|
|
home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events / faq
|
Why Hillary Clinton Has Always Been a Republican In the first of a series of profiles, Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chart the formative years of Hillary Clinton. Watch her as she zigzags from Nixon campaigner and vote-fraud investigator in 1960 to Goldwater Girl and President of Young Republicans at Wellesley to her internship for Gerald Ford and campaigner for Nelson Rockefeller. Witness her reaction to the student protests at Yale and the demonstrations at Grant Park during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Learn how she and Bill vowed to "remake" the Democratic Party--using the Nixon model HRC learned about as a member of the House impeachment staff. And much more! Plus: David Price on anthropologist Andre Gunder Frank, the FBI and the Bureaucratic Exile of a Critical Mind.
|
|
Today's Stories
July 17, 2007 Marjorie
Cohn
July 16, 2007 Gary
Leupp Ellen
Cantarow Paul
Craig Roberts Allan
J. Lichtman Dan
Bacher Patrick
Cockburn Manuel
Garcia, Jr. James
Brooks Liaquat
Ali Khan Julie
Flint Website
of the Day
July 14 / 15. 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Andy
Worthington Ralph
Nader Robert
Fantina Ron
Jacobs Joshua
Frank Conn
Hallinan Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD John
Ross Fred
Gardner Rannie
Amiri Charles
Modiano Anthony
DiMaggio China
Hand Missy
Comley Beattie Dr.
James J. Murtagh, Jr. Kenneth
Rexroth Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
July 13, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Winslow
T. Wheeler Imran
Khan Todd
Chretien Sam
Husseini Dr.
Herman Mindshaftgap Anthony
Papa D.
K. Wilson David
Michael Green Website
of the Day
July 12, 2007 Paul
Craig Roberts Robert Jensen Dr. Susan Block Joshua Frank John Chuckman Corporate Crime
Reporter Mike Whitney Nicola Nasser Richard Rhames William S.
Lind Website of the Day
July 11, 2007 Patrick
Cockburn Richard
Neville Debra
McNutt John
V. Walsh Scott
Liebertz George
C. Wilson James
McEnteer Philip
Rizk Johnny
Hazard Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
July 10, 2007 James
Ridgeway Tariq
Ali Javed
Hussein William
Blum Ralph
Nader Jay
Arena Anthony
DiMaggio Eva
Liddell Jerry
Kroth Alice
Woodward Nikolas
Kozloff Paul
Shannon Website
of the Day
July 9, 2007 Fidel
Castro Diana
Johnstone John
Walsh Uri
Avnery Ramzy
Baroud John
Ripton Stephen
Lendman Bruce
Jackson Michael
Donnelly Doug
Giebel Website
of the Day
Saul
Landau Ismael
Hossein-zadeh Fawzia
Afzal-Khan John
Ross Pat
Williams Rannie
Amiri Farzana
Versey Bart
Gruzalski Paul
Rockwell Reza
Fiyouzat Monica
Benderman Kenneth
Couesbouc Dave
Lindorff Charles
Modiano Missy
Beattie Dal
LaMagna Jean
Gerard Anne
Dachel Ron
Jacobs Poets'
Basement Website
of the Day
Daniel
Ellsberg Gary
Leupp Harvey
Wasserman Omer
Subhani Marjorie
Cohn Christopher
Brauchli David
Michael Green China
Hand Renee
Saucedo Corporate
Crime Reporter Website
of the Day
July 5, 2007 Andy
Worthington Mike
Stark Norman
Solomon Michael
Schwartz Susie
Day Jacob
Hornberger Bill
Hatch Don
Fitz John
Wright Website
of the Day
July 4, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Vijay
Prashad Carl
G. Estabrook Ron
Jacobs David
R. Dow Claudia
Johnson William
S. Lind Gregory
Afghani Paul
Edwards D.
K. Wilson Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Thomas
Jefferson Cindy
Sheehan Website
of the Day
Bill
Quigley Gary
Leupp Lynda
Brayer Richard
Thieme Helen
Redmond David
Swanson Jacob
Hornberger Ayesha
Ijaz Khan Franklin
Lamb Ray
McGovern Kevin
Zeese Dave
Lindorff Website
of the Day
Andy
Worthington Nina
Serrano Jack
Hirschman Paul
Craig Roberts Bill
Williams Anthony
Papa Sonja
Karkar Louay
Safi Anthony
Gregory Monica
Benderman Website
of the Day
June 30 / July 1, 2007 John
Ross Alan
Farago Peter
Quinn Christopher
Brauchli Robert
Fisk Uri
Avnery Judith
Siers-Poisson Saul
Landau Abbas
Zaidi Ron
Jacobs Ralph
Nader Donald
Worster Mike
Whitney Jacob
Hill Kenneth
Couesbouc Missy
Beattie Mohammad
Kamaali Ramzy
Baroud Leonard
Peltier Phyllis
Pollack Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 29, 2007 St.
Clair / Frank Brian
Cloughley Patrick
Cockburn Gilad
Atzmon Dave
Lindorff Jennifer
Matsui / Kevin
Zeese Daniel
Klimek David
Michael Green John
Chuckman Website
of the Day
June 28, 2007 Bill
Quigley Vijay
Prashad Margaret
Kimberley Winslow
T. Wheeler Philip
Rizk D.
K. Wilson Bill
Williams Mahmoud
El-Yousseph Richard
Rhames Paul
Krassner Website
of the Day
Marjorie
Cohn Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD Alan
Farago Carla
Blank Matthew
Abraham Sunsara
Taylor Russell
D. Hoffman Robert
Weissman Sen.
Russ Feingold Paul
Buchheit Website
of the Day
June 26, 2007 Jonathan
Cook Ralph
Nader Corporate
Crime Reporter Ron
Jacobs Martha
Rosenberg John
Chuckman Denny
Haldeman Anthony
DiMaggio Stephen
Fleischman William
S. Lind Website
of the Day
Paul
Craig Roberts Jennifer
Loewenstein Bob
Anderson Robert
Pollin Patrick
Cockburn Eva
Liddell Dan
Bacher Larry
Atkins Mark
Brenner James
Rothenberg Website
of the Day June 23 / 24, 2007 Alexander
Cockburn Jeff
Taylor Oren
Ben-Dor Gary
Leupp Robert
Fisk David
Rosen Russell
Mokhiber Alison
Weir Robert
Fantina D.
K. Wilson Nicole
Colson Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson Dave
Lindorff Benjamin
Dangl Michael
Dickinson Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
June 22, 2007 Andy
Worthington Sherwood
Ross Eliana
Monteforte Robert
Weissman Richard
Rhames Christopher
Brauchli Ramzy
Baroud Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon David
Michael Green Kathryn
Webber Website
of the Day
June 21, 2007 Peter
Linebaugh Natsu
Saito Ron
Jacobs Saree
Makdisi John
Stauber Scott
Liebertz Tom
Clifford Robert
Jensen Michael
J. Smith Jeb
Sprague Website
of the Day
Omar
Barghouti Andy
Worthington Margaret
Kimberley Robert
Weissman Russell
D. Hoffman Rannie
Amiri Stephen
Lendman Dave
Lindorff David
Swanson Anne
Dachel Website
of the Day
June 19, 2007 Ralph
Nader Dr.
Shepherd Bliss Bill
and Kathleen Christison Jeff
Leys Dave
Zirin Chris
Floyd Ben
Terrall Anthony
Papa VIPS Linda Flores Website
of the Day
John
Ross Paul
Craig Roberts Martha
Rosenberg Norman
Solomon Don
Santina Isabella
Kenfield James
Brooks Eva
Liddell Sam
Husseini Akiva
Eldar Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn John
Halle Robert
Fisk Andy
Worthington Uri
Avnery Fred
Gardner Saul
Landau P.
Sainath Missy
Comley Beattie Alan
Gregory Walter
Brasch Website
of the Weekend
June 15, 2007 Alan
Farago Andy
Worthington Michael
Simmons Franklin
Lamb Gary
Leupp John
Ross Website
of the Day
June 14, 2007 Michael
Donnelly
Faisal
Kutty Harry
Browne Charles
Jonkel Steven
Higgs Bruce
Dixon Bruce
K. Gagnon
Website
of the Day June 13, 2007 Glen Ford Marjorie Cohn Bill Christison Charles Jonkel Silvia Cattori Richard Gott Firmin DeBrabander William S. Lind Keith Rosenthal Website of the Day June 12, 2007 Jeffrey St.
Clair Paul Craig
Roberts P. Sainath Ralph Nader Omar Waraich Dave Lindorff Harvey Wasserman Malini Johar
Schueller Ramzy Baroud Website of
the Day
June 11, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Uri Avnery Norman Solomon Eva Liddell Rannie Amiri Rachel Voss Christopher
Brauchli D. K. Wilson Website of
the Day
Subscribe Online
|
July 17, 2007 The Christian Right, Sexual Scandal and the Sexual Pleasures of the CourtesanMoral Hypocrisy on the Hill, AgainBy DAVID ROSEN Making matters harder to dismiss, revelations about the DC Madam come amidst still other disclosures that Vitter was a regular at the New Orleans' Canal Street Brothel run by Jeanette Maier, a former madam, and had had an ongoing relationship for nearly a year with a New Orleans prostitute, one "Wendy Cortez," with whom he allegedly had an out-of-wedlock child and which he vehemently denies. (As he insisted, "I think you know that that allegation is absolutely and completely untrue. ... I have said that on numerous occasions.") These stories add to still others rumors circulating for years about Vitter's questionable sexual practices. It is common knowledge that Louisiana's former Republican governor, Mike Foster, encouraged Vitter not to run for governor in 2001 because of his extramarital affairs. In 2002, a Louisiana GOP official, Vincent Bruno, publicly raised questions about Vitter's affairs. Since then, this story had played out regularly in the local media. However, it has now broken out as a national scandal due to Vitter's political alliance with Rudi Giuliani and his possible role as the vice president candidate if Rudi got the Republican nod. The Vitter revelation comes just months after the original DC Madam scandal broke. At that time, Randall L. Tobias, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) resigned abruptly for "personal reasons." Our hardworking public servant was busted for calling in a "masseuse" from the DC Madam's up-scale escort service, Pamela Martin & Associates. Like the sex scandals that haunted the Republican party before last November's election, those involving disgraced congressmen Mark Fowley (R-FL) and Don Sherwood (R-PA) as well as the defrocked Rev. Ted Haggard, this one also involves an upstanding Christian worthy who was revealed to have crossed the line between the acceptable and the immoral. Whereas his fellow Republican cronies were caught flirting (if not worse) with youthful congressional pages, in an adulterous affair and in an out-of-wedlock assignation with a male prostitute, senator Vitter acknowledges his sexual dalliances and claims that his wife and his God have forgiven him. The Vitter disclosure, along with Tobias' resignation, Madam Palfrey's arrest and evolving media circus, has exposed the not-so-hidden dark side of Washington's (and America's) sex culture, the age-old male fantasy for the courtesan. The politically scandals involving Vitter, Tobias and who knows who else are common to Washington and will pass as so many others have. However, the male fantasy for the courtesan, the symbol of up-scale erotic pleasure, is for a sexual relation with someone who overcomes the contradiction between sexual commerce and mutual affection. Traditionally, the courtesan functioned as the sex worker who was not a prostitute. While embodying the highest expression of the alienation of commercial exchange, she represented for her male patron the fantasy of a personal intimacy of mutual choice, one without obligation, without strings. The courtesan and her fantasy remains a defining aspect of patriarchy, heterosexual sexual culture. Senator Vitter is a model conservative Christian Republican, with a pure pedigree: He is white, attractive and articulate, married famly man, a Harvard graduate, attended Tulane law school and was a Rhodes scholar. Most importantly, he has long taken strict moral positions. As a Republican state representative in 1998, Vitter spoke out forcefully in support of the impeachment of President Clinton for lying about his illicit sex affair. Writing an opinion piece for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he argued that impeachment "is a process of removing a president from office who can no longer effectively govern; it is not about punishment." [Times-Picayune, October 29, 1998] While running for the Senate in 2004, Vitter issued a position paper, "Protecting the Sanctity of Marriage," decrying the impact of gay marriage and other social "ills" on society. As he stated, "The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. Senators won't do anything about it. We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts's values. I am the only Senate Candidate to coauthor the Federal Marriage Amendment; the only one fighting for its passage." He went so far as to compare the effect of gay marriage on society as to the devastation inflicted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In the few years he has been
in Washington, he has been a model Republican foot-soldier.
He opposed health care reform, opposed family planning efforts,
opposed federal support for housing and education, resisted all
calls for improved human rights and civil liberties, opposed
labor rights and stalled all environment efforts. Most recently,
he joined other right-wing Republicans in opposing Bush's Immigration
Bill. And, of course, he has steadfastly backed mad king George's
Iraq war folly. The question not addressed, of course, is not whether Vitter has been forgiven by his wife or his God, but by his Louisiana constituency. In 2000, Vitter' wife, Wendy, was asked by a reporter: If her husband was as unfaithful as former president Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Clinton? "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary," she replied. "If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me." It remains to be seen, whether the latter-day Lorena Bobbitt will slice and dice her adulterous hubby. If the scandal continues to unravel and further indiscretions revealed, Vitter may well be forced to resign. However, his possible role on the ticket with Guiliani seems all but lost. And the recent revelation that Giuliani's South Carolina state campaign chairman, Thomas Ravenel, who was the South Carolina Treasurer, was charged in a federal cocaine-possession indictment, only further compromises Guiliani's campaign efforts. The Vitter scandal revels something about a darker side of American sexual culture: It's been a tough time for would-be madams. In addition to the travails of the DC Madam, a host of other madams, courtesans and high-class sex workers have recently faced considerable legal challenges. In the tony Westchester, NY, town of New Bedford, the hometown of Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren and George Soros, the police recently arrested Sandra Chemero. This 46-year-old woman was busted for running a successful sex club, "The Sovereign Estate," at a mansion owned by K'hal Adas Kashau, an ultra-Orthodox rabbinical school. (A school's representative bemoaned, "It's against our religion. It's against the Bible. We've never even heard of such a thing.") On her website, Chemero identified herself as an upscale sex worker, a professional dominatrix catering to men seeking (and more than willing to pay for) a highly specialized kind of pleasure or, as she advertised, "where submissives and slaves are immersed in training." In Greenburgh, NY, Erik Ward, a local police officer, was fired after being acquitted of having a tryst in the woods with a 32-year-old dominatrix, Gina Pane. On her website, she called herself "angelabella" and offered her services for a variety of sadomasochistic fantasies. Ms. Pane had been stopped for marijuana possession, but the officer was willing to exchange favors for services rendered. Ward insisted his actions were above suspicion; all he was trying to do was "turn" Pane into a confidential informant in order to get to her dope supplier. Pane testified that she and Ward drove off to a secluded spot and that he masturbated while she squatted on a tree branch and defecated to satisfy his sexual fetish. In Boston, wife, mother of two and dominatrix Paula Webb was arrested following disclosures by her husband, who was upset with her after a fight. Mrs. Webb's website listed services to include corporal punishment, humiliation and role-playing. According to the police, a detective posing as a customer responded to one of the ads and, when the detective and Webb met, she told him that she offered oral sex for $150. Her basement dungeon was equipped with an assortment of whips, chains, ropes and other items. In San Francisco (only San
Francisco!), a former dominatrix and current employee at the
U.S. Treasury Department, Susan Peacher, won a sexual harassment
and retaliation lawsuit against her office manager who was a
former client. She complained that he wouldn't leave her alone.
She went to court to stop him from sexually harassing her, attempting
to kiss her in the elevator, telling her she had "luscious
lips'' and repeatedly asking for "sessions.'' In Enfield, CT, the police arrested Michelle Silva, 44, known on her website as "Empress M," for running a members-only bondage club, a "BDSM playground." She was charged with prostitution, permitting prostitution and promoting prostitution; she was also charged with violating a town-zoning ordinance. The charges against her carry the combined maximum penalty of 17 years in prison and $19,000 in fines. Silva insists that the charges against her are "absolutely false" and that she was never involved in any exchanges of sex for money. She claims that the many people observed coming in and out of her home were models or participants in the video programs she posted on her website. In Santa Ana, CA, Betty Davis, a 60-year-old great-grandmother dominatrix won a court ruling that forced the Orange County Sheriff's Department to return $20,000 worth of bondage items, including whips, chains and other toys, seized during a raid on her private dungeon. Davis, who says she has 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, was arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitution after an undercover sheriff's deputy answered an ad in a bondage magazine and was led, blindfolded, to her dungeon. According to Davis' lawyer, she offered a therapeutic service that didn't include sex. In Dedham, MA, a dominatrix, Barbara Asher, 56, was acquitted of manslaughter charges in the death of Michael Lord, a man who allegedly suffered a fatal heart attack while strapped to a contemporary version of a "medieval torture device." The jury found her not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and dismemberment. During his closing argument, the prosecutor, Robert Nelson, re-enacted the bondage session: Donning a leather mask and speaking to the jury through the zippered mouth, he said Asher did nothing to help Lord as he flailed about and died while strapped to the rack in a makeshift dungeon. "She did nothing, nothing for five minutes," Nelson yelled, his voice muffled through the mask. As indicated by the Vitter revelation, the evolving story of the DC Madam, Deborah Palfrey, promises to capture headlines for some time to come. Palfrey, in a press conference held on the steps of Congress, announced that she had turned over some 40-odd pounds of her private billing records (including phone and credit card numbers) to ABC and Larry Flynt to ferret out high-ranking customers. Randall Tobias was the first to fall. He was the former chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly and AT&T International as well as chairman of Duke University. He was also a Republican party stalwart and major fundraiser and his "ambassadorship" was awarded for services rendered. However, in his role as the first US Global AIDS Coordinator, he led the Bush-administration's PEPFAR campaign insisting on abstinence-only sex education and opposing support for prostitutes. [See "Imperialism's Second Front: Bush's Foreign Sex Policy," CounterPunch, December 22, 2006.] In addition, Palfrey has identified two other Washington insiders. Harlan K. Ullman, an associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose main claim to fame was a scholarly paper he wrote more than a decade ago on the military strategy known as "shock and awe." Ullman has rejected her claims: "It doesn't deserve the dignity of a response." Palfrey's lawyer claims that the political consultant Dick Morris, Bill Clinton's famous shoe fetishist, was also a customer. The DC Madam got her start in the adult-sex business in San Diego. In court papers, she acknowledged that she was "appalled and disgusted" by how "seedy, lazy and incompetent" were the local escort agencies. An avowed teetotaler, she said she was most upset by the drug-related atmosphere promoted by the services. Palfrey's first escort service collapsed when she was arrested in 1990. She employed about a dozen women and would have made $100,000 that year, she said; however, an employee's angry mother apparently tipped off the police. She served 18 months in prison after her 1991 conviction and, while on probation, started her Washington business, Pamela Martin & Associates, in 1993. Palfrey's website noted that services were pegged at $300 for a 90 minute session. A help-wanted ad published in DC-area college- and weekly-papers sought attractive women over 23-years-old with at least two years of college. According to court records, the women sent roughly 50 percent of the money they made to her PO box in Vallejo. Authorities claim that she amassed upward of 15,000 customers between 1993 and 2006. In 2004, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Postal Service launched a joint investigation into Palfrey's business. In early March 2007, the feds seized Palfrey's assets, including her home valued at $500,000. (Ironically, in October 2006, the Department of Homeland Security extended the contract of Shirlington Limousine, a service that catered to Washington-area call girls.) Madam Palfrey has speculated that the federal indictment against her came as fallout from the investigation into former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. While she does not claim a direct link to Cunningham, she suggests that federal investigators had been investigating charges that a defense contractor provided hookers to Cunningham as part of an influence-peddling scheme. Palfrey believes that the federal probe of her business "had solely to do with some Duke Cunningham-type bigwig client that got caught up in something and started to say, 'Do you know this?' and 'Do you know that?' And that he might have been able to lead them to somebody." America is a highly variegated class society and no aspect of social life embodies class relations more than sex, especially prostitution. Whether a guy picks up a streetwalker on the seedy side of Atlantic City or visits a message parlor manned by sex slaves trafficked from China, Latin America or Eastern Europe on a local strip-mall or is a guest at a dominatrix's exclusive sex salon in a tony suburb, each exchange embodies the cash nexus. It is a relation of buyer and seller that hides not simply a profound inequity, but the history of patriarchy as well. For centuries and across nearly all continents, certain particularly well-appointed women have served as courtesans. These upper-class sex workers provided more than sex. She suggested a certain type of refined self-indulgence, as much a service to the male customer's physical pleasures as to his ego's self-confidence. The courtesan symbolically represented the overcoming of the divide between the alienation of commercial exchange (the prostitute) and the personal intimacy of mutual choice (the lover). This representation was a social fiction, but a fiction reserved for only the few. For the men who could afford such a fiction (both financially and psychologically), these women held out the promise that he, the male customer, could break out of conventional sexual inhibitions and indulge his deepest, most passionate, most private sexual fantasies. Simultaneously, the courtesan held out the equally compelling promise that this pleasure could be achieved without the moral trappings of ordinary heterosexual life, i.e., outside the restraints of monogamous marriage. Thus, sexual fantasy could be experienced without a feeling of sin, a sense of shame, apology or recrimination. At the heart of this fiction was the belief that sexual relations between a professional courtesan and a client could be shorn of the alienation that has been substantially removed from other, equally if not more intimate, commercial exchanges. A patient's relationship with a doctor, especially a psychotherapist, can be as profoundly intimate, freeing the patient from enormously burdensome inhibitions. A novice's relationship with a master craftsperson to learn, for example, sculpting, tai chi, cooking or a foreign language can be as instructive, making the novice feel more self-assured, confident. A customer's physical contact with a skilled masseuse can be as physical fulfilling, especially in terms of non-genital pleasures. Nevertheless, commercial sexual intimacy remains something fundamentally different. The history of most of the patriarchal world, but especially the developed nations, is replete with tales of the courtesan. They are characters with roots stretching back to the earliest days of European and Asian sexual lore. In America, however, the courtesan has had two faces, the privately sexual and the public celebrity. Among the former are such recent figures as Polly Adler, the legendary pre-WWII madam, and Syndney Biddle Barrows, known as the Mayflower Madam. They recall the glory days of old when sexual fantasy was rich with the bourgeois trappings of the finest decor, seductive indulgence and exquisite erotic pleasures. Among the latter are such notable public figures as Claire Boothe Luce and Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harrison. Their potency as much sexual as political. They recall the legendary female temptresses who, for centuries, were familiar figures of European court life and intimates (in every sense of the word) with kings, prime ministers and other grandees. However, in today post-sex revolution America, the grand courtesan has been replaced by the banality of the escort service and the oh-so-conventional dominatrix. Sexual fantasy has not merely become the cannon fodder of marketing and advertising, but one can only wonder if the quality of pleasure has accordingly degraded. One need only consult google, craigslist or a free local newsweekly to find the sex worker of one's (male) choice. Today, Heidi Fleiss, the so-called Hollywood Madam, represents high-end sexual indulgence. Unfortunately, while the popular media has presented her as a mysterious sex charmer, closer examination reveals her to be a far less grand figure of style and taste and more like a switchboard operator with a rolodex that could supply a caller with a female prostitute who would service his specialized fantasy or fetish. Once upon a time the courtesan's
allure, her claim to overcome alienation, might have been believed
like so many other social fictions. While never true, it was
wrapped in enough mystery and social stigma to suggest a different
value system. The courtesan's fiction was a negation to the
dominant Christian value of de-eroticized sexual propriety, a
sexuality that defined America's heterosexual patriarchy. But
as its mirror-image otherness, the courtesan's fiction only served
to reinforce sexual repression. The sexual pleasure promised
by Deborah Palfrey, Sandra Chemero and their innumerable sisters
operating throughout the country is no longer a negation or subversion
of the dominant sexual mores. Rather, it is part of the marketplace,
an acceptable social wink-and-a-nod fiction of cash exchange.
As a "victimless crime," prostitution (like most illegal
drugs) continues as a social "vestigial organ," retained
out of a need to placate a powerful social constituency but serving
no useful purpose. David Rosen can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com
|
CounterPunch Books of the Crossroads: HOW THE IRISH INVENTED SLANG By Daniel Cassidy  Click Here to Buy! How the Press Failed The Gang's All Here: Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, Rupert Murdoch, Bill O'Reilly...End Times Leaves No Reputation Unstained!  Buy End Times Now! CounterPunch Books! Saul Landau's Bush and Botox World with a Foreword by Gore Vidal  Click Here to Order! |
