Fear and loathing for the “Sheriff of Wall Street”

Ding dong, the witch is dead
Witch, old witch, the wicked witch
Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead
Heigh-ho, the dairy-o
Sing it high, sing it low
Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead
She's gone where the damned ones go
Below, below, below
So now, let's jump on up & sing & ring some bells now

DING DONG! THE WITCH IS DEAD
The Fifth Estate


A cheer reportedly went up on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange yesterday after the news came out that Eliot Spitzer has been caught with his special purpose in the wringer.
Unless you are deaf dumb and blind and living in a cave you must have heard about the Governors problem.
It’s amazing that as in the case of Al Capone that he was caught not with a “Cheaters” style sting but instead by leaving a money trail. Eliot, who has been called “Eliot Ness” for his dogged pursuit of all kinds of alleged corruption, was found to be transferring thousands of greenbacks from campaign funds to shell corporations so he could hide the wire transfers to the $5,000 an hour call girl ring. Eliot, who really should have known better, was transferring up to $9k at a crack which over a year ago raised the antennae of the feds who thought maybe he was being blackmailed or using the moola for bribes. Not for getting his ashes hauled.
In all the rush to judgment and amazing level of coverage this has raised, the fact that Eliot made the lives of many radio and record people a living hell has been overlooked. He ran a witch hunt to try and sniff out that old bug-a-boo “Paylola” where record companies are alleged to pay for play. After a year long investigation he found one Program Director who took some tickets to a baseball game. In the process he managed to extract several millions from big record companies and radio companies to JUST GO AWAY!
In the wake of this crusade he left a trail of new regulations and rules that are so onerous that they have driven many from the business and cost millions in legal fees and lost man hours to comply with the punishment.
Now if a record person buys lunch for a radio guy you have to document the whole deal, sometimes even to the point of listing who ordered what and how big the tip was.
Meanwhile Eliot was having his own “Pay for play” fun. With a 5’5”, 105 lb pretty American girl named "Kristen" picked from the website of Emperors club VIP.
In a way I feel like I shouldn’t be so happy about this. The family is going to suffer. His wife is going to be wondering about her HIV status after Hubby slept with whores. And this could, if the rat bastard is forced to resign, influence the outcome of the presidential election because Eliot, named “Client #9” in the wiretap records was a super-delegate pledged to Hilary Clinton. His Lieutenant Governor, David Paterson, a blind black man (you can’t make this stuff up!) will inherit that power and no doubt have a different point of view.
But I can’t disagree with this posting on a radio gossip site called radio-info.com

“Wabbit season” posted:

“I have been laughing all day over this.Then I would recover, and, after I caught my breath, I'd see another story or read another headline.Then, I would lose it all over again - tears, gasping for breath, the whole nine yards.This has been the best afternoon in forever.”

I was going to post the “Wizard of Oz” version of the "Witch is dead" here. But somehow I think it more fitting that you hear it from a 45 rpm version by the “Fifth Estate” which climbed the charts in the summer of 1967, with or without payola to the number 11 spot.
Enjoy.