Senator Vitter

Where to begin, where to begin.

Are you familiar with the name Vitter? If not, Vitter is a Louisiana senator who recently admitted that his phone number was found in the so-called black book of the D.C. madam because several years ago he apparently paid for sex with one of the madam's "escorts."

Everyone makes mistakes. But Vitter shot himself in the foot by crying from the mountain tops over the years that the sanctity of marriage and the strength of traditional family "operations" were crucial to the strength and development and character and moral fiber of the United States. He made those positions an integral part of his political personality. And then he went out and hired at least one hooker.

Here's the thing. I don't care what political party Vitter belongs to. It really doesn't matter to me that he's a Republican. Plenty of Democrats have had affairs over the years.

You're going to think I'm being frivolous, but what I'm more curious about is why Vitter paid for it. It.

I know that in theory we all pay for it. Women, as your romantic relationship with a new guy develops from caution to passion, you pay by patiently spending countless hours either listening to him talk about guy things and his job, watching him ignore you (and pretend not to) while you talk, or watching (and pretending not to see) his primate-like qualities, like butt-scratching, "other" scratching, belching, etc. And guys, you pay by patiently spending countless hours listening to her talk about girl things and her job, watching her obsess over "the little stuff" like a hair being out of place or an outfit not being quite right. You both pay by buying him or her gifts, meant to please them, and if you think about it, meant to ingratiate yourself to them.

So I get it. We pay.

But literally paying cash for it? That's a different story. Vitter's not a bad looking guy. Does he really have to pay cash? I notice on old reruns of Cops or in the occasional - lately sort of freqent - news reports about prominent figures getting caught in prostitution stings it's always a decent-looking guy who seems like he'd have game who gets busted.

Why? Seriously, getting a prostitute is not easy. I've heard/seen those guys explain after the fact that they did it because it was easy to arrange - a simple exchange of money for a service.

That's a crock. I don't know that because I've tried to hire a hooker. I haven't. I wouldn't. Aside from that whole loving my wife thing, I'm much too cheap to offer cash for it.

But having covered crime as a reporter, and having met my share of Johns and hookers while lurking in the shadows of cops on the street, I'm telling you hiring such an "employee" ain't that easy. Unless you're in Vegas or something where the prostitutes get all dressed up and trawl the casino floors looking for suckers, you have to go and find them. You have to go to a crappy neighborhood and look for them the same way you might go looking for illegal drugs. You can put your life in jeopardy looking in the wrong place, all for a few dollars and few minutes worth of intimacy. The danger exception might be what Vitter did - hiring a temporary sack friend from an escort service. Even then, you don't know the background of the person coming to meet you at your hotel room, or your office, or wherever. She/he could be a serial killer, who chops up Johns.

Sorry, the jokes about it being easy can't be right. I've seen too much to the contrary.

In the mean time, I hope Vitter gets it together. Whether in the Senate or not, I don't care. He doesn't represent my district. And if the good folks of Louisiana want him to rep their set, more power to 'em. I hope his kids aren't too traumatized. And I hope his wife learns a valuable lesson about the looooooooooooooooong "memory" of videotape - she was caught on tape several years back joking about Bill and Hillary Clinton RE Monica Lewinski that if her husband, Vitter, cheated on her she wouldn't forgive/embrace him, she'd turn into Lorena Bobbitt (the woman who chopped off her allegedly abusive husband's penis) on him - and from here on out takes a "there but for the grace of God" attitude about other people's human shortcomings.