My governor, Eliot Spitzer, has been found to be a user of hookers while in DC. He publicly has railed against the sex industry. So, yesterday, he appeared with his wife by his side, at the podium.

They always bring their wives when there's a sex scandal. The wife stands there looking attentive, loving and dutiful while the public official tries to make the best of things. Hillary in '98 started showing up to events when Bill was hit with the Lewinsky thing. She's been in the spotlight ever since, at least in New York State, where she's a senator.

Back in the mid-80s, Ed Koch was trying to convey that he was straight, when running for mayor of NYC. So he went to public event after public event holding hands with Betsy Gotbaum (who became our Culture official when Koch got elected). But once elected, she stopped showing up with him and he went back to being a single buck. That was sort of a reverse sex scandal. As opposed to outing himself, he was inning himself!

Everyone hates a hypocrite. When the head of the Council of Evangelical Christian Churches, or whatever that organization is, was suddenly found to have a Gay companion, he insisted the guy was a masseur and it was just massages. The thing was, Evangelicals are very biased against homosexuality, and very outspoken at that. Likewise the Idaho Republican senator who has "a wide stance" when in the stall. In the airport. Adamantly non-homosexual. But did he say he wasn't bi?

Spitzer went after prostitutes and their johns, so his hypocrisy is seen to be very great. People who decry sexual practices are double-darned when it's found that they practice those practices.

Should you avoid coming to New York City because of this? No. It's just a facet of life around here, that someone's secret sexual life is teased out. It happens so often that we New Yorkers just shake our heads, then go about our daily lives.

Just don't start asking me "Where are the hookers?" All I know is that they are in hotel rooms down in DC. And that our governor spent EIGHTY GRAND on them. And that his new sobriquet -- not in the papers but around water coolers -- is "Spitzer swallows."