rss feedJust Beat It, Spitzer
Posted by Harkavy at 9:59 AM, March 12, 2008
Blind black guy taking over for blind white guy.
Battered and bruised by the 24 straight hours of hard fucking he has taken from the public, Governor Eliot Spitzer is finally begging for a halt.
Yes, he's about to resign, probably later today, according to reports from ABC News, the New York City cable channel NY1, and other outlets.
Blind black guy David Paterson — he's legally blind — is about to take over the governor's mansion from blind white guy Spitzer — so blind that he was thoroughly wiretapped by government agents, according to a federal complaint.
Blind? Spitzer? Yes, blinded by high-priced, high-toned power and poon. Now he's finally been forced to take matters into his own hands and beat it. (Props to colleague Jesus Diaz for that thriller of a line.)
Let's review: Showing his supposed love for the public, Spitzer pinned a heart on for Valentine's Day 2008, when he was scheduled to testify at great length before Congress about bonds, insurance, securitization, and other details of the nation's imminent financial collapse — a collapse aborning on his state's Wall Street.
It was a brilliant summation of our country's woes — I'm not kidding about that.
But the night before his testimony, all his boning up at as great a length as he could muster involved "Kristen," and all his worries about collapse were focused on his penis.
When the scandal broke yesterday, "Client-9" proved himself a real man. We don't know whether "Kristen" complained to her gal pals in private about his performance, but the federal government did it publicly with a 47-page complaint filed in Manhattan's Southern District court. The March 5 complaint was revealed only yesterday to be a review of Spitzer's sexual performance.
Almost immediately after that revelation, Spitzer took the stage with his wife to talk about what he called a "minor" matter.
This had to be the first time in the history of sexual/political conduct that, after a politician had sex with another woman, he handed his wife a tissue.
Wait, make that the first time since Hillary Clinton got one from her husband. (Not counting the fluid-exchange episodes involving Larry Craig, David Vitter, and other minor pols.)
Spitzer, after hiding behind his wife's skirts at that brief press conference yesterday — he pulled out prematurely after only a minute or so and wound up crawling off the stage — stayed firm inside his Fifth Avenue apartment for an entire day.
We don't know all the details of his performance off-hours, but this is surely the hardest day Spitzer has ever spent in elective office.
How was he able to remain inside the governorship for so long after the scandal broke? His big, addictive dose of hubris — the politicians' version of Viagra — hadn't yet worn off.
Spitzer's staff wilted early during the steamy session with the public, and the New York Times just reported that his aides are confirming that he's quitting this morning. The governor's futile plunging ahead to stay inside Albany just a little while longer has finally ended.
Now his political capital is spent, and so is he.
