Of course it won't. (What, you want us to blow smoke up your ass? 'Cause that'll run you $200 an hour.) But don't worry - there are still people out there taking a serious look at the issue of prostitution. Right?
First off, let's acknowledge that because of the Spitzer Shocker (as The Missus has taken to referring to this scandal, and how about we find a matching sex act for that right quick), most of this country's fine, upstanding netizens will be getting their first actual looks at a prostitution site. Not the official Emperor's Club site, of course, because it's out of commission, but more likely rundowns of the site like the one provided by Salon's Machinist Blog.
[T]o look at the ring's Web site, the Emperors' Club seems only slightly classier than your run-of-the-mill corner operation.
The site, which is now offline but has been unearthed through the indispensable Internet Archive by the quick-thinking folks over at Digital Alchemy, certainly sets out to look like a high-class affair.
But it has a strong whiff of spam and scam to it -- misspellings, big words used incorrectly, sentence structure that would set off SpamAssassin's least sensitive filters. And there's this gambit: The Emperors' Club offers big-money males not only women but also "contemporary art" and "investment services." It's your one-stop shop for refinement!
Ouch. So, despite all the glamour and discretion that one presumes Spitzer was paying for, it's still all pretty seedy -- and not worth the money. Well, OK, what is that, a dose of realism? That can't hurt, right?
Meanwhile, over on ABC News, we caught Heidi Fleiss on Nightline, which didn't treat the subject with intelligence or candor so much as remind us that Fleiss lives with 24 parrots out in the middle of Bumfuck, NV.
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Sitting in front of a backdrop so jammed with Las Vegas landmarks that it might as well have included Frank Sinatra throwing William Petersen through a plate glass window in Howard Hughes' airtight condo, Fleiss started out by saying that "it" had gone on since Adam and Eve. Whether "it" referred to doing it, men being unfaithful, or $4,000-an-hour prostitution was unclear -- but hey, that didn't stop Heidi. She just kept rolling: governors and powerful men need to get laid; hypocrisy in government shouldn't go unpunished; and somewhat hysterically, that Spitzer should have gone to the Bunny Ranch in Nevada, where, she asserted, his identity would have remained confidential. OK. All valid points, perhaps, and who are we to argue with someone with so much (as Terry Moran called it) "expertise, as it were," in the field? But we're still hoping for a little more substantive discussion of the issue. (There's another, less nutty article from ABC featuring Fleiss here, but it gets a little caught up in the prices for our taste.)
Which apparently leaves us with... talk radio? Really? Well, NPR talk radio, anyway. Behold, WNYC's discussion on the world's oldest profession -- which thankfully lives up to its description:
Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate and Audacia Ray, former sex worker and blogger at Waking Vixen, discuss why exactly prostitution is illegal.
We love that "exactly" they put in there. As in the question hasn't already been answered. Nice one, Brian Lehrer and NPR. Good thing the whole freaking country listens to you, huh?
(Got a link to a good discussion on the Spitzer Shocker -- or a good suggestion as to what exactly a "Spitzer Shocker" might be? Drop it in the comments!
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