What do we do when we fall off the horse?

It was almost exactly nine months between Eliot Spitzer's prostitute-related resignation and his debut column in Slate, and now just a few months later, unnamed sources are telling the Post he thinks he can be a contender for Attorney General (again).

First of all, when Post readers start in on a piece about Eliot Spitzer, they don't want to be kept waiting for the single entendres, and Murdoch's wordsmiths don't disappoint. The fourth and seventh words of the piece are "flaccid" and "re-erecting," respectively.

But what of Spitzer, the man? I still say he's a huge scumbag. As an anonymous "longtime observer" said: "The whole idea of returning to Albany is preposterous. You can't go home again. He's a pariah. It wasn't just the prostitutes -- there was also Troopergate."

Or at least, I think the idea of him returning to Albany should be preposterous. In practice, I like his odds. He may have done all he could to squander it, but as personal political brands go "Scourge of Wall Street" is just too hot right now.

Spitzer is beloved by what I think of as the Greenwald/Digby segment of the Democratic electorate. They think the whole prostitute thing was a bad rap, noting that a) nobody really cares and b) when a Republican senator was caught doing the exact same thing he didn't even have to resign. And I agree with them on both those points. I just think Troopergate was that bad, and while his first stint as AG was useful in getting him elected governor, he didn't actually achieve much in the way of convictions or reforms.

I like the idea that sex scandals are becoming like Tommy John surgery (season-ending but not career ending, with the recovery period getting ever shorter as the technique is perfected). I just wish that this particular politician weren't so likely to make it back.

h/t

Ann Althouse attacked me! Where's the support group?

As I anticipated, Ann Althouse's all-seeing eye of Technorati found my re-introductory post and my "confession" to being a troll on her blog. She throws it right in my kisser in the comments to this post.

As I pointed out to her, she of all people was well aware of my comments, being on the receiving end of them. Especially because I used the term "troll" to refer to myself on her blog, using the broader definition of "commenter who regularly antagonizes the blogger" rather than the formal "commenter who is only there to disrupt the conversation."

Anyway, she called me "a little shit who hates me and intends destruction -- by his own admission." So I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.

The issue at hand, btw, was her attack on Glenn Greenwald for this post, in which Greenwald addresses "the media's obsession with the faux-masculinity of GOP candidates in general, and the tough-guy military persona of Fred Thompson in particular..."

Ann's summary was as follows:

"Greenwald begins with the subject of how sexy and manly Fred Thompson is..."

That's the kind of unflinching dishonesty that characterizes the Althouse oeuvre. But it's not only that.

The main issue for Althouse isn't what Greenwald has to say about Chris Matthews (although she defends the Thompson business too as the kind of freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness thinking that she approves of). It's that in the same post Greenwald goes after the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for bemoaning the state of American masculinity even though he "devotes his life to attending convention center conferences on space and playing around with new, cool gadgets in the fun room in his house, like a sheltered adolescent in his secret treehouse club..."

Of course she can't just come out and say: "Hey, that's my warm, supportive traffic generator you're talking about," so she argues that his accusation of hypocrisy is itself hypocritical (because it impugns Reynolds' masculinity). This isn't a good argument, but it's much better than her other main line of attack, which is that Greenwald uses too many words to make his points. This criticism is better founded but doesn't really discredit those points in the least.

Anyway, I just hope I can "leverage [her] popularity" as Jessica Valenti did (in Althouse's addled mind). I mean she got on Colbert fer cryin' out loud.