If blood will have blood, power will have sex

By Maureen Dowd: Just when I thought my head would explode from trying to figure out delegate math, I'm hit with call-girl math.

The arithmetic of procuring a prostitute who is both experienced and inspirational is even more complicated than the arithmetic of procuring a President who is both experienced and inspirational.

If you're a frugal governor who doesn't even like paying his political consultant bills, as opposed to an Arab sheikh or a Vegas high roller, do you really need to shell out $4,300, plus minibar expenses, to a shell com pany for two hours with a shady lady? Aren't there cheaper hooker hook-ups on Craigslist? It makes you wonder how sharp Eliot Spitzer's pencil was on the state's fiscal discipline.

And how does it add up that Steamroller No. 1 suddenly morphs into Client No. 9, a nom d'amour with the ring of an overpriced Gucci cologne for men, giving untold thousands for untold years to a prostitution ring that has hourly rates based on rating its girls on a diamond scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being $3,100, and above 7 in a special club for $5,500 and up?

(A friend of mine who knows the ways of the way ward, explained that the flesh peddlers no doubt had a shell game as well as a shell com- pany: "They say, ‘You can have Jane. She's $1,000 an hour. Or, you can have Tiffany for $5,000 an hour.' The client doesn't know that Jane and Tiffany are the same girl. It's not like clients are going to compare notes. ‘I paid $5,000 for Kristen. You only paid 1,000 for Chrissy?'").

If blood will have blood, as Shakespeare said in Mac beth, power will have sex.

Some people took the saga of Eliot Ness in the boudoir, the old yarn of holier than thou caught in flagrante delicto, as a sign that a woman should be President. "I would think the story about our esteemed governor is all the proof we need that we should have a woman as President," a woman I know said in an email message. Another woman emailed the reverse to a friend: "I hope this makes people think back to Monica Lewinsky. Can sex scandals be well timed?" In modern times, you rarely see any men having to stand ashenly by their women. But in the past, women got tangled up with sex and power. When Bette Davis played Elizabeth I, she was always sending her lovers off to the Tower of London when they made eyes at her pretty ladies-in-waiting. Hillary could not have been pleased to be in all the TV stand-byyour-man features, or to hear David Letterman's Spitzer Top Ten list which included, "I thought Bill Clinton legalised this years ago."

Geraldine Ferraro, who helped Walter Mondale lose 49 states in 1984, was clearly stung at what she considered Obama's easy rise to celebrity and electoral success. Last Friday, Ms Ferraro, who is on Hillary's national finance committee, told the Daily Breeze, a small newspaper in Torrance, California, "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any colour), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Obama acknowledged when he arrived in the Senate that he got more attention, his big book deal and his celebrity, because he is not white.