Here are some thoughts from a guy who wonders how a governor of a state could only be called Client No. 9 by a Washington prostitute. How important were the eight clients ahead of him?

OK, maybe the recent revelation that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was spending thousands of dollars on a prostitute isn’t funny. But it’s ironic. A guy who used to prosecute prostitutes may now be prosecuted and persecuted for engaging in the action.

As far as I’m concerned, unless he was using state funds illegally, I don’t care. The only people who should really care are his wife and family.

But what is it with wives of politicians? Do they realize that some of their husbands are morally deficient simply because of what they do and back them no matter what? Or is that where that line, “In good times and in bad,” comes in?

As I watched Spitzer’s wife stand beside him at a press conference, I thought: What is she doing there?

I was hoping she would pull out a baseball bat and crack the scumbag upside the head.

How many of you other guys out there could imagine getting caught messing around by your wife and still have her supporting you the next day on television in front of millions of people?

The big question many of wives would have after finding out would be: “Honey, where do we keep the ammunition?”

Then again, maybe some wives really don’t care. Spitzer is a multimillionaire and maybe spending $4,300 for an hour with a prostitute is better than having him become emotionally attached to some woman he would be putting up in a New York hotel.

But the whole incident again brings up the old question: Why do we try to dictate morality on such issues?

Should prostitution really be illegal? In some places in this country it isn’t. How does that work? Should smoking marijuana be illegal? How is some gambling legal and other forms not?

While Spitzer is obviously a hypocrite, having prosecuted prostitutes, aren’t most lawmakers hypocritical?

We put “sin” taxes on smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, yet declare smoking marijuana — which actually may be less harmful to your health — illegal. Just think of the taxes we could bring in if sale of the weed were legal. I’m certainly not promoting the use of any drugs, but it’s not like making it illegal is stopping many users. So just think of the tax money we would save by not arresting, prosecuting and jailing some users. I guarantee you, in 50 years people in this country will look back and think we were nuts for wasting so much time on something so trivial. (Of course, hopefully in 50 years nobody will be smoking anything!)

And how about gambling. My brother and I recently stopped in the new casino outside Hershey when we were there covering wrestling. It’s a beautiful place, but all they have are slot machines and video gambling. I really have no interest in that kind of thing. I’m not a big gambler, but if they had poker or blackjack tables, then it would have stirred my interest.

So why don’t they? Because our state is so backward that we think it is OK for some kinds of gambling but not others. So what happens? States around us like West Virginia start offering table card games, so people go there that don’t like slots and that state gets tax money that we could be getting.