Oh, please. These women (and the transgendered men you mention) don’t take home those huge fees. They give a big share – sometimes a ridiculously large share- to their pimp or madam. Often they work as whores because they don’t have qualifications to do any other kind of work – indeed, they get fired from jobs they attempt in the business world because they have disorders, psychological or physical, that prevent them from staying at any routine.

In my annoyance, I called “kathyw” “maryk” in my response. I appeal to those with cooler heads to share your thoughts with kathyw, either on this site or at The Guardian.

So New York’s Democrat governor Elliot Spitzer admits to having been a naughty boy. He wanted to have sex with someone who wasn’t his wife, and pay for it. Tut tut. Paroxysms of delight from his enemies at The Wall Street Journal and comment about Spitzer’s staying power and other analysis many other places besides. Even the tech nerds want in on the gloating.

I don’t give a toss if politicians want to buy sex as long as the treat the person who wants to sell it decently and pay them well (which Spitzer was apparently more than willing to do). Many other people feel the same. The problem comes not with the behaviour but with the hypocrisy. Spitzer has in the past ridden around on his white charger, puffed up with self-righteousness, telling people what a great job he has done of busting prostitution rings. My sentiments were nicely put by Vincent Romano, lawyer for Frank Farella, who has mouldered in jail since Spitzer bust his Staten Island sex work ring. “My client feels that people who live in a glass mansion in Albany should not throw stones,” Romano was quoted as saying.

While Democratic Assemblyman John McEneny is quoted by Hot Air as saying:

“I don’t think anyone remembers anything like this. The fact that the governor has a reputation as a reformer and there is a certain assumption as attorney general that you’re Caesar’s wife [above suspicion]. It’s a different element than if you were an accountant.”…

Gosh, Mr. McEneny has a short memory. Randall Tobias ran USAID and before that PEPFAR (the US effort against AIDS globally). The Bush appointee championed the Loyalty Oath (which some call The Pledge), an anti sex work provision that handcuffed PEPFAR money to organisations that oppose prostitution. Then oooops! he turned up in the address book of Deborah Palfrey, aka the DC Madam. She spun a gossamer web around his self-righteous hypocisy, until there was no escape and Tobias resigned.

For some really interesting comment on Spitzer’s hypocrisy and the surrounding hoopla, check out some of the sex worker blogs — there’s a good summary on Bound, Not Gagged. I especially liked Waking Vixen’s account of how the media are sticking their snouts into the affair:

And while I am not ashamed that I was a sex worker, and I know sound bites are short and cannot be anywhere near as complicated as my shit it, I don’t want to be MSNBC’s whore on television. It does nothing for me personally and nothing for the movement I’m part of for me to be boiled down to the essence of “will fuck for cash. here’s how.”

(Read more here)

Another thing to be upset about: as Lee Rudolph has already pointed out, it seems that Spitzer may have done “things that, like, you might not think were safe”. And we allow this man to preside over the educational policies of New York’s schools?