Sex Scandal Tees Are All the Rage

Spitzer takes backlash for taking wife along; reactions run along gender lines

(NEWSER) - Eliot Spitzer is going up in flames, but Americans are wondering why his wife has to go with him:

• The Los Angeles Times talks to angry people on the street, including one divorcee who insists, “She should’ve said, ‘This is your fight. ... You stand there and get yourself out of it.’” But professors disagree, saying sticking on your politician husband’s arm is simply “one last spousal duty.”

Not surprisingly, Bill Clinton is king of the list

(NEWSER) - David Letterman’s acknowledgement yesterday of some skeletons in his closet is only the latest caught by television’s unforgiving lens; Lisa Todorovich runs down her faves on True/Slant:

• Bill Clinton: The Democratic candidate, with wife Hillary alongside, cops to “mistakes in my marriage in a 1992 interview with CBS.
• Bill Clinton, part deux: “I don’t think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned,” he told the 1998 White House Prayer Breakfast in admitting his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.

Fellow New Yorker's fall from grace is an unwanted distraction, unpleasant reminder

(NEWSER) - Will the Eliot Spitzer scandal hurt fellow New York Democrat Hillary Clinton, who's all too familiar with the travails of philandering men? Writers are weighing in:

• Clinton had trouble securing Spitzer's endorsement, writes John Nichols in the Nation, and now, "He is a distraction—the big player in her adopted home state who is now in big, big trouble." One positive: David Paterson would "instantly become Clinton's most prominent African-American backer."

Shrink says it's time women balked at helping with cleanup

(NEWSER) - Silda Wall Spitzer, the Harvard-educated lawyer who stood grimly alongside her husband during his somewhat perplexing apology yesterday, joins the ranks of political wives who suffer publicly the sex scandals of their disgraced mates, ABC writes. She follows in the footsteps of Larry Craig's wife, Suzanne; Jim McGreevey's then-wife, Dana: and, of course, Hillary Clinton, an exception in that she didn't share the podium with Bill at his nadir. More»

It's clear the legend can't hack it anymore

(NEWSER) - If you needed proof that it’s time for Larry King to retire—beyond the plummeting ratings —you got it during his painful interview with Lady Gaga. The interaction was a total dud, despite Gaga’s obvious willingness to have fun. “If he can no longer hit a hanging curve ball over the middle of the plate, shouldn’t CNN be thinking hard about who is on deck?” writes David Carr of the New York Times . More»