Sure, Eliot Spitzer did much to discredit himself years ago with a scandal that cost him the governorship if not his marriage. We all know the tawdry details about that. We also know he hasn't held a steady job since, having already been fired by CNN and now trying to gain an audience at Current TV with his new show, Viewpoint. However, I think he continues to fight the good fight, and is holding steady in his past work to hold Wall Street accountable for past (and ongoing) misdeeds. For that reason, I believe Wall Street is fighting back to continue to discredit him, thinking he's an easy mark due to his tainted reputation as a cheater and womanizer. And the corporate media seems more than happy to do their bidding.
Last Friday afternoon, I wrote a diary about how CNBC attempted a hatchet job on Spitzer, led by Wall Street tool Maria Bartiromo. Many of you may have missed this diary and its embedded explosive video, given I did it late on a Friday afternoon. I urge you to click on the link and watch the video. The relevant portion is about 10 minutes long, and starts at the 4-minute mark. You'll be astonished.
Actually, all day long, CNBC on-air hosts promoted the story, using Spitzer's former GOP opponent for AG and his predecessor in that position as "exhibit A" in a smear to tarnish the messenger for a message of corruption and fraud, in this case against former AIG head Hank Greenberg.
It's transparent to me what's going on here. Greenberg has a PR team and lawyers who are trying to clean up the man's reputation by smearing his former prosecutor, Spitzer. They are trying to make this into a "personal vendetta" against Greenberg, and CNBC is all too willing to help out this guy. It's a right-wing, corporatist network that has an agenda of backing and supporting Wall Streeters such as Greenberg and Jamie Dimon, and it's obvious to anyone who watches the network at length that they are in the tank for these top chieftans. Bartiromo is the worst of the lot, as she is completely conflicted as the wife of a Wall Street chieftan, Jonathan Steinberg,, and with her acting as a defacto GOP operative on her show, Closing Bell. She almost always treats GOP guests with deference while aggressively and rudely interrupting her Dem guests. Her work last Friday, though, was below the belt, poorly researched, and blatantly transparent as an ambush that she was put up to performing by the Greenberg team. What a tool she has become, and I cannot understand how CNBC doesn't fire her right away after last Friday's appalling performance.
Hopefully, more and more people will see that Wall Street is fighting back against their "bankster" reputations with tactics like the one they tried against Spitzer last week. Eliot Spitzer, as I said, is seen as an "easy mark", but they are going to find Spitzer will fight back against them and other banksters who try to exonerate themselves by besmirching the motives of Spitzer. CNBC, and the rest of corporate media, should act more like the watchdog and attack dog that Spitzer was as AG, and less like the corporate malfeasance apologists that they are. They seem to not understand that their own journalistic reputation is on the line, and may already be damaged beyond repair. Maybe shows like HBO's "The Newsroom" will help more people wake up to the terrible pro-corporate and status quo stance that hacks like Bartiromo and others are foisting upon their audiences.
But I won't hold my breath.
UPDATE: Well, Maria really stepped into it this time. She "continued the conversation", as Eliot puts it, on her show today. And Spitzer responds...
http://www.businessinsider.com/...