Pot. Kettle. Rove.

I've always felt that if you need a solid viewpoint on a position that requires professional insight, you should go to a professional. Well, when speaking of positions found in the Kama Sutra there is no finer pro than Susie Bright, and she of course has a very professional analysis of the Spitzer Scandal.

Pride Goeth Before Client #9

Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, who became famous prosecuting Wall Street crooks, has been caught on a federal wiretap, making arrangements with a high-priced prostitute.

The pro, named Kristen, called her booker after her session with Eliot to confirm that all had gone well. She said she didn't find Spitzer "difficult,"€ as some of the other girls had complained.

The booker replied to her that "Client 9," as Eliot was called, was known to ask the women "€œto do things that, like, you might not think were safe."

Aside from the kinky slap to his Mr. Clean reputation, Spitzer is also facing legal jeopardy, since, among other things, the feds are hitting him with the Mann Act, a 1910 prostitution law designed to crack down on interstate "white slavery."

And as they say on Fark: "Hilarity Ensues." First Suzie has a few rings on the gong, and then her readers chime in. I won't spoil it- it's best enjoyed in it's compellingly NSFW context.

Oh, maybe just ONE more little nibble:

If we could give a truth serum to all the parties involved—€” or wiretap their personal diaries— here's what we might listen in on:

The $4,300 an Hour Prostitute:

Well, first of all, I got less than half of that, and my manicurist charges almost as much.

The Wife:

There's not a political wife alive who's been schtupped by her own husband in years. If you want a career as a high profile spouse, you can kiss your sex life goodbye.

The John/Governor:

Those sons of bitches. I know who did this, and I'll destroy them if it's the last thing I do.

The Escort Service Booker:

There's a couple dozen high end joints like us operating at any time to service the Pol crowd, and we just can't charge enough. Once they start ratting out each other, they'll mess us over so bad there'll be forty people filing bankruptcy as a result of their bullshit.

Did I mention that I like Susie Bright a lot?

She's had a lot to say about previous scandals of this sort, all of it compelling, insightful and wickedly pointed. But as amusing it is to see an arrant hypocrite hoist upon his own crusader's petard, it's really "Dog bites Man."

But, thanks to Susie, I was directed to this article on BoingBoing:

"I'm the proud owner of Karl Rove’s father’s solid gold cock ring."

You know, that might well be the most compelling headline of the decade.

Shannon Larratt, founder of the body modification online publication BMEzine, pointed us a few days ago to a first-person essay that a person named Yard[D]og was writing, regarding the adoptive father of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove (shown in the image at left). Yard[D]og claims to have been a close personal friend of the now-deceased elder Rove.

I've also had occasion to exchange emails with Shannon over the years, and there's nothing in my interactions that would cause me to either doubt his word or think that this might be concocted. [BK]

And now I wondered if that son ever cried for the man who raised him and watched him grow up? I’d be curious as to how Karl Rove would ever explain his pierced, gay father? He never told the people in Louis’ phone book that he had died, nor invited them to a service if there was one. No one even knows where he is buried.

As for me? Well, I am the proud owner of Karl Rove’s father’s pure, solid gold cock ring! I’ve put it away with a few memories and pictures of his father. And in my garden grows a nasty, prickly little cactus from Louie’s backyard ... alive and well.

- - - - - - - -

Link to full text. NSFW advisory: Contains links to photographs of pierced genitals said to those of Karl Rove's father, with a "modesty mosaic" imposed over the thumbnail images at that main link.

Well, now; that explains a lot, don't it? Oh, and Karl was raised in Sparks, Nev, just for that local interest angle.

I've always thought that Karl was a little bit "queer" myself. Not in the way his dad was, but in the sense of being ooozingly, off-puttingly not quite right. In the old sense, before the word came to be a synonym for homosexuality, one connotation was the sort of person that caused you to wipe your hand on your pants-leg after shaking their hand.

And oddly enough, Karl is the exact sort that would like you to confuse those terms, with the sort of pasty phiz you see in sex-offender registries.

So, with that unpleasant but entirely too plausible association in mind, let us now observe that Glenn Greenwald is wondering aloud if this might be the result of a politically motivated "sting" by the Department of Justice.

Is it really the case that any elected official who ever breaks the law should be righteously condemned by all decent people and then forced from office -- without regard to how serious the offense is or whether there are even any victims? If so, I don't think there are going to be very many elected officials left.

I believe that's one of them Rhetorical Questions.

I'm minded how easy it was for Larry Flindt to scare up awkward details on people howling for Clinton's head during the Lewinski matter. The odds are very good that if there is any political figure of any party that you would like to pressure or put out to pasture, that you will be able to find dirt enough to do it. The only requirement, of course, is that you somehow believe that "sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander."

Glenn points to a damn fine Harper's take on this and in a later update heaves a nod toward firedoglake.

UPDATE II: Harper's Scott Horton, one of the country's foremost experts on the Bush DOJ's overtly political prosecution of former Democratic Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, compiles numerous additional questions regarding this quite unusual, massive federal law enforcement effort directed at a small prostitution ring that just so happens to have had Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer as a client (leading, in turn, to the disclosure of all sorts of salacious details in the "Client-9" paragraphs of the Complaint having no bearing whatsoever on the actual criminal issues).

It will be difficult for the questions Horton raises to attract much attention given all of the fun, titillating details concerning Spitzer's sexual activities which are already preoccupying so many, to say nothing of the invigorating charge that comes from being part of an upstanding mob so righteously condemning the private lives of others. But the issues Horton raises are of far greater significance than how Eliot Spitzer and other consenting adults chose to spend their time with one another.

UPDATE III: Jane Hamsher is asking similar and additional questions about this very odd prosecution.

That, of course, would be the sort of operation we have come to describe in the Blogosphere as being "Rovian."

In light of all of this, I think it's pretty obvious exactly what precise national security imperative drives the White House toward insisting on the need to be able to listen to our phone-calls or mine your data without so much as a warrant or a by-your-leave.

Their idea of "national security" is a permanent Republican majority, if not in name, than in effect. Odd, is it not, how so many Democrats failed so frequently to frustrate such obvious abuses of power by George Bush and his cronies?

This may well be intended as an object lesson as to what happens to people who poke their noses into Republican business.

But I wonder what a decent investigative reporter could dig up on major Republican figures - given a few grand for expenses?

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