Client 9: Spitzer Snoozer
Alex Gibney’s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer is misguided on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start. Suffice to say, most film critics are slavishly praising it, as sure a case of liberal media bias as you’d find in, say, NPR or the New York Times.
Gibney, whose previous documentaries include the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, is so outraged by Spitzer’s fall from grace he can’t come up with a unifying theme for his movie.
So he cooks them together into one narrative soup. Client 9 defends prostitution as a profession that saves marriages and claims Spitzer’s actions were just about sex and therefore meaningless. The real crime, according to Gibney, wasn’t a sitting governor breaking the law but the nasty Republicans who leaked the story to the press.
Only he can’t prove that last part.
Spitzer “was going to be our first Jewish president,” an unseen talking head offers in the film’s opening moments. And perhaps the voice is right. The so-called “sheriff of Wall Street” did seem like a shooting political star. A sharp, take-no-prisoners Democrat from New York, whose zest for law enforcement could easily pry away a few million Republican votes.
Early on, there’s hope Gibney will paint a political portrait missing from the 24/7 news cycle. We hear Spitzer describe how his father would wallop him in Monopoly at the age of 10, the eagle-faced politician chuckling at the memory.
He grew up in a family where tough political subjects were debated around the kitchen table. That’s where his zest for the progressive agenda took shape. He went on to believe it was his duty to use the law to arrest the bad guys and change the way society worked for the “little guy.”
Client 9 registers when it details the financial shenanigans Spitzer disrupted both as New York’s attorney general and, later, its governor. Gibney patiently breaks them down in a way even the financially illiterate can grasp and puts a human face on the damage they did.
The film soon loses its focus.
Who really cares about Spitzer??? I wouldn’t wast my time. And how a guy like that gets a show on CNN is a mystery to me. Just shows you that you can put anything on Cable TV these days.
Seems like this documentary maker is entitled to associate membership in JournoList and its spinoff Cabalist. Given the will, there is no limit to the massaging that will make a lefty look good. I look forward to his film on George Soros, the former Nazi collaborator.
Dis you really mean former?
That was supposed to be; Did you really mean former?
“Client 9 registers when it details the financial shenanigans Spitzer disrupted both as New York’s attorney general and, later, its governor. Gibney patiently breaks them down in a way even the financially illiterate can grasp and puts a human face on the damage they did.”
It was mostly a witch hunt, he wrongly accused innocent people for his own political gain, he is an evil man, a man that ruined far more lives than he supposedly helped, may Spitzer burn in hell
Client 9 registers when it details the financial shenanigans Spitzer disrupted both as New York’s attorney general and, later, its governor. Gibney patiently breaks them down in a way even the financially illiterate can grasp and puts a human face on the damage they did.
And I’m sure it was presented with as much objectivity and lack of bias as Spitzer’s investigations were.
The “Sheriff of Wall Street?” Puh-leez! Spitzer was the Joe McCarthy, the Cotton Mather of Wall Street. The Master of theatricality, thunderously denouncing his victims without a shred of actual evidence, and then quietly dropping charges when it became apparent he had squat.
Would AIG have suffered catastrophe had Hank Greenberg not been run off? It certainly would have had a better chance.
Spitzer was staying at a hotel in Washington DC when he called that New York escort service to send him an escort. She traveled from NY to Washington via Amtrak.
Legally, that meant that Spitzer had paid for interstate sex trafficking, which is a felony. That’s why the FBI investigated Spitzer–and why Spitzer resigned rather than face jail for that felony.
If the documentary didn’t make that clear, then it’s nothing but a Democrat polemic.
If he was better looking he could have got chicks for free and been the next Kennedy. Maybe he would’ve instituted a gov’t run whorehouse in the District of Columbia like they have in Istanbul. If Spitzer had not been outed there might have been men on Mars by 2020, with paid escorts to ease the way natch.
It’s funny to hear that The New York Times is praising a documentary that accuses, without evidence, Republicans of leaking the details of Spitzer’s dealings with prostitutes, since the story was broken … by The New York Times. Perhaps the Arts & Leisure section people should have a little chat with the folks on the Times’ Metropolitan desk about the facts as put forward in “Clint 9″, so at least both departments can get their stories straight.
Spitzer was going to be our first Jewish president?
I assume the director is from New York City, because you’d have to be either from there or from California to be that clueless. “Flyover country” would have never voted for the guy. Not because he’s Jewish, but because he’s an abrasive asshole. I know the NYC-LA axis hates it, but we get to vote, too.
I wonder why Gibney didn’t mention that Spitzer was shaking down the Wall Street guys he was investigating for contributions to Spitzer’s campaign for governor.
Spitzer the Spritzer gives the lie to the “dead girl, live boy” canard. Of course, he’s neither as charming and brazen as the Big Rock from Little Rock nor as lost in narcissistic obliviousness as Father Edwards of the Coiffe. In short he lacks the capacity for pathological self-delusion that seems to mark recent presidential papibili.
Nice, detailed review. Good work, Christian.
I am thankful this little Fascist Spitzer was caught w/ his pants down, he was destined to be a threat on the National level. Great review Mr. Toto, it is most valuable to never let these frauds get away with their lying.
Put it all on record and drive it to the top of internet searches by tagging ‘spitzer, kennedy, dead whores, clinton, scumbags’.
The Film asks many questions, and attempts to answer them. It would be so much simpler, and save so much time, to give them here: 1) Spitzer is a whore-dog, 2) because he is a whore-dog, 3) you know he is a whore-dog, 4) well, you know,that’s what whore-dogs do and finally- 5)the Left loves Liberal Whore-Dogs. Because they have no morals or standards, they can violate no morals or standards.