Milk Baths With Eliot Spitzer

I fondly recall a memory from my 11th grade American history class. It was about two weeks into the school year and we were covering the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution, and my teacher Mr. Wimmer brought up one of the more obscure figures of the day: Gouverneur Morris. He was part of the “in” crowd…you know, the cool group with Hamilton, Franklin, Madison and Jefferson who used to move about town on their horses like they owned the place. According to Mr. and Mrs. Wikipedia he was the brains behind, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” of ye olde Constitution.

Well Gouverneur Morris–not to be confused with Governor Morris, who I’m sure has existed somewhere in some capacity in some U.S. state–was an eccentric lad. And one day during class Mr. Wimmer, a humorous but usually soft spoken man lounged in his chair, loudly exclaimed: “And Gouverneur Morris took milk baths with prostitutes!”

Once everyone in the class finished gasping, and then subsequently stopped giggling, I think we all realized how cool Gouverneur Morris was despite being slightly grossed out. Don’t quote me on any of this because it comes from a very unreliable source: my memory; and I haven’t found any Internet confirmation on it. Plus, if I learned anything from Psych 101 in college, our brain changes facts as time goes by. By that logic, however, the previous statement might very well be false as well. No matter…the fact is, Mr. Wimmer may have simply said “Gouverneur Morris was a statesman from Pennsylvania,” and over time my brain transformed that into “Gouverneur Morris took milk baths with prostitutes.”

Assuming for a minute the statement is true, Gouverneur hasn’t received nearly as much attention as he deserves. Also, supposedly the milk baths were just the tip of Gouverneur’s proverbial hedonistic iceberg.

That being said, Eliot Spitzer clearly has been given a bad wrap. As far as we know, there was absolutely no milk involved in Spitzer’s numerous encounters with the prostitutes. Wikipedia also states that Morris did get married at the age of 57 to a relative of Thomas Jefferson, which would leave him plenty of time to sow his wild oats. For all we know, Morris never engaged in any extramarital affairs. But I think we can assume that he did, because I think the statute of limitations passed, so that I can safely libel Gouverneur Morris. (Note: please don’t sue me Morris family…Gouverner is a gentleman and a scholar).

And I don’t even want to know what Theodore Roosevelt did in his spare time, when he wasn’t wrestling bears and boxing kangaroos, of course. Anyone who created the most successful third party of all time, and called it “The Bull Moose Party” (far more interesting than Progressive Party) must have had some unseemly things behind the curtain other than bulls and moosii. But whatever antics Theodore Roosevelt engaged in, I’m sure Howard Taft surpassed them threefold.

I’m not even gonna get started on the other more “interesting” politicians, like Millard “the lady killer” Fillmore, Grover “I love opium with my whiskey” Cleveland, and John “Don’t call me Quincy or I’ll come after you with my Winchester” Adams.

Furthermore, the Vatican just added seven more deadly sins. Of course there’s still the standard sloth and lust, but now there’s also excessive accumulation of wealth and not recycling. By adding seven more sins and including ones that I’m sure most of planet unfortunately doesn’t abide by (recycling for example), the Vatican has diluted the first seven deadly sins. Lust, therefore, is not that bad anymore, slightly worse than reading books on the divine scale of things.

The moral of this story is thus: we need to cut Eliot Spitzer some slack. It’s just a little, trifling international prostitution ring. If there were milk involved, that would be a different story.