Eliot Spitzer Knows What He's Doing

I'm trying to parse the Spitzer-Newsweek deal. In effect, Newsweek, by reporting on Spitzer's rehabilitation, is rehabilitating its own asset.

My curiosity here has nothing to do with whether Spitzer should be rehabilitated or not, but with the commercial nature of the effort, and, too, the who-knows-whom-in-the-media-power-structure aspects of the comeback.

Newsweek, in its cover story this week, is theoretically telling us, based on an in-depth interview with the former governor, about details of his soul-searching and the mechanics of his redemption. What Newsweek doesn't say is that a major building block of Spitzer's return to credibility and public life is to be featured on the cover of a major news magazine.

As it happens, Spitzer is openly engaged in a more or less formal comeback strategy with various entities of the Washington Post Co., of which Newsweek is one. In addition to writing for Newsweek, he also writes a regular column for Slate, the Washington Post-owned website. Other than a certain coziness, there is nothing necessarily wrong here.

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