Hey Eliot Spitzer will be sharing the mike with “conservative” (now that’s a real laugh) Kathleen Parker, thereby having an uber liberal debate a standard progressive Obama butt kissing liberal (why, was David Frum, David Brooks or Andrew Sullivan not available?) next month on CNN at 8 PM to compete with Bill O’Reilly and Krazy Keith Olbermann. The CNN promo referred to him as “the Sheriff of Wall Street” which was a real hoot. He was the tyrannical and power mad New York Attorney General who ran wild and did more damage then any good, costing many low level workers their jobs. Ashley Dupre his favorite call girl (“Kristen”) said if the show is not on Fox she won’t watch it – which shows she is smarter then Spitzer. The question is will Kathleen Parker make Eliot Spitzer take his stockings off during the show? (Ashley reported that Spitzer would get buck naked but never remove his socks – must have feet that got cold pretty easy!). This has ratings disaster written all over it. By the way is there a sleazier looking guy around then Eliot Spitzer?
hat tip – Instapundit
by Walter Shapiro
As a New York City resident for almost three decades, there is only one vote for state and local office that fills me with daily remorse and even shame. It was my November 2006 decision to pull the lever on an old-fashioned voting machine for Democratic gubernatorial candidate and alleged reformer Eliot Spitzer.We all know how that played out for Client No. 9 of the Emperor’s Club prostitution service. Sixteen months later, with his distraught wife Silda at his side, Spitzer resigned as governor, reading a prepared statement that began with these words, “In the past few days, I’ve begun to atone for my private failings . . .”We also know how long those days of atonement lasted – about long enough type “I’m so-o-o-o-o sorry and I’m already plotting a comeback” on his BlackBerry. These days, I probably feel more remorse and shame for voting for him than Spitzer feels about his staggering hypocrisy in prosecuting prostitution rings as New York attorney general and patronizing them as governor. Spitzer’s downfall was less about sex than about the betrayal of public trust.Now CNN is pairing Spitzer in prime time with conservative newspaper columnist Kathleen Parker, matching a Pulitzer Prize winner with a Prostitution Prize winner. Nothing cable TV news does these days in its bottom-feeding race for ratings surprises me. Probably at this very moment some business channel is negotiating with the federal prison authorities to allow a certain convicted Ponzi schemer to host a show direct from his cell called “Investing the Bernie Way.”Just so there is no ambiguity: I would sooner tune into Al Jazeera in Arabic or a highlight reel of 1950s TV test patterns than to watch Eliot Spitzer pontificate on CNN. As the defrocked governor contemplates his political future, I should also stress that I would not vote for Spitzer again for any public office even if his only competition on the ballot were Boss Tweed and John Edwards.My ire at Spitzer is partly triggered by the embarrassing record of his hand-picked successor, David Paterson, an accidental governor who put the “hap” in “hapless.” Whether helping his former driver (now a trusted aide) try to wiggle out of an accusation of domestic violence or presiding passively throughout a budget crisis, Paterson has made New York almost as much of a state-government laughingstock as Illinois (Rod Blagojevich) or South Carolina (Mark Sanford). Spitzer’s legacy: A new poll found that 83 percent of New York voters label the state government as “dysfunctional.”But Spitzer’s larger sin (and I do not use this word accidentally) lies in his zealous obsession with instant rehabilitation. If public humiliation becomes a temporary inconvenience that quickly morphs into a prime-time TV slot, it undermines all social sanctions against bad behavior. Even Richard Nixon grudgingly recognized that a decent society requires a decent interval before a disgraced political leader can dream of resurrection. Compared to Spitzer, Nixon was a slacker in the comeback department.
Read the rest: Eliot Spitzer on CNN – can Bernie Madoff be far off?
Tags: Eliot Spitzer, Walter Shapiro
