On a recent episode of “News Watch,” Fox News’ media-news snarkfest, the panel had fun mocking reports that rival CNN is planning to hire former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer for an on-air gig. The gang was giddy, of course, because Spitzer, a Democrat, had to resign as governor in 2008 over of a call-girl scandal.

Here’s how Frances Martel at Mediaite described the segment:

Today’s Fox News Watch was particularly giggly, as they were discussing the possibility of … Spitzer, who once paid a prostitute for sex, getting his own TV show on CNN. After a bout of ineptly suppressed laughter, Newsweek columnist Ellis Henican suggests a plan so perfectly crazy, it might just work: an Ashley Dupre-hosted show on CNN, instead.

Dupre, a call girl involved in the Spitzer scandal, was hired last December by the New York Post, a right-wing daily owned by Fox’s parent company, to write an advice column called “Ask Ashley.”

More from Martel:

After host Jon Scott asks, amid snickers, whether Spitzer is “host material for CNN? would people watch that?,” panelist Jim Pinkerton gives a sobering assessment of Spitzer and the cable news scene: “the cliche about certain hosts is that they are a train wreck waiting to happen… it is desperation, but maybe they are in that situation,” so why not try? Ellis Henican could not have answered that question better: “This is a terrible idea– Ashley Dupre should get her own show on CNN!”

As Fox News colleagues of Dick Morris these titterers have a lot of chutzpah. After all, Morris was fired by the Clintons in September 1996 after his favorite call girl, Sherry Rowlands, sold the story of her long-term, for-pay affair with Morris to The Star. In the Dept. of Way Too Much Information, Rowlands also famously revealed that the aptly named Dick has a toe-sucking fetish.

Wait, there’s more. In 2007, a lawyer for D.C. Madam Deborah Jean Palfrey filed notice he intended to depose Morris during Palfrey’s trial, presumably because Morris was listed among Palfrey’s clients. Morris was never deposed (that we know of), and Palfrey was found guilty. She later committed suicide — or so they say.

So, on one hand we have Dick Morris, a decadent ideologue posing as a pundit on Fox, a right-wing propaganda outlet posing as a news network. Even as a faux pundit, this guy is really bad. For example, in 2005 he devoted an entire book to a prediction about the 2008 presidential race. All you need to know about it is the title, “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race.” It’s obvious Morris is there for one reason: There are no limits to his perniciousness, especially when it comes to the Clintons.

On the other hand, there’s Eliot Spitzer, who, despite having engaged in a prostitution, which is a crime, is a uniquely credible expert on Wall Street trickery and malfeasance, a topic that couldn’t be more timely. As governor and previously as New York attorney general, Spitzer made a name for himself by investigating Wall Street at a time when the financial lobby had its boot on the neck of the Bush White House and the Republican-controlled Congress. Interestingly, Spitzer’s investigations ended immediately after his assignation with Ashley Dupre was uncovered by an FBI wiretap approved by the Bush Justice Department. (Flip all of that around and imagine the tea baggers’ howls if Obama Justice had wiretapped a Republican governor, call girl or no, who had been investigating, say, ACORN.)

Whether Spitzer is fit to serve in public office again remains to be seen, but he is unquestionably virtuous enough to work in television news.

Finally, though, it is past time our right-wing brothers and sisters got off their bogus “family values” high horse. In just the past year or so, new names to add to the list of Republican adulterers includes South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Nevada Sen. John Ensign and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering — all of whom are members of the Family, powerful a D.C.-based Christian cult, and none of whom resigned from office — as well as Nebraska Rep. Mark Souder, who resigned over an affair with a staffer last week; more recently Nikki Hadley, the candidate for governor of South Carolina endorsed by Sarah Palin — and, finally, professional homophobe Dr. George Rekers, a founder of the Family Research Council, an anti-gay hate group, who was caught with a male prostitute.

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Full-Disclosure-As-Name-Dropping-Opportunity: Although I didn’t know her well, I went to high school with Spitzer’s wife Silda Wall, in Concord, N.C.

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Update: We’ve been informed that mistakes were made in writing this headline. In fact, Dick Morris paid women to allow him to suck on their toes, not the other way around. We deeply regret the error, and apologize to anyone employed by Dick Morris, past or present, whose reputation may have been damaged by the error.