We Read Jewish Mags So You Don’t Have To: All-Spitzer Edition

Why does the Spitzer story feel so Jewish? Is it because New York is the other Jewish capital of the world? Is it because Spitzer has always been a bit of a Jewish stereotype—the pushy bulldog lawyer? Is it because of the Israeli pimp? It’s hard to say, but both Jewish publications and the mainstream media seem to think this is totally a tribal issue.

• In The New Republic, Noam Scheiber suggests that Spitzer is bit of an Alexander Portnoy:
  

  Like Portnoy, maybe Spitzer felt simultaneously driven (by stultifying parents) to be a good Jewish boy and rebel against his good Jewish boy-ness, and so you get the weird spectacle of the most upright guy in the world acting out some pretty deviant urges.

• In the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar predicts how the story will play in the Jewish media "Oy, such a nice Jewish boy, on his way to becoming the first Jewish President! What's this girl's name, Kristen? Sigh. To think he threw it all away for a shiksa."
• Heeb thinks Spitzer’s pseudonym, “George Fox,” might have something to do with “a ho bustin’ Wild West Rabbi.” As a good Quaker Jew, I should point out that George Fox was also the founder of the Friends movement, although I can’t even begin to imagine a Quaker pay-for-play sex scandal.
• Jewschool wonders if Bush administration Justice Department appointees targeted Spitzer for a takedown.
• In the Forward, Alan Dershowitz asks everyone to give Spitzer a break: “These may be sins, but there are no real victims, except for family members.” Yeah, except for them. Also? Few things could be more humiliating than having your former mentor defend your libido-led mistakes in the Jewish Daily Forward.
• New governor David Paterson + New York Jews = BFF
• Not Jewish, just hilarious (which is, by the way, going to be the title of my memoir if I ever leave this job): Samantha Bee forces her husband to stand by her side as she confesses to infidelity on the Daily Show. I LOL’d; so did Jon Stewart.