Ten years of hired sex in hotel rooms

I am sure I’m not the only one who’s been wondering how long New York’s own Thomas Dewey of the 21st century (i.e. a crusading prosecutor who became a governor) has been availing himself of ultra high priced hookers. Fred Dicker has the beginning of an answer in the March 12 New York Post:

March 11, 2008—Disgraced Gov. Spitzer dropped up to $80,000 on sex with prostitutes, sources revealed tonight.

Spitzer, a millionaire, was hopping into bed with harlots for as long as 10 years and traveled as far as Florida for call-girl trysts, sources said.

That’s all the article says on that subject. Ten years would mean from before Spitzer became Attorney General. Meaning he was meeting $1,000 an hour hookers in hotel rooms all through his eight years as New York’s ruthless crusading prosecutor. All through the childhood and adolescence of his three daughters.

Also, considering that he apparently spent $4,300 on his tryst on February 13, $80,000 doesn’t seem like very much for him to have spent on similar encounters over a ten year period. Or maybe not. If we figure four two-hour get-togethers per year for ten years, at $1,000 per hour, 2,000 dollars times 40 would come to 80,000 smackers. However, the compulsive nature of the behavior would suggest that it’s occurred more often than four times a year.

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Update: According to Wednesday’s New York Times, Dicker’s account substantially underestimates the activity, just as I guessed. The Times reports:

Investigators reviewing the scope of Mr. Spitzer’s involvement with prostitutes said on Tuesday that just in the past year he had had more than a half-dozen meetings with them and had paid tens of thousands of dollars to the ring, one law enforcement official said.

A person with knowledge of the service’s operations said that Mr. Spitzer had begun meeting with the prostitutes of the Emperor’s Club about eight months ago and had had encounters in Dallas as well as Washington. A law enforcement official said Mr. Spitzer also had an encounter with a prostitute in Florida. On some trips of several days’ duration, Mr. Spitzer scheduled more than one visit with a prostitute, this person said.

In his Washington visit with the prostitute, Mr. Spitzer is said to have used an alias to book one of his rooms at the Mayflower Hotel, the name of a close friend, the financier George Fox.

Mr. Fox released a statement yesterday that said he was surprised and disappointed by Mr. Spitzer’s misuse of his name. “There is absolutely no connection between Mr. Fox and the governor’s alleged activity beyond the unauthorized use of his name,” the statement said.

If Spitzer had a minimum of seven “meetings” in the last eight months since the beginning of his use of the Emperors Club costing “tens of thousands of dollars, i.e., a minimum of $20,000, then if he used prostitutes at the same frequency and at the same price over the last 10 years or 120 months as over the last eight months, with eight months going into 120 months 15 times, then in 10 years he had 105 encounters with prostitutes costing $300,000.

I quoted the business about George Fox in order to underscore one of the sickest aspects of this: that Spitzer used the name of a close personal friend of his as his alias for these assignations. In other words, he would reserve a room in the name of “George Fox,” then arrive at the hotel and go up to the front desk—he, the governor of the state of New York—and say, “I’m George Fox, I have a reservation,” and take the key and go up to the room. And think that he could get away with this. This is a seriously sick dude.

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For those interested in the Spitzer story, I recommend the New York Daily News and the New York Post. There were some extraordinary statements and quotes in Tuesday’s papers to the effect that insiders were thinking in early 2007 that Spitzer had a major screw lose, with his out of control anger and threats and pathological lying. News columnist Michael Goodwin tells of an incident 10 years ago in which Spitzer told him a bald faced lie and excused it afterward by saying that he “had no choice” but to lie.

This is what gets me the most: When you think of what he was risking with his behavior, the lasting damage that it would cause to his marriage, to his daughters, to New York State’s government and its whole political system, the impression becomes all the stronger that this is a mentally disordered man.

Another thing: Being aware of this story throughout the day on Tuesday, following it in the papers, having it in my mind, made me feel soiled. It’s just shockingly sick and repulsive, on so many levels. Even Clinton didn’t pay for it.

A big question remains: given Spitzer’s evident personality problems, why did he get so much support in his run for governor? Surely these problems didn’t appear after he became govenor 14 months ago?

As an example of Tuesday’s coverage, here is Michael Goodwin’s column, entitled “Eliot Spitzer’s just gotta go”:

At times like this, journalists are supposed to wring our hands and say what a tragedy.

Okay, here goes.

For Eliot Spitzer’s family, his parents, his wife and especially his three daughters, his shameful conduct truly is a tragedy.

For the rest of us, the voters and the people of New York, his downfall comes as a relief. Assuming Spitzer resigns in short order, as he must, we will be relieved of his volcanic tantrums, abuse of authority and incessant dishonesty. Once he’s gone, perhaps government can get back to the work of the people.

Eliot Spitzer’s enormous failure is not political, nor simply personal. He suffers from a character flaw that defeated his better angels. He simply couldn’t tell the truth, even when a lie wasn’t needed. It’s as though he didn’t know the difference.

It’s now obvious his whole life was a lie. This is a man who thundered against illegality and prosecuted prostitution rings, and now has been caught patronizing one.

He needs help. New York does not need him.

If that sounds unduly harsh, consider that Spitzer had, in little more than a year, turned a landslide mandate for reform into a laughingstock. He correctly diagnosed Albany as a cesspool and vowed to clean it up. The Sheriff of Wall Street would bring law and order to the state Capitol.

Only he didn’t.

He brought more corruption and sweetheart deals for friends. He talked a good game but, against all odds, he actually made Albany worse.

In rapid fashion, he spawned a cottage industry of state investigations, with rumors of indictments of one or more of his top aides rampant. His own role in Troopergate, where his office used the state police to smear a political rival, still has not been fully revealed.

He achieved no reforms of substance or process. He was so distrusted by his colleagues that he had ceased to be taken seriously.

They had concluded that, in Spitzer’s world, the rules were only for others.

My first experience with Spitzer’s claim of an “ethics exemption” came in 1998. As a candidate for attorney general, he told me and others for months he had financed his campaign, then belatedly admitted his wealthy father put up the millions.

In a phone call he made to me, I said, “Eliot, you lied to us.” His response was unforgettable. “I had to,” he said, claiming his father didn’t want his role known.

Of course, that was a lie, too. More than the father, it was Eliot who didn’t want the source of the cash known. It would make him look like a rich kid and would ultimately be a campaign violation.

He was elected anyway, and I hoped his near-death experience in politics would scare him straight so he could be as good as his potential. For a smart man, Ivy League all the way, Spitzer turned out to be a very slow learner. If only he had taken his cue from the 2004 downfall of New Jersey Gov. Jim (“I am a gay American”) McGreevey, he would have kept his pants on and maybe his job.

He can’t say he wasn’t warned. Last October, I noted that Spitzer’s rapid decline in public approval and growing questions about his honesty and competence reminded me of McGreevey, a Democrat forced to resign in his third year after he put his boy toy on the payroll.

“Spitzer isn’t that far gone yet,” I wrote, “but in office less than 10 months, he’s moving downhill faster and earlier than McGreevey did. Unless he gets his act together, he could meet the same end and have the same legacy.”

That legacy, as described by a New Jersey political scientist, was that McGreevey “wasted the governorship because of an enormous character flaw: not recognizing how he was trapped by his own dishonesty.”

Spitzer shares that legacy.

- end of initial entry -

James N. writes:

Obviously the current governor of New York is one sick dude.

His landslide election, as well as that of McGreevy in NJ (also obviously sick), and the nature of the men who may very well be the only choices on the ballot for President in November, should make us wonder WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

The last conspicuously qualified candidates for President ran against each other in 1956. That was 52 years ago. Ronald Reagan was magnificent in the role, but I would not say he was conspicuously qualified before his election.

Recently, we’ve had a run of very, very odd characters presenting themselves for the job. LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Little Bush—all have had some overt weirdness about them.

Is the fault in our stars, or in ourselves?

David B. writes:

On Monday, when the Spitzer story broke, I surfed the news channels. On CNN, “legal analyst” Jeffrey Toobin was on. Toobin was a Harvard Law classmate of Spitzer’s. “He was a straight arrow who had stood for justice and cleaning up New York. No one knew this about him,” Toobin said, in effect. On MSMBC, Dan Abrams said that he knew and liked Spitzer and had no idea that Spitzer would do something like this. Spitzer had been a big media favorite, but they claim that this was a shock that they had no inkling of.

Alan Levine writes:

It has occurred to me that we have been just a little harsh with Spitzer. True, he may have broken the Mann Act, but when he transported a woman across state lines for immoral purposes, he was using public transportation to do so. He is at least ecologically responsible. He is a green womanizer, so to speak.

I have a point that does not seem to have been raised by anyone else: Is it a good idea to have a governor who is blind? Offhand, I cannot think of any other disability that should bar a man from a high executive position, but blindness is a serious matter. How can such a man be sure of what is really going on around him, or what his subordinates are doing, if he cannot see, or read anything that isn’t in Braille? I doubt it matters that much in a legislator, such as Patterson was, but it seems to me to render him unfit as governor.

LA replies:

It certainly would be odd. David Patterson (the son of Harlem political biggie Basil Patterson), who was blind from birth, was a state senator for 20 years, and from 2002 to 2006 he was the Senate minority leader. So apparently he was able to fulfill that job. But being governor of the state?

And this is part of Spitzer’s pathological irresponsibility. He carried on this behavior which has sunk his own governorship and thus has saddled New York with a blind governor for the next three years.

N. writes:

One wonders just how many people in the liberal New York establishment knew of Spitzer’s habits, and chose to look the other way. I mean, come on, the Governor of New York, former Attorney General shows up at a major NYC hotel claiming to be someone else, and no one notices? Plus he was engaged in these activities for ten years, and no one found out? [LA replies: Apparently he only did it in out of state hotels.]

Bunk. This is utter bunk. It boggles the mind to consider that he could do this sort of thing for a decade and have no one know. Therefore, there had to be people who knew, and decided it was not a problem. So we have arrogance not just on the part of Spitzer, but on the part of at least some of the New York State Democrats. More questions then arise once we accept the fact that some people had to know. Was he blackmailed? Do these actions account for some of his bizarre anger and threats towards people in NY politics?

I guess my question boils down to this: who knew about Spitzer’s activities, and how long did they know about it?

This leads to the next question: are there other activities he was engaged in?

LA replies:

According to coverage the other day, some of the girls working for the Emperors Club knew he wasn’t “George Fox” but the governor of New York. That obviously placed him in an exposed position to be blackmailed. But I don’t see any immediate reason why the fact that some of the prostitutes he consorted with knew he was governor should translate into his Democratic colleagues knowing he was using prostitutes.

I agree it’s amazing he got away with this as long as he did, and that he thought he could get away with it. I return to the scene of the governor of New York walking up to a front desk at a top Washington D.C. hotel and signing in as George Fox—and not carrying any luggage! (Because the room he rented for his assignations was only used for that purpose—at least that was the case on February 13 at the Mayflower.)

Zachary R. writes:

Regarding N.’s questions, I have no doubt some close associates knew about Spitzer’s, uh, “activities” as did his security detail. And you can be damn sure the Russian mafia knows about it too. They run quite a bit of that kind of high $$$$ prostitution in the U.S. or are at least tied into it in some way. I have no doubt they would have blackmailed him if they could, and they probably did. We are probably never going to know how compromised he was or what organized crime got away with because they had Spitzer on the hook. But I have been enjoying his downfall immensely. Thanks again for your work at VFR.

Adela Gereth writes:

You refer to Eliot “I’m a Steamroller baby” Spitzer as “seriously sick” and “mentally disordered.” I take strong issue with your word choice here. Frankly, by implying some mental derangement on the part of the soon-to-be-ex governor, your words veer dangerously close to that “people do bad things not because they’re evil but because they’re sick” mantra of the liberals. It was evil, not illness, that brought Spitzer down.

If Spitzer were indeed seriously sick mentally, I doubt he could have got as far in state politics as he did. A “sickness” extending back at least ten years that yet did not prevent him from doing his job or even from being elected to run one of the most prominent states in America can hardly be “serious.” Nor would I describe him as “mentally disordered.” His thinking was clear and ordered enough for him to lead a secret life for ten years, during which time he was a well-known public figure statewide and eventually even on the national level. Indeed, had he taken a little more care in arranging the details of his private life, he would still be free to pursue it.

It would be far more accurate to call him “morally bankrupt” and “ethically void.” You were much closer to the mark, I think, in a previous entry about Spitzer titled simply “A bad man.”

I’m delighted to see him brought down by his own monstrously egotistical and unethical behavior. It comes as no surprise to me, though. Last fall, he showed plainly with his outrageous campaign for driver’s licenses for illegals that he was not only willing to reward those who by their very presence in our country are breaking the law but that he was willing to reward them for being lawbreakers. Isn’t that, in essence, what he did by paying prostitutes for their sexual services? Perhaps he thought that cute pro-amnesty slogan “No woman is illegal” could be stretched to cover female prostitutes, as well.

Usually I would consider the betrayal of public trust a greater sin than private treachery but in this case, I’m not so sure. Since Spitzer evidently paid prostitutes to perform “unsafe” sex acts, his wife should undergo an HIV test, a fearful and fearfully humiliating circumstance for her. In essence, along with bullying others with his legal authority and flouting in private those same laws he trumpeted upholding in public, he very likely put his wife at risk of acquiring a potentially fatal STD. I have nothing but contempt for him—and for her, for standing by his side during a disaster entirely of his own making, the deleterious effects of which, however, are and will be widely felt.

LA replies:

When I described him as sick and disordered, I did not intend in the slightest to mitigate his badness. But it seems to me that his badness, which is evident, is one thing, and his being so out of touch with reality that he thought he could get away with living such a double life, is another. The same with his threatening eruptions at people, which startled those around him and made them think there was something wrong with him. It suggested a person who was out of control.

I’m not sure if my “he is both bad and sick” idea is self-contradictory or not. If I am persuaded that it is, then I will concede Miss Gereth’s point.

Adela G. replies:

You refer to Spitzer as “…being so out of touch with reality that he thought he could get away with living such a double life…”

But the very title of this entry seems to me to contradict what you then go on to say since he evidently did get away with it for ten years.

A very public, even controversial, figure who manages to enjoy “ten years of hired sex in motel rooms” without being discovered can hardly be called “out of touch with reality”. He’d evidently factored in however much reality he needed to be in touch with to do that.

His wife seems to me to be the one out of touch, particularly if the reports I read saying she was urging him not to resign are true.

Perhaps I’m missing something here in your train of thought, which you could kindly rephrase for me? I realize, of course, you are not condoning his behavior in any way. I just wonder at some of the terminology you are using.

LA replies:

I think Adela is winning this discussion…

LA continues:

But what about using the name of his friend and donor for such a tawdry purpose? Doesn’t that indicate something sick, as distinct from something bad?

Miss Gereth replies:

I liked it better when you thought I was winning.

Again, you say it yourself—the use of a friend’s name was for a “tawdry” purpose, not a “deranged” or “neurotic” one. I think Spitzer has a runaway ego but morally blindness that leads one to believe that he can behave with impunity is not, in the absence of something symptomatic, indicative of something sick.

I’m so insistent on this point not because I want to nitpick but because I am totally committed to this whole notion of a traditionalist society. One of the cleverest and most damaging things the left has done is to coopt language to glorify itself and to demonize the right. By choosing which words we may and may not use and choosing the ways in which we can and cannot use them, the left has basically dictated all the terms of the cultural debate in our country. We’ve come to a terrible pass when the accusation “racist!” is worse than that of “traitor!”.

We traditionalists must be plain-spoken and accurate and refuse to cede to the left the right to decide what is said and how it is said because, quite simply, words matter. Barack Obama is not “black”, he is bi-racial. People who dislike Islam are not (necessarily) racists or Islamaphobes. Liberals are not “progressive”, they are regressive or even (if we can get away with it) oppressive. And so on.

So, absent the evidence of some brain tumor or other organic disorder, Spitzer is not sick, he is evil.

And this is why I refer to your arguments as “persuasive,” not “convincing,” because you use logic to lead others to your conclusions, not emotion to impose on them your own convictions.

N. writes:

An observation I had not considered, from Lisa Schiffren in NRO’s “Corner”:

Nor was there any sympathy for the wronged wife, Silda—who has clearly benefitted for long years from his ruthless prosecution of others.

Much, though for the kids. What sympathy there was for Silda was contingent upon seeing her leave him immediately. My buds, it seems, were highly offended that she dignified his pathetic non-admission, non-resignation by standing there with him, looking stricken. (Their husbands, they reported, more so yet. It was unmanly.) The ladies felt strongly that, what with her power-career, connections, and the likely settlement, she has nothing to fear in leaving. Staying makes her complicit—and costs her the sympathy anyone whose life has been shattered deserves.

Laura W. writes:

I share Miss Gereth’s revulsion at the common use of the word “sick” to describe someone who has committed a grave moral wrong. At the same time, it’s possible to recognize and agree that every evil person is sick. The cure is not the pity and self-indulgence prescribed by psychotherapists, but lonely repentance and the conscious rejection of evil.

I have often wondered whether there isn’t something about the legal training in this country that doesn’t seriously damage the soul. Spitzer seems cut from the same cloth as so many brilliant lawyers. They are arrogant, overweening, filled with self-righteousness and so hyper-rational it’s almost impossible to carry on a normal conversation with them. At the same time, they are emotionally stunted, almost child-like on the inside and filled with impulsive drives that destroy their personal lives. It almost seems an occupational disease, but I agree the sickness is purely moral.

Brandon F. writes;

I heard Glenn Beck mention a couple of weeks ago the sick intent of Spitzer to force all hospitals to provide abortion. Here is a story on it. Note the celebration of abortion providers.

Calamitas writes:

You wrote: “When I described him as sick and disordered, I did not intend in the slightest to mitigate his badness. But it seems to me that his badness, which is evident, is one thing, and his being so out of touch with reality that he thought he could get away with living such a double life, is another. The same with his threatening eruptions at people, which startled those around him and made them think there was something wrong with him. It suggested a person who was out of control.”

Thank you again for another most interesting exchange of thoughts, namely the one between you and Adela Gereth.

Regarding Miss Gereth’s criticism, I think that it is a fallacy to assume that being out of control or sick can serve as an excuse for any evil commited. It’s the ethical person who dies last. Even the mentally deranged, even the moron, knows the basic rules of a civilized society, roughly defined in the Decalogue. Being out of control is not an excuse for anything. Only in the very last and extreme stages of such a condition does a man not know anymore what he is doing. We can assume that this does not apply to Spitzer.

You may, or may have not, followed the antics of the French president who married and brought a woman to the Elysee who is, to all intents and purposes, a whore, not to mention in detail all the unspeakable shenanigans concerning his former wife. That he is losing his cool (control) in public in a most un-statesmanly way is just fitting, as is his excuse that “it is difficult when you are the president not to respond to an insult” when it should be exactly the other way round.

Here we have someone I consider a deranged and sick man. Is he culpable? You bet he is!

I think it is no mere chance that at the bottom of both cases, Spitzer’s and Sarkozy’s, we find sex. It seems that sex is the most potentially destabilizing factor in a man’s life. Yes, there are alcohol and drugs, but it is feasible to stay totally away from both. Not so easy with sex. And once a man chooses (!) to let sex rule his life, the descent to a visceral and primitive existence will inevitably follow.

(That is, by the way, why an openly, proud, and confessing homosexual politician, who defines his sexuality as the very core of his human being, is so dangerous. But I digress.)

So WAS Spitzer “out of control”? Is it true, as Miss Gereth puts it, that “a very public, even controversial, figure who manages to enjoy “ten years of hired sex in motel rooms” without being discovered … hardly [can] be called “out of touch with reality”?

I believe that this way to look at it confuses cause and effect. The lack of control and the disconnection from reality are not the CAUSE, but the RESULT of committing evil. Spitzer, as well as Sarkozy, chose to become the moral and ethical wrecks that they are and the fact that they are moral and ethical wrecks is no excuse for anything they do.

Regarding Mrs. Spitzer, I don’t even WANT to know what goes on in a marriage as dysfunctional as the Spitzers’, but we can safely assume that ten years of sharing her husband with a platoon (make that a company) of hookers must have left her with an idea of what was going on.

Jeff in England writes:

What exactly did Spitzer do wrong other than pay for prostitutes? Admittedly he did wrong things in the past but in this case it seems the worst he did was hardly the worst thing. He should have insisted on staying.

N. writes:

Mark R. Levin at the Corner writes:

From my friend Jim Capua, who reminds us (and Eliot Spitzer):

He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one.

Edmund Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777

John D. writes:

In response to the difference of opinion between Adela Gereth and yourself, I’d like to submit the following.

Many years ago as an active alcoholic, I was introduced to a set of “steps” which I agreed to undertake in order to purge myself of the overwhelming compulsion to drink. Among these steps was the necessity of realizing and admitting to my “defects of character” (to use the terminology of Alcoholics Anonymous). I came to realize that my deficiency was that of a lack of a particular God-based moral order in my life, a deficiency so considerable that the void which needed be filled could only be filled by a Power immensely greater than myself. I would have to proceed by humbling myself to God in every aspect of my life in order to have God help me to achieve what would have been absolutely impossible to achieve without his help.

I believe the disorder that affects Eliot Spitzer is simply this, a defective character. It doesn’t manifests itself in Spitzer as alcohol addiction, but in in his dishonesty, his pathological lying, his uncontrolled outbursts of anger, his overall arrogance and his cheating ways. Its causation is the lack of a God-based moral order and its application in his life. It could be labeled an “illness or sickness,” as you have stated, or “evil,” as depicted by Miss Gereth, or as a combination of both, but it is most certainly a defective character which can only be healed by submitting oneself to God’s moral order.

On a side note, I have often thought that if the Twelve Steps of AA were to be applied and worked as a program by liberals, the world would be rid of that affliction as well.

The Twelve Steps of Liberals Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over liberalism—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other liberals and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

LA replies:

For those not familiar with the origin of AA, I highly recommend the movie, “My Name is Bill W.,” starring James Woods in one of his greatest performances. It is the story of a man who has utterly abased and destroyed himself through alcoholism, and then, through a spiritual light that enters his life and that of his friend, Dr. Bob, played by James Garner, the two men are saved from their alcoholism and then start to help others.

Tiberge of Galliawatch writes:

I just posted a link to VFR on Spitzer. There are obvious comparisons with Sarkozy, but so far he is a bit more contained. The unfolding of his character over the next four years will be instructive—it seems that the longer a bad man is in office, the worse he gets, the more tyrannical, the more insatiable he becomes.

As for the distinction between “sick” and “evil,” it’s a question I often ask myself. I think Spitzer is sick, but totally conscious of his acts therefore totally responsible. The acts themselves, in their totality, constitute grave evil, and he becomes, ipso facto, an evil man, even if he could not stop himself from committing them. The sick person who commits evil cannot stop himself, someone else has to stop him. Maybe it’s good he was in the public spotlight—he was more easily caught. But he never should have gotten that far.

The big problem is the apparent contradiction between not being able to stop oneself, and at the same time being responsible. My only answer is that such a person has to be restrained, possibly given some psychotherapy (which won’t help), for the sake of society. Your reader seemed to feel that only an acknowledgement of God can help a man out of such straits. I very much doubt that Spitzer is that type, but you never know.

As to why there are so many weird leaders around—it’s the inability to grow up and assume the responsibilities of an adult. This is turn is the result of the culture of the sixties and its aftermath. People are encouraged not to grow up—adolescence is the final stage of existence for them. And “sickness” is the result of being chronologically an adult, but emotionally an adolescent.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 12, 2008 02:05 AM | Send