We're back, and since we got all the sleazy stuff out of the way earlier this morning, we're looking at whether the media's doing any better treating the Spitzer Scandal like we're all adults. And we gotta say: if this were the SAT's, we'd say they scored in, like, the 85th percentile. Let's have a look.
-- On New York's Daily Intelligencer, it is noted that prostitution, like real estate, is an industry that has seen a fair amount of inflation in the last few years -- and everyone knowing what Eliot Spitzer was paying might make it worse. Here also find the Wall Street Journal article which inspired the DI post, albeit longer-ly and with less wacky Photoshopping.
-- By the way, in case you weren't aware, the New York Post says over a ten-year period, it was somewhere around $80 GRAND the guy spent on hookers. Remember: Eliot Spitzer actually comes from money, so that $80 Grand probably seems like even less money to him than it might to you or us, assuming you are as broke as us.
-- Slate Magazine totally surprises us by dropping a couple of short missives on whether Spitzer might shoulda paid more for his lady company, and how he could have arranged his payments, to avoid being caught. Slate, who knew you were so naughty!
-- And Slate's XX Factor blog also goes into overdrive on the topic, asking whether cheating is better or worse with a prostitute (for the spouse, of course), what a prostitute might consider "not safe," how hard it would have been for him to have just gotten a little on the side, and whether Spitzer got into politics for the chicks in the first place. (Again, we remind you: dude was born rich, so it ain't out of left field to wonder.)
-- Finally, over on Salon, Glenn Greenwald bums us out as he generally does, this time with all the contradictions brought up by l'affaire Spitzer.
* People who work at an unpleasant job in order to support themselves, rather than because they enjoy it, are the functional equivalent of brutalized, exploited slaves and therefore should be barred by others from choosing that job -- when the job in question is prostitution, but not when it's factory work or fast food cashier or large corporate law firm associate or massage therapist or porn actor.
Ah dude, don't ruin porn for us too!