White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

  • Home
  • King’s Commentaries
  • Random Features
  • Photos
  • Public Speaker
  • WHC Episodes
  • About WHC
  • Carrying Stations
  • ME/CFS Alert
  • Contact Us

Eliot Spitzer and the Parallel Life Phenomenon

March 17, 2008 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment


The two most effective and reprehensible spies of he Cold War were the Briton Kim Philby and the American Aldrich Ames. They were both professionals in the espionage business who betrayed their countries and caused the deaths of untold Western agents in the Soviet Union.

In style and personality, Philby and Ames did not share much in common. There is no compelling evidence that they yearned for the triumph of communism over capitalism. This separated them from the atomic spies Klaus Fuchs and Julius Rosenberg: They were traitors who believed in the Soviet enterprise.

Perhaps, Philby and Ames shared the desire to live two lives in parallel.

Perhaps, it was New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s desire for a parallel life–a secret but concurrent existence—that propelled his elaborate patronage of an escort service. Spitzer did not pick up a sex worker in a bar, make eye contact with her across a crowded room, but planned, financed and orchestrated the betrayal of his wife and public life.

It seems that Spitzer wanted something more than sex. He was not Bill Clinton redux. He was a man who clearly got some satisfaction from the structure of his infidelity; the pseudo-romance of it.

Here was a man of huge public life, pursuing a private life that he sought to make larger than sex alone would require. The analogy with the world of espionage fits. Here was a man in the sun who wanted to be in the shade at the same time.

John le Carre, the great espionage writer, has explored this lifestyle duality in his characters. In his novel, “A Perfect Spy,” the protagonist, Magnus Pym, tries to explain the rewards of his two lives by telling his son what it is like to be “well run.” Here, le Carre reveals the perfect spy: the person who wants to live two lives at full speed.

Not all secret lives are confined to spies and governors who want complexity in their sex lives. There are, for example, bigamists—people who feel compelled to have more than one family simultaneously, often at great risk. I know a man who maintained two families until the truth came out. The stress and strain must have been terrible, but he was very happy with the parallel families. Playwright and theater critic Kenneth Tynan was the product of a bigamist marriage. The truth was not revealed until his father’s funeral, when the two families collided.

Of course, not all secret lives are dangerous and lead to national betrayal or the suffering of families. Some are quite innocent and involve an escape from the reality of the first life. They include the huge gambit of people who belong to secret societies, mostly innocent, and to cross-dressers.

Clearly for Spitzer, a brilliant academic career, a seemingly perfect family and great success in public life were not enough. He wanted to put his talent to work at diverting money, initiating complex logistics, and spending a little time with a high-priced sex worker in a hotel room. It looks as though he wanted the life of those he used to prosecute.

Alas for Spitzer, his secret life is public and his public life is in shreds. No hiding place now.

Filed Under: King's Commentaries Tagged With: Aldrich Ames, Eliot Spitzer, John le Carre, Julius Rosenberg, Kenneth Tynan, Kim Philby, Klaus Fuchs, spies

White House Chronicle on Social

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube
IRENA Panel Urges Youth To Move from Anger to Action on Energy Transition

IRENA Panel Urges Youth To Move from Anger to Action on Energy Transition

Linda Gasparello

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate change canary, didn’t participate in the 13th assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), held in Abu Dhabi on Jan. 14 to 15. Perhaps it was because she was otherwise engaged in protesting against the razing of the German village of Lützerath for […]

Big Tech First Cornered the Ad Market, Now Practices Censorship

Big Tech First Cornered the Ad Market, Now Practices Censorship

Llewellyn King

Big tech has siphoned off advertising and wants to be a global censor.  The Department of Justice has filed suit against Google for its predatory advertising practices. Bully! Not that I think Google is inherently evil, venal or greedier than any other corporation. Indeed, it is a source of much good through its awesome search […]

Going Green Is a Palpable Need but a Tough Transition

Going Green Is a Palpable Need but a Tough Transition

Llewellyn King

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — I first heard about global warming being attributable to human activity about 50 years ago. Back then, it was just a curiosity, a matter of academic discussion. It didn’t engage the environmental movement, which marshaled opposition to nuclear and firmly advocated coal as an alternative. Twenty years on, there […]

My Adventures With Classified Documents

My Adventures With Classified Documents

Llewellyn King

It is easy to start hyperventilating over classified documents. It isn’t the classification but what is in the documents that counts. Much marked classified is rubbish. I have been around the classification follies for years. In 1970, I did what might be called a study, but it was just a freelance article on hovercraft use […]

Copyright © 2023 · White House Chronicle Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in