I stumbled onto SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY last night, and first I was amazed he had on an 11 year old girl who had been selling these snap jelly sex bracelets, and her mother. I was totally shocked at the conversation with an 11 YEAR OLD !! Yikes!, I am old !! Couldn't believe it !! You can read the transcript on the "source" below. The young girl was innocent, but was in big trouble and had her picture splashed in big time newspaper.
But I digress...next they went to talk about our new find BLOG..."WONKETTE.COM". Here is the transcript of last nights segment.
****************************************************
WILLIAM J. CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCARBOROUGH: That‘s just awful. Just awful. Let‘s never play that one again.
Well, it‘s been a long time since there‘s been a good old-fashioned sex scandal in Washington. But fear not, Jessica Cutler has saved the day. The 24-year-old Hill staffer just got fired from a job in Senator Mike DeWine‘s office, who would have ever guess, for keeping a steamy sex diary online, a Weblog which detailed her exploits with unnamed power players, including, according to him, getting paid for sex by an administrative honcho appointed by President Bush.
With me now, Washington blogger Ana Marie Cox, who recently spoke to the fired staffer. And we also have Lloyd Grove of “The New York Daily News.”
Ana Marie, you are the Wonkette. You have been stirring it up in the nation‘s capital. Tell me about this story. tell Americans about this story.
ANA MARIE COX, WONKETTE.COM: Well, it‘s a story that, actually, as Jessica described it, it‘s a bunch of nobodies having sex with each other.
And, really, compared to Clinton, this is not something that‘s going to bring down the presidency or even come close to bringing it down. But it is rather explicit in a way that I think even the Starr report—well, it‘s about the same as the Starr report. And it‘s much more candid and much more funny.
SCARBOROUGH: It‘s also happening in real time, isn‘t it? The amazing thing about what your Web site has done is, every day, this woman, you would post what she was putting on her blog and we‘d go step by step by step into this scandal and readers would see every day what was going on.
COX: And I‘m afraid she got fired in real time too.
I‘ve learned that soon—about an hour after I posted her blog, she came back from lunch and was confronted with one of the people in the blog who had printed out the post and confronted her with it. And she said that, well, she pretty much knew to start packing her stuff then.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, pretty much, because didn‘t she say that she actually got paid $400 after having sex within an administration official?
COX: Yes, so it‘s good that she had some money in her pocket to take home that day.
SCARBOROUGH: Exactly, because that‘s kind of—I don‘t know, that‘s kind of a fireable offense, I would guess.
COX: Yes, although it‘s funny. They said they didn‘t fire her for...
SCARBOROUGH: Getting paid for sex?
COX: Getting paid for sex. They fired her for improper use of Senate computers, which I—I don‘t know what else she was doing with the computers besides keeping a diary.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes.
Lloyd Grove “The New York Daily News,” you worked in Washington for a long time.
(LAUGHTER)
LLOYD GROVE, “THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS”: I‘m sorry I left.
SCARBOROUGH: This is nothing new for you. But we saw that picture of Bill Clinton. Obviously, that scandal was launched by “The Drudge Report.” A lot of people in the media said, oh, my God, I can‘t believe that Matt Drudge is pushing news.
Now we move into the age of blogging, where these online journals are getting all that gossip out there. It seems like, as they say in “Broadcast News,” they keep moving that line, don‘t they?
GROVE: Well, scandal, I must say, was launched by Ana Marie on Wonkette.
(CROSSTALK)
GROVE: She‘s the impresario of this whole thing. And God bless her. She‘s cut through the clutter. Now Wonkette is something to be read by everyone all around the world.
SCARBOROUGH: Wonkette.com, that is.
But when you were in Washington, again, I‘m sure you got tips, scandalous tips every day that you couldn‘t just go out and run. I‘m sure now at “The Daily News,” you hear things all the time that you can‘t print? So what do you do?
GROVE: Well, you try and verify it. You make phone calls. They do make me make phone calls before I print stuff at “The Daily News.”
And if somebody came to me with an entertaining blog about having sex, I would seriously consider it. And this blog actually is quite entertaining. It‘s kind of the dark side of “Bridget Jones‘s Diary.”
SCARBOROUGH: Yes. And, again, but do you think, though—I know there are a lot of people in journalism that are going to be very concerned that this may start happening to presidential candidates. We‘ve already had in this presidential campaign a rumor that was thrown up on a Web site
(CROSSTALK)
GROVE: And Alexandra Polier is having a big story in “New York” magazine that is breaking next week. So we‘ll here about how the process by which she came to the fore and “The Drudge Report” exposed her as allegedly having had an affair with John Kerry. No matter that everyone denied it, it was out there and was a mini nonscandal for a while.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes.
Now, Ana Marie, here‘s an excerpt from Cutler‘s blog. She said: “Most of my living expenses are thankfully subsidized by a few generous older gentlemen. I‘m sure I‘m not the only one who makes money on the side this way. I‘m convinced that the congressional offices are full of dealers and hos.”
I am sure you reprinting this is causing shockwaves in Washington. I must say, when I went down to the Correspondents Dinners, you had all of these journalists down there with capital J.s, and yet everybody sort of seemed to be flocking around you. Is the blogger sort of the new muckraker of the 21st century?
COX: Oh, I can just talk dirty in a way that they can‘t. I think that—it‘s funny. We were talking about Jessica‘s blog and whether or not having a blog was going to mean something in the way that this kind of gossip is distributed. And, actually, I think something that people haven‘t pointed out is that Jessica, in a way, for a young person who has kind of grown up with this media, I think she‘s the one who was the most surprised and kind of the most naive about how quickly this got out and how easy it was for people to figure out who she was, where she was blogging from.
SCARBOROUGH: How did you track it down?
COX: Oh, someone just sent me the link. It was a public blog. It was BlogSpot, like hundreds of thousands of other blogs are. I had—this is my naivete—I had assumed that she had disguised her paramours a little bit better. I had assumed that someone who would keep such a public blog wouldn‘t make it so easy for people to find out who she was.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes. Wow. I‘ll tell you what. And now I would guess she wants to come to New York. What is she going to do?
GROVE: I can‘t wait.
SCARBOROUGH: She is going to cash in and do a reality TV show with Paris Hilton? I say that tongue-in-cheek, but, my God, that‘s where American society is going now. Have sex. Get paid for it.
(CROSSTALK)
GROVE: Watch where you put your tongue, Joe. That‘s all I‘ve got
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: Come to New York. Exactly. It‘s pretty crazy stuff. And, again, this could—this doesn‘t—it does actually have an impact on how these stories are run. “The Washington Post” picked this up from Wonkette.com. They ran a story, gave it
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: ... at “The New York Post.” It‘s amazing stuff.
GROVE: And, look, it‘s fun. One thing that‘s sort of a revelation, I think, is that all this sex is happening from a Republican office, a conservative, pro-life Republican? It‘s, you know, quite SCARBOROUGH: Mike DeWine, of all people, not...
COX: Jessica herself proudly claims to be bipartisan. I think she sleeps with both guys.
GROVE: She is definitely bi.
(LAUGHTER)
COX: Actually, she told me that during her—well, never mind.
(CROSSTALK)
SCARBOROUGH: Yes, you better watch out. This ain‘t a blog, baby. We could get sued for what you—unless you have some news you want to break that‘s not going to get us all sued.
COX: No, I should just keep my mouth shut about that.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, because you did say—I saw “The New York Times” article. You said time and time again, you are not a journalist. Is that correct?
COX: Oh, I don‘t pretend to be. I don‘t actually report.
This whole thing fell into my lap. Maybe I should take more credit than I should. But everything fell into Drudge‘s lap, too.
(CROSSTALK)
GROVE: Kind of a literary lap dance.
COX: That‘s right. Oh, my God, I wish.
(LAUGHTER)
COX: Neither of us really live our office. It‘s sort of the journalistic equivalent of phone sex, really. We get to just sort of sit there and have people tell us what to do.
SCARBOROUGH: OK, the cameramen are laughing. That means it‘s time to get off the subject.
(LAUGHTER)
SCARBOROUGH: Thanks a lot for being with us, Lloyd Grove. I appreciate it.
Ana Marie Cox, keep stirring it up in Washington, D.C. COX: Thanks.
MSNBCSource
Former US vice president Al Gore (news - web sites) denounces the policies of the administration US President George W. Bush (news - web sites) at New York University. Gore called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.(AFP/Getty Images/Mario Tama)
