Washingtonienne Resurfaces!In our excitement over nubile, young Spitzer hooker Ashley Alexandra Dupre, we completely forgot about that other politician-probed prostitute that captivated America’s hearts and loins not so long ago: Jessica Cutler, who gained notoriety by writing about the anal preferences of Washington muckety-mucks on her blog, Washingtonienne, back in 2004. But now she’s back.
Because He Got HighLast night, David Paterson told NY1 that he has used marijuana and cocaine “a couple of times.” Not that he’s hitting the chronic before looking over the budget, mind you — this was a while ago. “I don’t think I’ve touched marijuana since the late seventies,” he said. He doesn’t think! But who can be sure? Can we? Do we care?
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Eliot Spitzer: Disgraced Governor, Chronic ExpectoratorThe rapidly deteriorating economy, the five-year anniversary of Iraq, and new governor David Paterson’s seemingly limitless libido all may have distracted you from what’s going on with our fallen former governor. But news is still dribbling out about the Spitzer affair, and perhaps more importantly, so are sexy pictures of hookers!
it happened this week
InfidelsFor another week, almost all politics was both local and sleazy.
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Is an Ed Koch Sex Scandal Next?Eliot Spitzer slept with hookers. Jim and Dina McGreevey had threesomes with their driver. Governor David Paterson’s list of conquests is starting to look like it could be longer than Wilt Chamberlain’s. And then there’s Ed Koch.
Our Governor: Out-Blinded by Previous Pols?So David Paterson isn’t the first blind governor. But he does join a long line of respected (if doomed) vision-impaired politicians. A brief historical list.
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OMG, Is Joe Bruno Going to Be Our Next Governor?By now, four days into Governor David Paterson’s reign, one thing is clear: He never thought he was actually going to be governor. The loosey-goosey (and juicy!) way he’s blended his personal and professional affairs don’t reflect the kind of care and caution that most people who expect close scrutiny would have used. If this goes on, will Joe Bruno use it to his advantage?
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Happy Hooker Xaveria Hollander Has the Utmost Respect for the Girls of the Emperors ClubAn astute historian of New York prostitution might have heard a small bell ringing in their head upon reading the name of the woman accused of arranging prostitutes for Eliot’s Emperors Club VIP: Tanya Hollander. You see, New York’s most notorious prostitute (and madam) ever, the Happy Hooker, was named Xaveria Hollander. Was it now a family business? We called the old girl in Amsterdam to check.
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David Paterson Had an Affair Affairs. So What?When incoming governor David Paterson first told the Daily News that he had an extramarital affair (or two, or three), no one seemed to get very upset. Sure, the papers tried to keep us riled up.
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Who Are David Paterson’s Girls?As with the Spitzer scandal, the news cycle for David Paterson’s affairs has now moved onto the lucky ladies in question. Although Our Lady of Indignation Andrea Peyser names the new Governor’s trysts as “too many to count,” there’s still only one woman who’s an official notch on the motel-room bedpost, and a second who, while perhaps totally innocent of any hanky panky, still sounds a bit sketchy. But given what we do know, who are the ladies to whom David turned to during his dark, jealous hours of marital misery?
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When Strippers AttackLast week, we learned that prostitutes can ruin you. But it’s not just hookers! Many kinds of sex workers can be dangerous. No one knows this better than Stephen Chang, a securities trader who was innocently patronizing the Hot Lap Dance Club near Madison Square Garden last November when something awful happened. The Hot Lap Dance club, as you undoubtedly know, is known as the “Playboy Mansion of Manhattan party lofts,” despite the fact that it is located in a rat-infested corridor of 38th Street near Ninth Avenue. Stephen is married, but the women who work at Hot Lap Dance were irresistible: They “are among the most beautiful women in New York City,” the Website says, and do interesting things like “lesbian (dildo) shows and all nude Sybian performances.” But don’t judge! It’s a bear market! A guy’s got to blow off steam somehow! And anyway, that Thursday at 1 a.m., Stephen was not there to partake in anything exotic. He was merely in the market for a regular old lap dance from one of the club’s many “friendly and personable” workers. Until suddenly, thing were no longer friendly and personable at all.
company town
Eliot Spitzer Hires Guides to Keep Him From Washing Down River of DespairLAW
• Eliot Spitzer has been careful about the lawyers he’s selected to protect him against potential charges related to his activities with random twentysomething hookers, hiring a set of heavy hitters from white-collar crime specialists Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. He’s right to be choosy: “Hiring a lawyer is not unlike selecting a river guide,” the Times says today. “One wants a professional who not only steers clear of the rapids but does so in a reassuring manner. It also helps if he knows what to do should the boat hit the rocks.” Yeah. That’s just how we would have put it. [NYT]
• A New York court rules that the daughter of a Jell-O heiress is not entitled to a taste of the multi-million-dollar fortune. [New York Law Journal]
• Is Hillary Clinton’s legal background hindering her campaign? [Law.com]
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Sirius Creates Media Circus in Microcosm With Client 9 RadioCan you not get enough of the Spitzer sex scandal? Is the minutiae of the governor’s trysts with hookers that has subsumed pretty much every media outlet for the entire week still somehow not enough? Do you feel that there are some important people, such as deposed publisher Judith Reagan, Wikepedia dumpee Rachel Marsden, and Dennis Hof, owner of Nevada’s Moonlight Bunny Ranch, whose full opinions have not been given their due? Then, friends, we hope you subscribe to Sirius Satellite Radio, which has just announced the creation of Client 9 Radio, a station fully devoted to news and opinion about Eliot Spitzer sex scandal. In addition to the aforementioned pundits, Client 9, which will air tonight and be hosted by Court TV’s Vinnie Politan, will also air the opinions of esteemed figures like John McCain, Alan Dershowitz, and “private eye Vito Colucci.” But most important, they will provide a forum for you, the listener, to join “this national conversation.” So go forth, citizen gossips! Let no crevice go unexplored.
As We Win One Hooker, We Lose Another
In the excitement surrounding the unveiling of Kristen, the Jersey-grown hooker who (accidentally) brought Eliot Spitzer down, we almost missed the fact that last night, the city lost another famous prostitute. Andreia Schwartz, the “millionaire” madam who was arrested last year for running a brothel on West 58th Street where call girls got paid between $700 and $1,500 an hour (how quaint!), was quietly deported back to her native Brazil after twenty months in prison and, the Post tells us, serving as a source for the federal authorities who were probing Spitzer. Schwartz’s biggest client was Time Warner CFO Wayne Pace, who she said paid her about $200,000 and helped her buy the apartment out of which she ran her business. He denied it and got off with only a terrible reputation, but now we’re wondering … who were clients one through eight?
Kinky Link to Brazil’s Bombshell[NYP]
Earlier: Eliot Spitzer’s ‘Kristen’ Somehow Much More Adorable Than Anticipated
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EXCLUSIVE! Silda Wall Spitzer and Hillary Clinton’s Phone ConversationExclusively in our imaginations, that is. We’re not sure whether Hillary Clinton, in the past 48 hours, has called Silda Wall Spitzer. But it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Clinton is close with the Spitzers, and she did call Dina Matos McGreevey after her ordeal with the whole “My husband’s a gay governor” thing to give counsel. So we’re just going to assume that she did for a moment (we’re not sure you’ll ever hear the real story confirmed by her press people anyway — they likely don’t want to remind everyone that Hillary for a long time was best known for standing by a philandering husband). We’ll never know for sure what might have gone on in such a conversation (until, of course, Silda gives up on Eliot and gets her $3 million book deal), but we do have an idea. Thus, we have constructed for your reading pleasure an imaginary phone conversation between Hillary Clinton and Silda Wall Spitzer:
[A phone rings somewhere in the Spitzer apartment on the Upper East Side. Silda is holed up in the bedroom, reading a copy of Honor Thyself, Danielle Steel’s latest best-seller. She does not get up — the thing has been ringing off the hook, and it’s always for him. Usually these insistent calls come late at night, after she’s thankfully taken a Klonopin and drifted off to sleep. On the other side of the apartment, Eliot is surrounded by advisers in the children’s playroom. He is seated precariously on a Playmobil tea table. He picks up the phone.]
Eliot: If this is anyone but the Daily Princetonian, I have no comment, okay?
Hillary: Hello, Eliot.
Eliot: Kristen? Is it you? I’ve been trying—
Hillary: NO, it’s not KRISTEN. God, they always have white-trash names, don’t they?
Eliot: Mom?
white men with money
Among Other Things, Eliot Spitzer Has Contributed to Hooker Inflation
When we were little, our grandpa used to tell us stories about the olden days. “Used to be, you could get a hooker for a dollar!” he’d say. “Those were the days.” Sigh. If Grandpa had seen the complaint filed in the bust of Emperor’s Club — well, he’d have about keeled over. The preferred escort service of former governor Eliot Spitzer, according to the complaint, charged between $1,000 and $5,000 an hour. And, as one potential prostie was heard to complain, that didn’t even include dinner. Inflation affects even the oldest profession, and according The Wall Street Journal, the “wealth boom — and the explosion in the number of multi-millionaires — has created entirely new pricing levels for escorts.” Of 661 people who own private jets, a survey from Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, found, 34 percent of males and 20 percent of the females had paid for sex. And that’s just of people who owned private jets. If you apply those percentages to, say, people who own BMWs, that’s enough to skew the numbers for everyone. But at least one thing remains the same since Grandpa’s* day: The most popular reason the people surveyed gave for using escorts was “unique experiences.”
How the New Rich Are Changing the Oldest Profession [WSJ]
Earlier: You Can Say This About the Girls of the Emperor’s Club: They’re No Morons
*We made this bit up. Our real Grampy, God rest his soul, was a wonderful man and a devout Catholic who never ran with loose women. With the exception of his second wife. But they were married.
it just happened
Joe Bruno Remarkably Restrained in Press ConferenceJoe Bruno held a press conference just now, and it was well played. Despite the fact that Eliot Spitzer has basically been up until now his mortal enemy, he didn’t rub it in that he was totally right when he told New York earlier this month that the governor was “two-faced. He does not tell the truth.” Rather, wearing an expression of weary “I-don’t-have-time-for-this-perv” resignation, he discussed the possible transition of David Paterson (with whom he has a “great relationship”) into the position of governor and went out of his way to make the point that just because someone decided to defy Lord and country by sleeping with hookers doesn’t mean that everyone else was going to stop doing their jobs. “There is no pleasure in what is going on in this state,” he said. “This is a distraction of proportions we have never experienced. As for Eliot Spitzer, my heart goes out to his wife and his family. He must deal with his problems in his own way.”
Related: How Eliot Spitzer Finally Got Joe Bruno on the Ropes [NYM]
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Silda Wall Spitzer: More Controversial Than Britney SpearsPoor Silda Wall Spitzer. People are more opinionated about her sticking (at least for the moment) with her husband than they were about Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. Even
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Dr. Laura: Basically, It Is Silda’s Fault That Her Husband Cavorted With WhoresThe Today show invited noted moralist Dr. Laura Schlessinger on to promote her book Stop Whining and Start Living and to discuss Eliot Spitzer’s sex scandal this morning. But they seemed surprised when, predictably, she acted Dr. Laura–ish: “When the wife does not focus in on the needs and the feelings, sexually, personally, to make him feel like a man, to make him feel like a success, to make him feel like her hero, he’s very susceptible to the charm of some other woman making him feel what he needs,” Schlessinger said.
Today hostesses Meredith Viera, Ann Curry, and Hoda Kotb stared at her. There was palpable silence. It was awkward, even for us at home.
Finally, Viera managed to speak: “You’re saying the women should feel guilty that they somehow drove the man to cheat?” she asked.
“The cheating was his decision to repair what’s damaged and to feed himself where he’s starving,” Schlessinger explained. “But, yes, I hold women responsible for tossing out perfectly good men by not treating them with the love and kindness and respect and attention they need.”
Right, because Spitzer was clearly a perfectly good man. Jezebel has video if you’d like to give yourself that nice, midday outraged feeling.
Dr. Laura: Women share blame for cheating men [MSNBC]