WTF is highly average? Does it mean sitting on the very top of a Gauss curve?

Maybe they should have a wrestling match; loser gets shunned. They could do it on a giant plastic mat.

......maybe wearing skimpy bathing suits.

.....covered in baby oil.

You know, up until now I didn't know Cox was married. I'd never have guessed it from reading her blog or her antics with that Staff Ass prostitute. So before, I thought her antics were merely immature, but now they've crossed over into the realm of the sadly pathetic.

Hey, Bill? I notice something curious.

How come nobody's used the word "whore" yet?

I'm pretty sure sex-for-money equals whore. Unless the language has changed drastically when I wasn't looking.

Frequent Reader:

"Highly average" describes eminent, exorbidant, stunning, jaw-dropping, mind-numbing, exceptionally awesome mediocrity. Do you have any other questions?

Whore has judgmental, abstract connotations. hooker or prostitute is a more cold-blooded assessment, IMO.

Whore has judgmental, abstract connotations.

Well... yeah. :-)

Seriously, I'm judgmental as hell about this little situation. She took money for sex! And not in that way where you let your boyfriend pay your rent every so often. It was butt-sex followed by cash money. That's being a whore!

Sorry to monopolize the comments, but it's the relativism of it that disgusts me. From the famous Post profile:

"It's so cliched. It's like, 'There's a slutty girl on the Hill?' There's millions of 'em," she said, laughing. "A lot of my friends are way worse than me."

She was laughing. She was laughing because her prostitution was not as bad, in her opinion, as what her friends were doing.

Just what were her friends doing, exactly? What's worse than taking money for sex? Did one of her friends murder Vince Foster? Is one of her friends an abortion doctor? Was one of her friends one of the 9/11 hijackers?

Just what is "way worse" than being a whore?

God, I'm just so disgusted by the whole thing I feel like I could scream.

All together, now:

"I'm a prostitute, and it's okay -
"I fark all night, and I blog all day . . ."

[apologies to Monty Python]

Jeff, that's the thing. Monica Lewisnksy was a ha-ha sex scandal. This is taking greenbacks for pooter-sex and publicly bragging about it. To top it all off, it's not like she even slept with anyone important. It crosses many lines for me.

Jeff, you aren't monopolizing.

And imagine the outcry if the genders were reversed. Can you imagine the spin on all of this if it were a male Staff Ass tapping seven women, writing about it in his blog on company time with company resources, and another blogger (hell, we'll say Bill) sensationalizes it up? Then the two of them go out on the town, with the next entry bragging about how they used people to get free drinks and the like? And then the end result of all of this being the Staff Ass gets a book deal and the blogger gets named as a news source in Google?

We'd never hear the end of it.

And worse, the people who would be going off are the same ones who are trying to say Cutler's actions are liberated, not prostitution.

So I agree. Let's stop with the faux tact and start calling things what they are. Cutler = prostitute, the very definition of having sex for money (I'll leave the whoredom to the reader's discretion on this point). Cox = whore, using a manufactured sex scandal to get the attention she couldn't earn through her lackluster blog.

John, you forgot me and the male prostitute taking sexy faux-gay photos of ourselves out on the town to drive traffic.

Bill, I didn't forget about it, I just preferred to keep that particular image out of my mind...

Somehow, I've ended up on the ote side of this debate. Just to keep the pot boiling ---

Shouldn't this same condemnation be levelled at Jeff Quinton for the Nick Berg video link whorage? I mean trying to goose your blog traffic with THAT?? Serenity took those folks to task, in her inimitable, take-no-prisoners style. If she got down on W/W, I'd buy it.

Again, I'm not criticizing Quinton, nor anyone here, just debating.

I guess there's a 'race-to-the-bottom' element of the blogosphere, and it's tricky to be selective in whom we hammer for participating in that.

Morbidly curious traffic or no, the Nick Berg beheading served the public interest. I linked to it. It should have been on the evening news with a warning. Apples and oranges.

I'm also not saying that Wonkette's bs doesn't have some place on the internet; rather, I'm affirming my right to call it manipulative crap.

You look at the faux lez pics and you think, "People can't see through this?" If it's the sex, there are thousands and thousands of sites where you can see this without the clothes. If it isn't the sex, who cares?

Let me clarify once and for all -- BILL IS NOT GAY.

But are you saying this doesn't titilate you in the least? Or that such titilation has no place on the *cough* INTERNET.

Sure, the faux-lesbian photos titillated me for a second, before I got annoyed at how easy it is for a mildly attractive woman to rplace talent with manipulation (who do you think anonymously sent out those photos to another blogger?) It's so damn cynical.

I can say this for sure however - I was never titallated by the concept of a solid "6.2" prostituting herself to some middle-aged married government staffer.

RE: Cool.
Who thinks she's cool? I just think she's hot.

BTW-I agree. But I am both attracted and repulsed at the same time.

Why do I only seem to know the nice, smart interns in sensible shoes? Where are the millions of easy, attractive women, who, from the sounds of it, are lounging about the capitol, prepared to fling themselves upon any man who approaches? Or is it possible that Miss Skank is, in fact, what used to be called a "prostitute"?

Okay. I know what I must do.

Bill, you and me. One does the HoBlogging and the other does the Intrepid Reporting.

Then after we break the story we take Faux Homosexual pictures (heavy on the Faux, please!) and send them to...hmm...who? The Commissar? Rusty?

Anyone want to volunteer to break the second tier of this story?

Hey, if it gets me hits and a potential of an interview with Molly Hennenberg (Rowr!) I could work it.

LMAO

"heavy on the faux"

Ooh!

"HoBlogging". Now that's a word I can use again, I'll bet...

The ass-cendency of Wonkette follows the pattern of many such marketing victories from the left.

Which is to say, by throwing around a Washintonienne-load of cash and innuendo to normalize the lowest common denominator - which is then wrapped around the naked smarmy truth to be proclaimed 'cool' by the media.

Voila! Her spiffy venture-capital business-blog is making money...and is lauded for fighting for some progressive cause against "uptight" conservatives.

In the meantime, it's basically Air-America hiding behind tits and making a profit.

Next it'll be categorized galleries and personals hooking up sleazy pols with reamed-out ho's.

Anyway, stand by for the inevitable outing of the army of pirates who apparently rented Wonkette's new best friend's poop-shoot.

taking greenbacks for pooter-sex

Bill, would you mind if I used this as my own personal catchphrase for the next couple of weeks?

Morbidly curious traffic or no, the Nick Berg beheading served the public interest. I linked to it.

I didn't link to it; I just mentioned it, and I got a big traffic burst anyway. There was about a week there where having the words "nick berg" on your site guaranteed you attention no matter what the context.

(rifles through logs)

In fact, just this afternoon I got a hit from somebody searching for "Nick Berg" via MSN. (Those guys are always a little behind the curve.) Then again I also got hits off of "stephanopoulos resume" and "bleed death carotid jugular minutes." Gotta admire that last one. You know just what they were looking for.

The ass-cendency of Wonkette

Remember a few months ago when we caught Saddam and every newspaper in the country ran the "Ace in the Hole" headline?

This is gonna be one of those, I promise you.

As for titillation:

Would a picture of Ellen DeGeneres sucking face with Rosie O'Donnell titillate you? (I hope the answer's no.) Two less-than-physically-desirable women in close facial proximity does not a hot pic make. Meager physical appearance combined with disreputable behavior goes a long way towards making someone repulsive in my book, and these two exemplify that rule rather well.

If I was going to carry on with a Washington staffer, I'd prefer it to be Laurel Scott from The Final Countdown. In any event, I'd rather not boldly go where paying customers have gone before.

The thing to go "Bother!" about is rtfm's post; it's probably more accurate than any other theory.

Ewwwww! There's "good gay" and then there's "bad gay". Good gay exists exclusively on Cinimax between the hours of 11:30 and 1 a.m. All the rest is bad gay.