Minneapolis/st. Paul Blog

Most everyone has ignored the yellow and black Trojan bus. It sat empty the first two days of the convention. It's parked on west 7th street in the back of a parking lot, across the street from the Starbucks where Bob Barr set up camp yesterday. But there are plenty of cute girls around who will gladly give a guy a tour for free. As all of them reminded me constantly, condoms are non-partisan.

Like many Hillary supporters, I was distraught by the way her campaign was shredded in the news media. I was angered by her sometimes-petty political antics and downright livid that she couldn’t win the nomination.

Today, I sit at my desk pessimistic that she will not go down in history as the brilliant trailblazer she is, and rather she will be remembered as the woman who wouldn’t give up and lost.

But the political reality is that none of that matters anymore. What matters is that this is a crucial political tipping point. To Hillary supporters who want their candidate's values represented, nothing should matter more than putting the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, in office. Nowhere is this more true than on the issue of reproductive choice.

Inspired by Sarah Silverman, here's the Hillary Clinton mash-up:

Republican county commissioner Bruce Barclay of Cumberland, Penn., steadfastly denied allegations that he'd raped a 20-year-old man. "This accusation of rape is ludicrous," he said in a statement. "It will be defended forever and is wrong."

Barclay was in the right. He had an iron-clad alibi. The young man was one of the prostitutes with whom Barclay had shared hundreds of sexual encounters over the years -- and he'd videotaped all of them, using high-tech surveillance cameras without their consent.

It must be spring. The politician sex stories are rolling in.

We all know about former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, who allegedly spent more on prostitutes than the median American household makes in a year. But like all tumultuous narrative events, these sex stories come in threes.

With the Superbowl over, the traveling whores of the world will soon be departing Arizona and heading to Denver and the Twin Cities.

As this article in the Rocky Mountain News points out, the sex business spikes when political conventions come to town. The first wave of online sex ads have already hit Denver, with offerings ranging from "Claudia the 'she-male porn star' to Erin the 'adorable college cutie,' whose $300-an-hour services are guaranteed to 'leave you breathless.'"

But if there's a dark cloud to the silver lining for the Denver ho's, it's that they didn't land the Republican convention instead:

"It would be a lot better for the sex workers if it was the Republican convention," she said. "We get a lot more business. I don't know if they're just frustrated because of the family values agenda."

For a preview of the sexual hijinx, check out this New York magazine article, The Girls in Their Summer Hotpants, which reported on the sex industry's preparations for the 2004 Republican National Convention. It's a fascinating tell-all that puts the lie to the "Moral" Majority--"Republicans are way freakier, probably because they’re way more repressed," says Mistress Natasha. "They can’t be kinky with their wives." I found this bizarre bit of roleplaying to be especially illuminating:

Another sex professional, 25-year-old Eve, says, “I don’t want to single out the Republicans, but they are majority male and a fairly wealthy group of people.” The on-again-off-again prostitute with streaked pixieish hair looks less like a hooker than a bartender at Galapagos—which made her ideal for one politically charged client last year. He’d asked her to show up at his apartment wearing a black hoodie with patches and no perfume or deodorant. “I said, ‘Do you want me to dress like a protester?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah.’ He tied me down, spanked me, and wanted to yell at me a lot. He said, ‘You bad girl! You smashed the Starbucks!’ He was a very conservative Wall Street banker, and he basically wanted to fuck the movement.”

In addition to a stunning portrait of Tiffany Fallon as Wonder Woman (the outfit is quite literally painted on), the new issue of Playboy features a survey that offers a lurid glimpse into what your choice in presidential candidates says about your innermost sexual desires. Let's read it for the articles after the jump ...