Rehab by Slate

Yesterday, Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York, published his first piece on the online Web magazine Slate. While The Huffington Post has a number of celebrity bloggers and there are all sorts of pundits that offer their opinions on the Web sites of their employers, Slate's choice to provide Spitzer with a soapbox is significantly more interesting. His mini-biography on the page is amusingly succinct: "Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York."

Slate, naturally, has a comments forum. While a few of the threads that have popped up have been supportive of Spitzer, Slate or the piece's message, another segment is, as one poster puts it, "grossly disappointed" in the Web mag. In the American political tradition, of course, a person's personal life is often just as important as his political views, so it's no surprise that Spitzer has caused a slight controversy. Slate obviously benefits from the partnership, as not only do they have more content and another political heavyweight on the payroll, they also likely received a bump in traffic as a result of the controversy. Spitzer, though, certainly could've faded into obscurity had he so chosen, or he could have published his thoughts anonymously if he'd really wanted to get his message out there, so his participation is probably equal parts punditry and political rehab.