The Hooker and the Governor

Hi there, friends! I'm ashamed to say that it's been nearly two weeks since I last posted, which means I have entirely missed out on blogging about the Eliot Spitzer affair -- an event custom-made for snarky wise cracks if ever there was one. But better late than never, as they say, so let me make a couple of observations:

• I've read many comments along the lines of "Is anyone/anything really worth $3,000 an hour?" Obviously The Gov thought so, however to put this in perspective, that rate comes to an annual salary of roughly $6.2 million (assuming a 40 hour week and paid vacations). So, to see who else might be getting that sort of money, I consulted Forbes Magazines' 2007 survey of the highest-paid CEO's in the corporate world and found that their average annual compensation was $15.2 million -- or about the cost of two 7-diamond escorts and one somewhat skankier 3-diamond model. The top dog on the list was Apple CEO Steve Jobs at $646.6 million, followed by Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum at $321.6 million, and one could make the argument that they've been screwing the public for years. Of course, whether the Chief Escort Officers on the Forbes list are actually worth that amount is another question. Ashley Alexandra Dupre earned outstanding performance reviews from her clients, probably higher than Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr., for example, who brought home $9 million in '06 while his company's stock tanked.

• The high cost of "Kristin's" er, "professional services" naturally lends itself to all sorts of jokes. This blog is of course way too classy to print such things (hah!), however anyone so inclined can go here for some suitably ribald humor. (Caution: not only unsafe for work, but tasteless too; don't say I didn't warn you.)

• Ms. Dupre may have made the understatement of the year when she called her father the day after Emperor's Club VIP was busted to say that she "was in a little bit of trouble." However, she's also shown herself to be a resourceful girl, turning lemons into lemonade by using her 15 minutes of fame to promote her MySpace site and singing career. She better get on the ball fast though, for as Bloomberg.com points out, "Sadly, you've already used up six and a half minutes of it with two underwhelming songs." Like many others, I downloaded "What We Want" and "Move Ya Body", thinking they might make an interesting addition to my radio show next week. However, I quickly discarded that idea after listening to them, because to be perfectly honest, they suck.

Which, when you think about it, is highly appropriate.