Michael Wolff, whose affair with a 28-year-old Vanity Fair intern and subsequent divorce were publicized all over the place, is just thinkin' about Eliot Spitzer, today.

Wolff, a Vanity Fair contributing editor and media critic and internet-ranter, is apparently writing a piece for VF on how to handle a well-publicized personal scandal, which Eliot Spitzer is coincidentally also doing right now! So, you know, it's a little bit odd for Wolff to not mention that fact in his dispassionate and non-judgmental review of the Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive-sponsored reintroduction of whoremaster/former New York governor Eliot Spitzer.

Like with very few changes we will probably be able to write these words about Michael Wolff's upcoming Vanity Fair story, right?

I'm trying to parse the Spitzer-Newsweek deal. In effect, Newsweek, by reporting on Spitzer's rehabilitation, is rehabilitating its own asset.

My curiosity here has nothing to do with whether Spitzer should be rehabilitated or not, but with the commercial nature of the effort, and, too, the who-knows-whom-in-the-media-power-structure aspects of the comeback.

Right. See, Spitzer gets to use Newsweek for his own PR ends because he's wealthy and really well-connected in Manhattan media circles, which Wolff illustrates by telling the story of being introduced to Spitzer by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter at a book party for a New York Times editorial board member at the home of Steve Rattner. Michael Wolff is an expert on the incestuous New York media! And image rehab!

Anyway. Eliot's rehab is a well-orchestrated campaign, while Wolff admirably doesn't seem to give much of a shit what you think of his behavior (we think he picked a really unappealing, unpleasant woman to make his mistress, but we're sure she'd think the same of us, because we are under 40 and have never worked for Conde Nast). Still. You know. It's funny. We're just saying!