Decades ago at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, it is said, a customer responded to a drunken rant by poet Delmore Schwartz: “You’re paranoid” to which Schwartz replied: “Even paranoids have enemies.”

Could even Gov. Spitzer have enemies? GOP crank-plotter Roger Stone hints he’s behind the Spitzer mud [1] and suggests there’s more to come. Further, as the Washington Post reports, Gov. Spitzer had been the target of FBI surveillance weeks before he was discovered to be Customer #9. [2] For those of you with a bizarre sense of humor about these things check out Jim Dwyer's Spitzer reminisce [3] with of all people Dickie Morris. Read also Scott Horton's review of the Dept. of Injustice's conduct. [4]

Is the aura of power so intoxicating that those who smell it's perfume feel invulnerable? Have you read through the indictment and affidavits? It's a little alarming the ways in which customer #9 tried to manipulate payments to prostitutes because it shows a sense that he's invulnerable. Did Mr. Spitzer think no one could ever try to trap him? Did Mr. Spitzer forget the vilification visited upon Alan Hevesi for (in my view) Hevesi's innocent steps to protect his sick wife?

Many other powerful men have engaged in sexual liaisons they’d perhaps have preferred to have not reported on the front page of the New York Times: Presidents John Kennedy & Bill Clinton, Civil Rights leaders Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bayard Rustin, Senator Larry Craig. In my view, it’s worth thinking about why people (It seems to be only a guy thing -- why?) do things which damage them profoundly and why we react so strongly against them when they do.

I find myself agreeing with Nora Ephron's Huff Post [5]: it feels inevitable that Gov. Spitzer will resign, but I wish he wouldn't. The acts he's accused of are common, trivial to governing. There's no there, there.

Even customers of high-priced prostitution rings have enemies.

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