The Governor announced his resignation today, citing “personal failings.” The fallout? First up is, author Tracy Quan (“Diary of a Manhatten Call Girl”) who writes in today’s NY Times, “As a former sex worker, I’m puzzled by what is reported to be Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s preference for the riskiest form of indoor prostitution I have ever experienced. Escort agencies are constantly being investigated, infiltrated and spied on.”
Cybersocket headquarters is buzzing with chat about Eliot Spitzer’s sex worker sex scandel. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, Spitzer, New York’s Governor, has been accused of “participating” in a prostition ring. When we first heard this, we thought he’d been running a ring.
Oh no. Much worse than that! Spitzer was a client. According to yesterday’s NYTimes, an FBI investigation revealed that Spitzer a.k.a., Client 9, had been buying expensive, D.C. pussy (for prices of hot snatch check out new york mag’s ’05 article about how jason itzler pimped natalia, “The $2,000 Hour Woman”) from the Emperor’s Club.
Price being everything, two grand (the Emperor’s Club rate for first class snatch), is how Spitzer got caught. As the New York Times reports, “The IRS became interested in some strange transfers of several thousand dollars from the governor’s account and began an inquiry looking for “bribery, corruption or illicit campaign financing.” That’s when they discovered the prostitution link and Spitzer’s efforts to cover his tracks.”
Now, Spitzer’s been given forty-eight hours to quit or face impeachment. We wondered why — when the Republican Party are fending off a sex scandel seemingly every other month: from so called closet case, Sentaor Larry Craig (for tearoom tapping, Senator David Vitter ( for hiring escorts) and Rep Mark Foley (sex with teenage boys) — they feel comfortable holding themselves to another standard (the three Washington politicians remain in office.)
And then there’s hooker lovin’ hypocrites who hail from megachurches. Who can forget family value preachers, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard? (Check out Deborah Soloman’s New York Times Magazine interview with Mike Jones, the male escort who blew the whistle on Ted Haggard, the Celebrity Preacher. “These men were coming to me with really big emotional issues, and I was comforting them.”
“My real take is that this is happening when there’s a Federal bill, (HR 3887) aimed to federalize certain prostitution crimes and place them within the jurisdiction of the FBI.,” says Carol Leigh (a.k.a. Scarlot Harlot, a San Francisco activist who coined the term “sex worker”). “It’s not really news that politicians use hookers but that they’re trying to federalize prostitution crimes. It’s just that these kind of crimes are more interesting to the general public.”
“The shame and threat of exposure creates an atmosphere of danger which becomes part of the sexual high,” Leigh explains. “This phenomena is one of the ingredients of escalating repression. When a law goes against our natural desire for consensual sex part of the result is a risk taking compulsion. The client-politicians (and all the sexually conflicted politicians) feel a need to pass stricter and stricter legislation to mask their needs.”
We asked Leigh what she predicts will happen to the Emperor’s Club sex worker: “Nothing. If she’s smart she can get some moiney for a good interview.”
Rentboy.com’s Brandon Baker disagrees. “She’ll definitely be in trouble. They have to make an example of her.”
When will it end? “Historically,” says Leigh, “the spiral can be interrupted by a national disaster, war or a trip by Brittany Spears to rehab.”
