The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

I'd Read That Novel

Meghan, I love that premise for a novel. Sudhir Venkatesh is about to publish a great piece in Slate laying out the different layers of the New York sex trade, which he has studied as a sociologist at Columbia. (I"ll post the link when it appears.) For the unintiated, which seems to include XX factor, it's helps clarify what men get from prostitutes that they don't get from afffairs. Beyond the simple (and yet so false) promise of averting entanglement that I think the Emperors' Club Web site offered before it got yanked.

For what it's worth, I agree with you that sex crimes like this one don't necessarily disqualify people from holding future public office, in part because the word "crime" seems just too harsh. And I also agree that Spitzer's case is different because of his record zealously prosecuting prosection rings—and also because of the allegations that he broke other laws by moving money around illegally. For this former, scourge-of-Wall-Street AG that is some whole level beyond irony. My favorite scandal fact, from NPR yesterday, is that Spitzer's deposits got picked up because banks now have powerful software for sniffing out the sort of cash bundling he was doing—because as AG, he told the banks to get it! More novel fodder.