The Spitzer Scandal Breaks (2008) w/ Azi Paybarah

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6 • 982 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s March 19th. In 2008 (on March 17th) New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigned after a week of reports about his patronizing a prostitution ring.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by long-time NY political reporter Azi Paybarah to discuss how quickly the salacious details broke, the media environment that fueled it — and why there was a particular hypocrisy at the heart of it all.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.
0:07.0	My name is Jody Avergan.
0:10.0	This day 2008, New York Governor Elliot Spitzer resigned after reports that he had patronized a prostitution ring.
0:18.0	Just about two years earlier, Spitzer had come into office pledging to clean up the notoriously corrupt and
0:24.1	sketchy New York government, but he was quickly embroiled in a series of
0:28.0	scandals and then this absolutely wild week of news stories starting on March 10th with the first reports in the New York Times and then the New York Post and elsewhere
0:37.3	The initial headline in the post was Spitzer linked to prostitution ring and then as you can imagine the New York
0:44.2	post headlines got pretty wild and pretty out there over the course of that week
0:48.2	some of those headlines and images are still seared into my brain and we'll we'll
0:52.2	recount them here.
0:53.6	But let's talk about Elliot Spitzer's fall,
0:55.8	but also a bit about his rise,
0:58.0	because as I mentioned, he really did come in
0:59.6	with a reputation as someone who's going to clean up Albany in lots of ways and there is no
1:04.4	better guest to have on for this than Ozzy Pabra now a political reporter at the
1:09.1	Washington Post but Ozzy has done stints at the New York Times W WNYC, where I got to know him political,
1:14.4	the New York Observer, one of the best chroniclers of New York governmental shadiness that we have.
1:20.0	Ozzy, hello, thanks for coming on the show.
1:22.3	It's great to have you on.
1:23.2	Thanks for having me.
1:24.4	Apologies for taking you back to the spring of 2008, but you know.
1:29.1	There are more innocent times.
	...

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