The Speedy- and Premature- Rehabilitation of Eliot Spitzer

Can it really be 2 1/2 years since former New York governor Eliot Spitzer resigned his office after being publicly revealed to have spent tens of thousands of dollars on prostitutes?

While he didn't use public money, as South Carolina's governor, Mark Sanford did, when he fraudulently listed his visit to his Argentinian lover as a state business trip, Spitzer did manage to humiliate himself and his wife. And give the lie to his promises of running a highly ethical admininstration.

Still, Spitzer's exit from public life was pretty humbling and abrupt.

Now, after so little time, he's baaaaack!

Spitzer has been paired with Kathleen Parker on a new CNN evening program. The headlines one sees when Googling "Spitzer Parker program review" are hysterical. Here's a sampling-

Parker/Spitzer: Countdown to Divorce
Freak show unbearable to watch
CNN's Parker Spitzer debuts to scathing reviews
CNN's "Parker Spitzer" gets bad reviews, low ratings (this one from CNN Gossip)

Here's a smattering of reactions in the press to the program's debut.

Parker Spitzer , the new CNN Talk Show starring columnist Kathleen Parker and former Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer, attracted only 454,000 viewers during its debut Monday night, according to the Los Angeles Times . By comparison, Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor tallied 3.1 million viewers and MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann registered 1.1 million viewers during the same 8 p.m. time frame. Parker Spitzer replaced Campbell Brown , which premiered to 1.3 million...



Eliot Spitzer may have a ways to go in his bid for TV stardom. On Monday, the disgraced former Governor of New York bombed in his new Prime Time CNN Talk Show with his co-host, the columnist Kathleen Parker. "Parker Spitzer" drew a paltry 454,000 total viewers, according to the Nielsen Co. That ranked dead last in the Cable News race at 8 p.m., far behind Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor" (3.1 million) and MSNBC's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" (1.1 million)
 
The success of CNN's big gamble in mounting a new politically-oriented Talk Show in Primetime featuring the conservative columnist Kathleen Parker and the liberal former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer won't be known until the Ratings start coming in -- but the verdict of TV columnists has been uniformly disapproving. New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley said that Parker/Spitzer was "hard to watch"
 
Disgraced former President Richard Nixon took the better part of a decade to regain any semblance of respect, and that was after several noteworthy books on foreign affairs.
 
What's Spitzer done in the last 30 months to merit a high-profile talk show on CNN?
 
Well, based on Parker/Spitzer's viewership and reviews, we may not have long to endure Spitzer's latest star turn.