Spitzer announces resignation over prostitution scandal

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

NEW YORK — Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace today after getting caught in a call-girl scandal that shattered his corruption-fighting, straight-arrow image, saying: "I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work."

Spitzer made the announcement without having finalized a plea deal with federal prosecutors, though a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said he is believed to still be negotiating one.

And

Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, built his political reputation on rooting out government corruption, and made a name for himself as attorney general as crusader against shady practices and overly generous compensation. He also cracked down on prostitution.

He was known as the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Time magazine named him "Crusader of the Year," and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness." The square-jawed graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for president.

He rode into the governor's office with a historic margin of victory on Jan. 1, 2007, vowing to stamp out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general.

(emphasis mine)

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In some ways this is a tough one for me to call because Spitzer is, for the most part, and from my point of view, one of the good guys, taking on the kind of bad guys who piss me off most, you know, Wall Street assholes and career politicians who think they own us. In other ways, this is as clear cut and black and white as a political issue can be.

While the hypocrisy with Spitzer comes nowhere near the kind we've seen from GOP lovelies such as the anti-sex family values creep Senator David Vitter or the toe-tapping men's room cruising anti-gay Senator Larry Craig, it is, nonetheless, hypocrisy, and quite offensive at that. An attorney general gets a great deal of latitude in deciding which cases to pursue: Spitzer didn't have to go after prostitution rings in his previous office, but he chose to do so anyway. And who knows just how long he's been a consumer of the goods that prostitutes have to offer.

I'm still sitting on a fence as far as my views on prostitution go. On the one hand, prostitution very clearly exploits women, often exposing them to great physical and psychological danger. On the other hand, it's never going away, and legalizing and regulating it strikes me as the best compromise solution--at the very least, regulated prostitution minimizes most of its ill effects, for both clients and prostitutes. So I don't judge Spitzer's morality in terms of his use of prostitutes, Vitter's either, for that matter. Like I said, I find it hard to arrive at a hard and fast moral conclusion on the world's oldest profession. But Spitzer used his government power to oppress the very people with whom he secretly did business, apparently at the same time he was doing his business, so to speak.

So great. He was stamping out corruption. But this is corruption. You can't have it both ways. Fuck him. I'm glad he did the right thing and stepped down, but fuck him. This is a slap in the face to everybody who believed in what he was doing. Not to mention a rank abuse of power. People like him in government simply cannot be tolerated.

I will say this, however. At least he's facing the music. What I really want to know is why my senator, David Vitter, isn't in jail for doing essentially the same thing. Goddamned Republicans.

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