The XX Factor: What women really think.

Is Spitzer Sorry?

Jacob Gershman's New Republic spanking of Eliot Spitzer for not appearing contrite enough upon his return to public scrutiny by way of a new Slate column is causing a minor blogosphere kerfuffle. As Gershman sees it, Spitzer isn't sufficiently sorry for having sex with a call girl, cheating on his wife, and, according to a former Spitzer aide, "the fact that the entire state government ground to a halt." Instead, the New York governor turned Luv Gov should endure a period of professional mourning, throw himself into public service so he'll be re-seen as wholly contrite, and then slowly but surely earn back the trust of the hopefully forgiving (and forgetful) American public.

Unsurprisingly, Salon's rabid legal dog Glenn Greenwald doesn't exactly agree. Greenwald, whose general modus operandi involves identifying one wrong, comparing it to anything the Bush administration has ever done, and deeming the supposed wrong a right by comparison, posits prostitution as a victimless crime for which Spitzer should never apologize. Rather, he presents Spitzer as a pseudo-victim who committed a "minor, consensual, victimless, private crime," a teeny-tiny not-even transgression for which he was "forced to resign as Governor, had intimate details of his sex life voyeuristically dissected by hordes of people driven by titillation masquerading as moral disgust, and was as humiliated and disgraced as a political figure can be." Sniff. Dick Cheney should apologize! he trumpets.

Back in January, I launched an online project called Letters From Johns. While call-girl stories aren't all that uncommon these days, there wasn't much known about why men pay for sex. I put out a query, asking men to send me their anonymous stories about why they'd paid for sex, and the letters started coming. While many of the men I heard from were contrite and conflicted, many were not. Take, for example, "I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done." Unlike Greenwald, I don't believe prostitution is a "victimless crime"—the business of buying and selling sex is far too complicated for sex workers and johns alike to be summed up so succinctly—but I don't know that I understand why Spitzer should have to apologize for what other men do, too, private actions that sometimes sit in stark contrast to their professional lives. The only difference is that Spitzer got caught. Maybe he could apologize for that?