Eliot Spitzer Prostitution

Donn Esmonde: Silda stood nobly amid humiliation

By Donn Esmonde
Updated: 03/16/08 1:42 PM

My new favorite person is named Spitzer.

No, not Eliot. Silda.

The soon-to-be-ex-governor’s wife is taking heat, mainly from understandably exasperated women, for standing next to her disgraced husband during his pair of press conferences last week.

It is a too-familiar story, and I understand the point of view: Politician husband fesses up when caught with his pants down. The screw-up submarines his political career and inflicts pain on the people closest to him. It is his horrible mess, yet — when it comes time to come clean — there is the suffering spouse, dutifully positioned at the sinning husband’s side. Not only does she shoulder a personal humiliation, she — by her presence — shares in the public punishment for a trespass that victimized her.

“Just once,” said one of my female coworkers, “I’d like to see one of these wives say, ‘Forget it, buddy. You made the mess. Walk out there on your own.’ ”

I have no doubt that a part of Silda Wall Spitzer wanted to say exactly that. And I suspect that, behind

closed doors, she had plenty to say to her hooker-habit husband.

But I think Silda stood with him out of something other than blind loyalty. I think her presence was a statement, and a tough, noble one. It said that, on balance, the love and emotion of two decades of marriage matters more than sporadic trysts in hotel rooms. It said that the life they built, the three daughters they raised, the family they created, is bigger than the bizarre character flaw in the man she married. It said that the mainline of a marriage matters more than any random, randy detours.

Her message, as I read it: It will take more to bring down all that we have built than a a series of trysts with nubile young women.

Nobody was more stunned by Spitzer’s vice than his staff
By Tom Precious - NEWS ALBANY BUREAU
Updated: 03/16/08 10:39 AM

ALBANY — Over the years, Eliot Spitzer often showed his staff new photographs of his wife. In public, the couple held hands.

At night on the road, aides recalled, Spitzer was on the phone, helping his three teenage daughters with their homework.

Aides who pointed out a pretty woman walking by in the Capitol were quickly rebuked, told to grow up and think about their work.

When office talk digressed into rumors of state officials having extramarital affairs, Spitzer appeared shocked.

“That’s appalling,” he said to an aide, expressing his moral outrage. “Do you think that could be true?”

So when Eliot Spitzer, whose political career rose by accusing others of behaving unethically as well as criminally, last week was toppled because of his involvement with a prostitution ring, those closest to him thought they were dreaming.

Full Story in the Buffalo News

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Letterman’s Top 10 Elliot Spitzer Excuses

The Spitzer Scandal - The Shame and The Embarrassment

 By Gary S. Howell

  By now, the whole world knows the details of New York State Governor Elliot Spitzer’s immoral dalliances.

If he is guilty of any of these crimes, he could go down as one of history’s biggest hypocrites.

Pictures of Kitsten in the TimesOnline

 Kristen: Eliot Spitzer’s Call Girl

Spitzers New Official Photo

SPITZER HAS USED HOOKERS FOR 6 YEARS: SOURCES

By JEANE MACINTOSH and CHUCK BENNETT

March 11, 2008 — Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been soliciting high-priced hookers for at least six years and possibly for more than a decade, sources tell The Post.

The revelation yesterday that the crusading governor was in fact “Client 9″ named in a federal prostitution indictment did not shock insiders in the city’s sex industry.

Sources tell The Post that Spitzer had frequented high-priced hookers as far back as 2002 and possibly earlier.

Read the Full Story New York Post

Spitzer Shares Arrogance of Other Powerful Men

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer built his career on the moral high ground, but faces a fall suffered by Greek gods and Shakespearean characters through his own hubris or exaggerated sense of self-pride.

That scenario, say psychologists, is as old as time: Men who seemingly have it all but tempt fate to risk everything — family, reputation and even power.

Spitzer — who during eight years as an aggressive attorney general was compared to Eliot Ness, the legendary FBI man who brought down Al Capone — is now allegedly Client 9 in a federal investigation of an upscale prostitution ring.

Read the Full Story ABC News

State Police Internal Investigation: How Did Gov. Spitzer Slip Security Leash?

By RICHARD ESPOSITO
March 11, 2008  

In New York state, even as cabinet-level officials began to prepare an orderly transition by briefing Lt. Gov. David Paterson on key details of their components of the government in anticipation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer stepping down, criminal justice officials launched a preliminary inquiry into how the disgraced governor slipped his security detail while traveling, state sources told ABC News.

ABC News has learned that Spitzer routinely tried to push off the one or two state police officers who accompanied him out of town, suggesting to the troopers that they didn’t need to accompany him as he went to the gym or telling them he was going to turn in early.

Read the Full Story on ABC News