A hooker, not a ‘monster’

What happened

Kristen, the prostitute named in the sex scandal that brought down New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, told The New York Times that she had slept very little in the days since the story erupted. Kristen—who was born Ashley Youmans, but now goes by Ashley Alexandra Dupré—is an aspiring rhythm and blues singer who fled “a broken family” at 17, according to her MySpace page, and endured being “broke and homeless” as she pursued her first love, music. “I just don’t want to be thought of as a monster,” she said. (The New York Times, free registration)

What the commentators said

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Even Dupré’s closest friends were stunned to learn that she “peddled her own flesh,” said Tanangachi Mfuni in the New York Daily News. To those who know her, she’s just a “stunning” brunette beauty with “pipes like Mariah Carey.”

Terrific, but why exactly is this any of our business? said the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money. She’s a grown-up, it’s true, and it was her decision to talk to the Times. But, “I have to say, the decision to reveal her identity publicly makes me somewhat uncomfortable—she will now be branded as the woman who brought down Spitzer, and as a prostitute. She is sure to face stigma (though perhaps she'll get her 15 minutes, too).”

It’s valid to question whether the Times should have put this on the front page, said Doug Mataconis in the blog Below the Beltway, but it’s hardly shocking that Dupré would grab the “opportunity” for all this attention. Like most "20-somethings, she really isn’t thinking very clearly," so, “frankly, I wouldn’t surprised if she showed up between the covers of certain magazines in the next few months.”

A nude photo shoot would be “the low-hanging fruit,” said John Hinderaker in the Power Line blog. That would be lucrative, but if “she is smart she'll think bigger" -- maybe a record deal, or a movie career. And of course journalists will quote her “as though she were a serious social critic,” and we’ll all be treated to “one more weird episode in a culture in which celebrity trumps pretty much everything else.”