Media Channel

Eliot Spitzer’s terse TV press conference with his wife, Silda, at his side did nothing to help his cause.

For many years, television was a best friend to Eliot Spitzer.

By yesterday evening, it had become his blood enemy.

A videotape of his brief statement Monday, not much more than a minute long, remained in heavy rotation on every television newscast and news channel yesterday, and its evasive tone only underscored every dire bit of speculation that has been swirling since it was revealed that Spitzer’s recreation regimen seems to have included expensive hookers.

Television didn’t create the problem. Spitzer did. But television is where we rubberneck these days, and yesterday, with nothing that softened or explained what he seems to have done, most people’s original impression was being continually reinforced.

He looked guilty.

Guilty of what is something that’s being worked out by lawyers. But guilty of enough so that once again, a brief television image - a “sound bite” - will become a defining part of a life story.

The name “Spitzer” will be tied forever to the bizarre gambit of telling us he disappointed himself, as if that in any way is the point of the implosion we’ve been watching for the last two days.

Television is not the only medium that chronicles the hard falls of leaders. It often isn’t the best. But television images endure, which is why we still have such a vivid picture of James McGreevey announcing he is a “gay American” and therefore won’t continue as governor of New Jersey, or Richard Nixon giving that windshield-washer wave as he left the presidency.

TV snapshots don’t even have to be fatal to stay with us, as Bill Clinton proved after his finger-wagging “I did not have sex with that woman” moment.

But a lot of people liked Clinton, or at least the Clinton they knew from television. Eliot Spitzer, not so much.

Spitzer’s been more the aristocrat, the man we didn’t necessarily find warm, but whom we trusted to do the right thing on our behalf.

Then in about four hours Monday, telescoped into one minute of TV videotape, that whole “right thing” notion dropped off the wall, broke into a thousand pieces and was scattered into microscopic dust.

His TV minute was very likely his last chance to put it back together. TV can taketh away, but for the right words, TV can also giveth back. So if he had an explanation for anything, that was the time.

Instead, he only tried to buy himself a little time. At the end, he said “thank you” and then “thank you” again, like a nervous kid in his first prep school debate.

No sale.

Television, perhaps more than other media, is often accused of “gotcha” journalism, of trying to bait people into embarrassing themselves or inflating trivia into major issues.

That happens. But some “gotcha” moments are legitimate - like Monday’s, when Eliot Spitzer got himself and television was just there to burn it into the permanent record.