Most of us are probably wondering, as we ponder economic collapse and the end of life as we know it unless we do whatever the President proposes, what’s up with Eliot Spitzer.  Thanks to the ever-vigilant J-dog, who’s been busily making Mark’s life miserable by testing the visual fringes of Windypundit, we now know.

From the New York Sun :

Eliot Spitzer, in his first big business venture since he was shamed out of office by a prostitution scandal, is shopping around a plan to start a vulture fund that would scoop up distressed real estate assets around the country, revamp them, and flip the properties for a profit.

Late last month, the former governor of New York gathered a group of high-level Washington, D.C.-based labor union officials in a conference room at the headquarters of his father’s real estate business in Manhattan and pitched them his idea for starting such a fund, a source said.

Rarely does a name so well capture a concept as “vulture fund.”  The image, picking at the carcasses of the dead and dying, is just so Spitzer.  And how does he feel about himself, post resignation?

During the meeting, Mr. Spitzer expressed relief that he was no longer burdened with the frustrations of being governor, according to the source. And, in contrast to his repentant resignation speech that he delivered beside his tearful wife, Silda Wall, he took a more relaxed view of his indiscretions.

He has told friends and associates that he is consoled by passersby who stop him on the city sidewalks and tell him that sex is “no big deal” and that the disclosure that he frequented prostitutes was distorted out of proportion, the source said. Europeans, the former governor has noted, have been especially supportive of him and perplexed by the fallout from the scandal.

Of course, had he been European rather than American, his meteoric rise to political prominence on the backs of businesspeople whose offense was successfully doing what they always did, he might not have been in a position to have a scandal in the first place.

Like most of you, I am heartened by two things.  First, Spitzer’s new take on violating the law being “no big deal.”  Second, that even a disgraced former prosecutor can make a new life for himself as a vulture.  Isn’t it wonderful how one can apply one’s skills to new ventures after a fall from grace.

Mr. Spitzer’s entrepreneurial activities are the latest indication that the former governor is plunging himself more deeply into a life of business, rather than following, for instance, the model set by a former British war minister, John Profumo, who spent the rest of his life volunteering for a charity after he was caught in a scandal involving a prostitute and a Russian spy.

How wonderful that Eliot found someone to model himself after.  And such an appropriate choice.