Nice Guy, Good Tipper

There's a sweaty hand handling his cocktail napkin
"Come on up and see me" is scribbled with a gold pen
"But you'd better ring twice"

Seven months after his little indiscretion
He sits with his wife at a therapy
For a little advice

"If the healing happens as the time goes
Tell me why I still can't look her in the eye"

"God I'm only human, got no other reason"
Sin for a season

-Steve Taylor

Governor Spitzer was Client (Love Potion?) Number 9.

A 22-year-old escort found on another call-girl Web site claimed to ABC News in a phone interview that Gov. Eliot Spitzer had been one of her customers two years ago when he was New York attorney general and that he was a nice guy who tipped well.

"He didn't do anything that wasn't clean," she said, adding that she knew who he was because he had made calls from the attorney general's office in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Federal investigators say there is no evidence Spitzer used state money or campaign funds to pay the prostitutes, but that the way he moved an estimated $40,000 through various accounts violated federal money laundering laws.

Mind you, the feds didn't find Spitzer by investigating the prostitution ring; they found the prostitution ring by investigating Spitzer. And the feds were using the same tools and methods that the Guv was using to bust Wall Street types and prostitution rings when he was NY attorney general.

He went after rich Wall Street guys, and from what I understand some of those he targeted were actually guilty. Spitzer is using his resignation as leverage to cut a deal with the feds. He will resign after he does so. Unlike Bill Clinton there is no one who likes him enough to risk their reputation defending him.

Mortal men are always at risk to succumb to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (1John 2:16), and whorism goes on in more places that the parking lot of the Days Inn in Neptune, NJ. Over half the teaching programs on Christian radio are about how to divorce-proof your marriage; advice on how to take extreme measures to avoid even thinking about harlotry. James Dobson's radio show is called Focus on the Family, not Focus on the Single Guy.

If the threat of whorism is pounded into guys who are trying to follow the Lord, how much more of a danger this to the average guy who is not? It's a miracle that any of us make it unscathed.

McGreevy, and now Spitzer. Is there something in the water up there?

Update: If it sounds like I'm being easy on Elliot, it's because I am reading about being humble before God. And this was Spitzer's downfall, his arrogance, his white knight crusaderness, his busting up prostitution rings while he was using one himself. He went after Wall Street, and some of these guys may have been doing wrong but others were ruined for committing the unpardonable sin of having wealth.

Today in stock market offices it's a special kind of schadenfreude called Spitzenfreude, with many offices displaying Photoshopped pics of the Guv in embarrassing situations. And I can't blame them.