We Endorse The Hooker Dude

The incredibly wealthy Eliot Spitzer, who lives in his dad’s building at 985 Fifth Avenue, up the street from his dad’s building at 800 Fifth Avenue, was one of the very few people hollering about the out-of-control Wall Street corporate culture before the recession. As pushy as he was, he didn’t do enough. As A.G., he sued the stock exchange’s Dick Grasso for his golden-parachute money-grabbing. He nearly took down AIG back in 2005, before AIG nearly took down New York City. He did not, and he should have. Before that, he crusaded against fake anti-abortion “family crisis center” facilities. Good! Eventually for some reason he ran for governor, which was a stupid choice, unless he’d run on a New York City secessionist platform, which would have been awesome. Some day! Then all that stuff happened. Five years passed.

His opponent Scott Stringer is a decent dude, but he’s a fairly nice guy. Eliot Spitzer is not. We are either going to end up with a screamy asshole mayor, like Chris Quinn or (unlikely) Anthony Weiner, or we are going to end up with a decent, hard-working, non-asshole mayor, like Bill de Blasio or (unlikely) that other guy, the one who ran last time, whose name I can never remember because he’s SO QUIET, WHY DOES HE NEVER SAY ANYTHING MEMORABLE. In either event, having a mouthy, obnoxious, pushy jerk for Comptroller is going to be important, either to push back against the screamer or to help out in being the strong arm for the wussier mayor.

A combo of nice-guy Stringer and imperious Quinn would be a disaster; she’d stomp on him. But also, a combo of two polite and kinda wimpy dudes would be a disaster. We have a long proud history of asshole mayors. It’s just that sometimes we get the wrong kind of asshole (like a Giuliani, or, possibly, a Quinn).

New York City needs a dick to stand up for us downtown. New York City needs a dick like Eliot Spitzer.