How do young women react to political scandals?

Back in February I blogged about the rumors of John Kerry having an affair, the possible impact on his presidential campaign. Although I was somewhat ambivalent about whether it was a bloggable topic, and I quickly posted the subsequent flat-out denials by all involved, I still feel a sense of queasiness about the whole episode. So in fairness, here’s a link to Alexandra Polier’s New York cover story on being at the eye of the media storm, and her subsequent efforts to find out how she got sucked into it. The key graf:

It was becoming clearer: No single person had to have engineered this. First came a rumor about Kerry, then a small-time blogger wrote about it, and his posting was read by journalists. They started looking into it, a detail that was picked up by Drudge—who, post-Monica, is taken seriously by other sites like Wonkette, which no political reporter can ignore. I was getting a better education in 21st-century reporting than I had gotten at Columbia J-school.

Read the whole thing. David Frum and Matt Drudge come off as appropriately contrite. Wesley Clark spinmeister Chris Lehane and The Sun’s Brian Flynn come off as officious sleazebags. Noam Scheiber and Mickey Kaus have further thoughts on Polier’s Kerry experience (links via Glenn Reynolds) There’s an interesting parallel contrast to be drawn between Polier’s scandal experience and reaction, and that of Jessica Cutler, a.k.a. Washingtonienne, who was fired from the office of Senator Mike DeWine (R., Ohio) for blogging about her scandalous sex life on government time. Her brief blog was immediately embraced heartily by Wonkette. Cutler is a bit younger than Polier, but not by much. They’re both attractive young women who have plugged themselves into the worlds of politics and the media. They both became the center of media attention. They have both capitalized to some extent on their media notoriety. However, Cutler’s reaction to the whole brouhaha has been much more… enthusiastic than Polier, according to the Washington Post‘s Richard Leiby:

[Cutler] once aspired to be a journalist and says she is not ashamed in the least of her behavior. “Everything is true,” Cutler told us in an interview. “It’s so cliched. It’s like, ‘There’s a slutty girl on the Hill?’ There’s millions of ’em,” she said, laughing. “A lot of my friends are way worse than me.”…. Slim and 5 feet 2, she primped herself for photos (“I have good cheekbones. . . . I have good teeth”) and said she would probably move to New York to find work because of her notoriety in Washington. She’s setting her sights on the book publishing industry: “They’ll totally hire me if I say I got fired from my job on the Hill because of a sex scandal.”

So as I said, there’s an interesting parallel comparison to be drawn here…. but I can’t think of what it is. All I keep hearing in my head is Homer Simpson saying “There’s no moral. It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened!!” Readers are hereby invited to do so. UPDATE: A few of the commenters misread a poor word choice of mine. I was not trying to equate Polier’s behavior with Cutler. It was the similarity of their positions, contrasted with the divergence in their behavior, that I find so interesting. Sorry for the confusion. ANOTHER UPDATE: James Joyner is probably correct in his analysis:

1) people like to read about sex involving 20-something chicks and people connected in some way to power; 2) Drudge and Wonkette especially like to write about sex involving 20-something chicks and people connected in some way to power; and 3) one of the quickest way for a 20-something chick to get rich and famous is to have sex with people connected in some way to power.

I’d amend #3 to include “people accused of having sex with powerful people.”