IfWonketteand theWashingtoniennehave taught us anything, it's that youcan get pretty far in this great nation by writing about butt sex. Also, alittle lesbianism never hurts your cause.
Jessica Cutler has an innate skill at trading in the latest surefire routeto infamy—strategic self-humiliation. Last summer, she rocketed tosomething like fame when her short-livedsex blogwas discovered by Ana Marie Cox (a.k.a. Wonkette), editor of a D.C.-based gossip website. Ayoung Capitol Hill staffer writing under the pseudonym of"TheWashingtonienne,"Cutler chronicled her paid and unpaid sexcapades withseveral men—one of whom was allegedly a married Bush appointee. Herblog was taken down quickly thereafter. Soon her anonymity was destroyed,and she found her job in a Congressional mailroom terminated as well. Hernotoriety, however, lasted the summer.
A fluttering of posts on Wonkette and other D.C. sites andpublications—including ablogthat I was editing at the time—worked on outing the people vaguelyidentified on the site and discovering the senator Cutler had worked for—Ohio RepublicanMike DeWine,as it turned out. After a good deal of publicity and somesemi-Sapphic photosof Cutler and Cox published on Wonkette, Cutler had scored a six-figure bookdeal. In November she appeared inPlayboy. And now, a mere nine months afterher Monika Lewinsky reveal, the fruit of that deal is being released.
Cutler's trajectory proves that in a society with no taste for shame, thereis little to lose and much to gain from a sex scandal. Especially when theonly thing at stake is a job in the mailroom—and somethinginsignificant like pride. There was a time when a public sex tape would ruinan actress's career. One recently launched Paris Hilton's. It's not toodifferent in politics these days. Last year alone, Arnold Swarzenegger'sTeflon exterior rolled him into the governor's mansions with nary a sexabuse accusation scratch, and New Jersey's married governor McGreevey managedto evade sure political disgrace by coming out as a"gay American."
At a time when publicized sex scandals no longer end political careers, theWashingtonienne scandal barely ranks at all. Most of her notoriety wasearnedby her willingness to spread the details of her copulations and herpartners' sexual preferences. No such new additions are in the novel, andshe is mostlyunknown outside D.C. A former sex partner has launched a well timedlawsuitfor invasion of privacy (a suit that appears as futureless as Cutler'swriting career), which may be contributing to thenovel'sfairly respectable Amazon sales rank.Or maybe that's due to her writing skill.
The novel does have its moments, but it never reaches the entertainmentvalue of her brief blog—the archive of which is still available onlineand has the added advantage of being free of charge. As an addition to thepost-Bridget Jones chick-litgenre,The Washingtonienneis short on the crucial ingredient of grrl power:It's unlikely historians of feminism will ever look back at Cutler'sjustification for engaging in degrading sex—"If a woman did it herself,she was in control"—as a high point in empowerment.
But you read a book like this for the hilarious rationalizations, and thereare some good ones here. As she"innocently"posts her sexploits online,Cutler's stand-in"Jacqueline Turner"has no inkling of what's ahead:"Whatinterest would strangers have in our lives anyway?"Cutler treads the fineline between world-weary vixen and complete imbecile well. She also capturesthe weird mix of power and impotency that accompany working for the federalgovernment. But like her character, Cutler seems too distracted toaccomplish the task at hand—this one being book writing. Half the novelis spent trying desperately to invent stinging one-liners—she describesher internship as"Another day, another no dollar"— but the remainderis padded with lazy prose and many painful double entendres:"I had abuttload of stuff to do before taking off for Miami that weekend."
She manages to throw in a good bit of girl on girl action, but for a bloggerwho produced such promising gems as"A man who tries to fuck you in the asswhen you are sober does not love you,"the novel is surprisingly lacking innew witticisms about sex or sodomy. Instead, she spends an awful lot of timeon the subject of abortion for such a short book. Of all the pride-reducingexperiences she underwent last year, the most bothersome seems to have beenworking for a Senator who was against legalized abortion:"What can I say? Ineeded one. Twice. A woman's right to choose is a right I hold as dearly asa woman's prerogative to change her mind."
In fact, the strongest aspect of Cutler's character appears to be herdetermination not to learn from her mistakes:"It may have been pretty basic(lying + cheating = bad), but life experience had taught me otherwise. Thelesson I learned was:You can get whatever you want for free by lying andcheating, and there are never any consequences."Never mind that hercharacter spends the better part of the book running away from ruinedrelationships, dealing with her depression, and admitting that she's justlooking for someone who really loves her. Cutler may be forced out of townbiannually, but at least she got a book deal out of it this time.
Cutler ends her book with a note of gratitude:"Last but not least, thanksto all the bloggers who gave me so much attention and free publicity, and toall of my colleagues in Washington who sent in tips. I knew that all I hadto do was wait, and you would make all of this possible."She has certainlyshown some skill at harnessing the current media zeitgeist, but it remainsunclear where she can go from here. Her career as a semi-prostitute turnedout quite lucrative—but that's the kind of trick that only works once,and (discretion being the better part of value in that line of work) she doesn't seemsuited to a long career in that field. She'll have to put some seriouseffort into unearthing a new publicity stunt.