Spitzer's the Emperor With No Clothes

Just to put any speculation to rest, I can assure you that I am not Client # 10.  As you are no doubt aware, Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York (at least at the time of this writing) is, allegedly, Client # 9 caught on a phone line being tapped by the IRS making $4300 payment arrangements with a certain lady of the night from the escort service, Emperor’s Club VIP, while his bride and the mother of his children was busy buying the story of the important meeting that would preclude Mr. Spitzer from sharing his Valentine with her.  Wasn’t it the IRS whose investigation put the squeeze on Brian McNamee and now Roger Clemens as well (those tax return audits must not excite like they once did)?  There is a # 10 out there though and I’m sure he’s (I’m making an assumption here but are there any male prostitution rings?) quite worried that he’ll be the next chap doing the “I need to earn back my family’s trust” mea culpa.   

The press says that Wall Streeters are popping the Dom Perignon and pulling out the really dusty bottles from their wine cellars to celebrate Eliot’s fall from grace.  And why not.  As they say, what comes around goes around and Mr. Spitzer was / has been (and might be again) a first-class pr**k to a lot of people, aggressively bullying people not accustom to being bullied, people who surrounded themselves with people who would never think to make them answer for things that most people might call, oh I don’t know … stealing.  Spitzer was born smart enough to match wits with the big boys and rich enough not to care about anything but “what was right.”  But, it turns out, that like most pontificators of truth, justice and, well, you get the point, Mr. Spitzer may have just been shouting loud enough to drown out his own demons, those annoying indiscretions that he knows better than to engage in but that he just can’t help himself avoid. 

Mr. Spitzer’s lawyers are doing cartwheels and triple sow cows to convince the justice department that he should not be charged with a crime.  It’s only fair, they’re saying, since the government has never made a habit out of trying “johns” in prostitution matters.  Amazing how the arguments on his behalf seem so strikingly similar to those of Dick Strong, Dick Grasso, Maurice Greenberg and the other corporate executive prey Mr. Spitzer hunted.  “This isn’t fair, we did nothing wrong and, even if we did, it’s never been considered a crime before.”  Mr. Spitzer flatly rejected their “wimpy” fairness arguments and threw them back in their face.  Now that he may find himself in the defendant’s chair, he, like they, instinctively resorts to relying on what’s “fair.”  We’ll see how that works for him. 

Mr. Spitzer’s placed himself in a situation that examples just how dangerous it is to put yourself on a pedestal that’s supported by your own fragile limitations.