBC named Ponchitta Pierce for help. Pierce came over and she called for medical help. Marshak was freaked that her affair with the married Rockefeller would be exposed and her career ruined, so it was an ugly scene.
We heard a bunch of teachers discussing the death in detail (one of them was a friend of Ms. Pierce's) in a stairwell conversation at school in the days following and eventually the death scene EMTs lurid reports would break into public notice, thus ensuring that Rocky's “going while coming” would forever be remembered in New York goofy death infamy.
How bad was it? High school kids were goofing on it, mimicking Rockefeller's final moments with upstrokes, downstrokes, impersonations of his famous grimace and goofy “in-the-act” and “on-the-way-out” call-outs.
This was one wild-assed town. 
LM --
Call me guilty of a case of the Telephone Game then 'cuz the story I got had him under a glass table watching an act of evacuation when his light went out (jeez, somebody I knew had quite the imagination!)
And Sara's idea of a Will to Balance among the powerful is compelling -- but I wonder ... one sure feature of this era is the breakdown between public & private, maybe that brings these shadow selves to demand their moments in the public sun? Or at least it gums up the clean divisions that public people try to maintain in themselves.
How else to explain Team Hillary's destroy-me-or-die strategy?
"There is no "safe," unfortunately."
I understand that, and so did the hooker who warned the other one about Spitzer's risky tastes. But I'm sure that testing is factored into the cost of and promoted as one of the supposed benefits of this escort service. So Spitzer was either thinking with his dick, or into the risk. Stupid either way, and that's before we even get to his public career and reputation.
An interesting and wholly unexpected scenario here in 2008. I can only wonder how many months/weeks/days it'll be before the barely-in-the-closet bigots up-and downstate start sniping at Governor-To-Be Patterson.
Too late. The NY Post has already started:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/
0312...fire_101554.htm
As for Betsy Ross: maybe the old girl had a little nervous-stomach accident
and didn't want to make it worse by sitting...happens sometimes.
Patterson will give his long time homonym, Frank Padavan, a chance for redemption, after Padavan was repeatedly jitled for a commissionership under Pataki and Giuliani. Padavan prides himself as a party-less independent, and has been under increasing thret from his traditional constituents because of his opposition to their dormitory and their feudal zoning casuistry. Given how he was ostensibly denied commissionerships in order to preserve the majority, he relishes this unique opportuntiy at payback.
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