(continued)

All of which reminded me of my favorite headline of all time, which had the dual virtues of brevity and wit:

HE CAME AND HE WENT

That how the Village Voice summarized Nelson Rockefeller's collapse in the arms of his 25-year-old paramour, Megan Marshack.

The schadenfreude was loudest on Wall Street, where there were cheers on the floor of the stock exchange, and the Dow Jones Industrial average was up by 219 points at midday today.

On editorial pages, the score was three "go nows" (Post, Daily News, and Newsday) to three attacks with no explicit recommendations (New York Times, New York Sun, Wall Street Journal) to one silence (Washington Post). On New York 1, immediately after the story broke on the New York Times website, political reporter Dominic Carter was the most decisive of all: "He cannot survive this!" Over at CNN, the reporter reading the gory details of Spitzer's tryst from the federal complaint ended by saying, "I'm nauseous now—I guess that's enough."

Newsday went with a centerfold of the all-time great political sex scandals of the past 50 years, including Larry Craig (2006), James McGreevey (2004), Bill Clinton (1998), Gary Hart (1987—complete with the famous National Enquirer cover with Donna Rice on his lap), and Nelson Rockefeller (1963—when he divorced his first wife to marry his mistress, Happy.) Newsday's Bob Kessler was also first with the news that Spitzer had used the Emperor's Club "seven or eight times" in Washington and Florida, among other places.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page saw Client 9's indiscretions as one more piece of evidence of Spitzer's "self-destructive inability to recognize any limit on his compulsions," previously on display when he tried to smear New York senate majority leader Joseph Bruno. "On any level, it was nuts."

Finally, the Washington Post offered the best coda: "By late afternoon yesterday, the Mayflower had stationed a security guard on the eighth floor to keep the scandal-minded at bay. Some of the camera-toting tourists had already dubbed it the 'Spitzer Hotel.' But Kristen and Client 9 were long gone. In their place, reporters arriving on the scene encountered a bit of fitting imagery for the New York governor: a meeting of the National Funeral Directors Association."

As for the $5,000 question on everyone's mind—what do you get for that much money?—an Albany veteran offered me the best suggestion, involving Spitzer's arch Republican rival: "He wanted her to dress up like Joe Bruno."

---

Big Moment for the Gray Lady: The New York Times broke the Spitzer story on its website yesterday. These were the reporters trying to keep the paper abreast of it today: Danny Hakim ,William K. Rashbaum, John Sullivan, Jennifer Anderson, Cara Buckley, Sewell Chan, Sushil Cheema, David W. Chen, Alison Leigh Cowan, Jane Gottlieb, Jason Grant, Kate Hammer, Patrick Healy, Raymond Hernandez, C. J. Hughes, Andrew Jacobs, Daryl Khan, David Kocieniewski, Serge F. Kovaleski, Angela Macropoulos, Colin Moynihan, Don Van Natta Jr., Patrick McGeehan, Jeremy W. Peters, Sam Roberts and Stacey Stowe.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Reporter: Richard Vanderford


Charles Kaiser
www.Radaronline.com/fullcourtpress

Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.

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