He’s hitting the bottle!: Eliot Spitzer, November 7, 2006; and November 15, 2007.Photo: Getty Images, AP
“Coming after a summer of scandal and other stumbles, the long and ultimately futile battle over driver’s licenses has left many people pondering the same simple question,” Nicholas Confessore writes in his assessment of Eliot Spitzer’s term in this morning’s Times. “Does Eliot Spitzer have the judgment to succeed as governor?” He goes on to rehash the governor’s missteps, quoting various muckety-mucks on how it will all play out. But through it all, he fails to address what to us is the most obvious and compelling question of all, the question that has been presenting itself, unbidden, in our minds for the past several months: Is Eliot Spitzer still hot? Like many others, we’ve long nursed a crush on ol’ blue eyes — his steely jaw and growly, steamrollerly demeanor induced a certain frisson. But soon after he was elected governor, our love has faded: “I used to have a massive man crush on him,” a friend of ours at Congressional Quarterly recently moaned. “But it was mostly based on his swashbuckling legal crusading for right and justice. Now whenever I see him, he looks sweaty and squirmy-ish. It’s like if you put Captain America at a desk job. He no longer revs my (straight) engines of justice.” It’s manifested physically, too. Lately, Spitzer’s male pattern baldness has become a shade more noticeable. His once-luminous skin has started looking a bit sallow. And could that be an extra inch on his waistline? Is it all finally getting to Eliot? Could he be going the way of gasp Al Gore? Like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Woody Allen, has scandal taken away the virility that power bestowed on him? We can only hope that, like Hugh Grant after being caught with Divine Brown, he’ll be able to rise from the ashes.
