By Chloe Angyal • @chloeangyal • 11 years ago

Does Eliot Spitzer consider himself a feminist? Yes. Um…

Last night on Up With Chris Hayes, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was asked if he considers himself a feminist. Spitzer answered in the affirmative, and was then asked how he squares that position with the reason he is a former Governor: he got busted patronizing escorts, which is illegal in New York, and using public funds to pay for the hotel rooms in which some of those meetings took place.

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Spitzer said: “I’ve been forthright and direct. I resigned five years ago and done a great deal between now and then… The record I had was one of devout dedication to women’s rights, on the issues of choice and the issues of equal pay or issues of anti-discrimination, both as attorney general where we were fervent in pursuing those cases; [and] where we were fervent in governing and legislation.”

Yeah, but dude, you also used public money to break the law and sleep with a woman half your age, so…

New York, NY

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009. Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

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