The End of the Affair(s)

Eliot Spitzer resigns and Michael Todd kills himself. Those are two different outcomes from alleged bouts of infidelity. Both are just plain sad.

Spitzer is the New York governor caught up in a high-class prostitution ring, though one wonders how a prostitution ring can be said to be "high-class." "High-price" maybe, given how much the Emperors Club V.I.P. charged. Todd was a high-ranking English police chief, head of the Greater Manchester force. He was found dead halfway up a Welsh mountain, a half-empty bottle of alcohol beside him. He may not have meant to kill himself, but the Daily Mail suggests he was distraught that an alleged affair with a "high-flying married mother-of-two" was about to be exposed. (What is it with the "high-" prefix lately? Can no one or nothing just be normal any longer?)

Spitzer apparently dithered over resigning. It would have been interesting--or at least novel--to see him argue for keeping his job. "You know what," he could have said, "I behaved like a jerk. I may have broken the law. But I think I'm a pretty good governor and, after chemical castration, I will go back to doing the people's business." But, no, that really wouldn't have worked. The alleged scale of his subterfuge was just too much. (Slate has a great video showing the different ways politicians 'fess up to their indiscretions.)

And for those who might argue that Spitzer was wrapped up in a victimless crime, just read about "Kristen," the call girl who serviced Client 9. Ashley Alexandra Dupré sounds like the sort of fragile, damaged person you'd expect would end up a hooker, not the self-actualized feminist that some TV producers serve up. Spitzer's conversation with his teenaged daughters--the oldest not much younger than Dupre--must have been the most uncomfortable of his life.

And what of Chief Constable Todd? I wonder whether exposure of his alleged affair really would have ended his career. It wasn't illegal. (I also wonder who he worried would expose it. Which tabloid was poking around?) It sounds as if he may have suffered from depression, which could have made him feel that walking up a Welsh mountain in a storm with a bottle of gin was the only recourse he had left.

I'm not sure there any any lessons to be learned from either of these events. It's not like anything new happened. As I said, it's the shamed politician who doesn't resign that would be the real story, man bites dog instead of man behaves like dog. For as Nick Lowe sang:
All men, all men are liars;
their words aren't worth no more than wornout tires.
Get rusty pliers to pull his tooth,
Cause all men are liars and that's the truth.

Lust Potion #9, or 'Spitzer? I Don't Even Know Her'

I imagine not much work got done in New York yesterday, except for in the newsroom of the New York Times. The rest of the state, and much of the country, was obsessed with the amazing public downfall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer. Early headlines on the Times' web site made it sound as if Spitzer was perhaps running a call girl ring, and that seemed more believable than the crusading former attorney general as a customer ("involved" with the ring? "linked to" the ring? what did that mean, I wondered). But, no, Spitzer was apparently a client of the Emperors Club V.I.P. escort service.

That name has a certain resonance. Do men willing to pay $5,000 for a prostitute consider themselves modern Caesars, able to flout the law with impunity?

This is no doubt a tragedy for Spitzer's family, but it's the sort of story journalists love: a total bombshell that can be gleefully picked apart over the coming weeks. Eventually we will know more about Eliot Spitzer's sex life than we know about our own. (But pity the poor reporters who have to nibble the less interesting aspects of the story, such as this article from the Globe and Mail on how the scandal will affect the troubled bond insurance market. Who cares? Tell us why Client 9 was "difficult"! Did he like to keep his socks on or hum the "Good Times" theme song?)

The Post's Hank Stuever has a nice essay about the appeal of the hotel room to men. "Men lose their minds in hotels." Hotel rooms are like mini-Las Vegases: What happens in Room 871 stays in Room 871.

Unless you're a politician.

When will politicians learn that they will always get caught? Is it only politicians that we care about? If a Hollywood exec or a corporate CEO were to be revealed as an Emperors Club customer, would we expect him to resign? Then again, it's the hypocrisy that bugs us. If you're charged with prosecuting prostitutes don't use them.

Washingtonpost.com's Mary Ann Akers points out that Washington's prostitutes apparently weren't good enough for Spitzer. He preferred to order one from New York. Not only did that increase the tawdry transaction's carbon footprint--the train, the taxicabs--it was just more disrespect for my birthplace. First we can't get a voting representative in Congress or a commemorative state quarter and now this....

It seems to me that British political sex scandals have cooled off lately. We Americans used to find them so entertaining, especially since they involved Soviet spies and riding crops. The tabloids here are still full of illicit sex but it's usually about footballers or pop stars. The gutter press seems to want photogenic people for their scandals, not pasty-faced politicos. Being under an under-secretary just doesn't sell like it once did.

Spitzer has to resign, right? There's no way he can govern after this. He doesn't strike me as the kind of man to do a full Oprah: tearfully confessing and begging forgiveness on national TV. I think he'll silently slink away. And we'll await the next politician who thought he could get away with it.