The Politburo Diktat

Last? Word on Washingtonienne

It's been a big story. And I'm still chasing that rabbit, which went down the hole days ago.

The whole thing seemed too pat, too coincidental from the get-go, see here. But it was undeniably big - huge traffic spikes and bloggers on cable news.

The Party Line from Jessica & Wankette --- "All the sex is all true, 'someone' told Wankette, and the story just took off." --- is, in the literal sense of the word, incredible.

Painting Wankette as an active conspirator/co-author (before 5/18) is equally incredible.

What's a plausible explanation?

A couple recent posts, by Calico Cat and Rusty Shackleford, are noteworthy. The first reports an anonymous posting, that in high school Jessica had an imaginary boyfriend. Rusty comically pointed out the "Penthouse Forum"-like style of her blog. Also, Wankette, on Tony Snow, said that Jessica might seek psychiatric help, and should move to France. Without accepting any of these items as facts, they provide a framework for a plausible explanation, thus:

A Non-Tin-Foil Hat Theory

Jessica made most of it up. She started the blog "for the entertainment of a few friends." Like many bloggers, she was a fan of Wankette. Jessica is a pretty girl, and believably had an active, even promiscuous, sex life. But the frequent mentions of anal sex, the amounts of money given, the number & frequency of partners, the nature of surprise gifts, the PH Forum writing, and other bells-and whistles, taken altogether, are hard to believe. More likely, she fashioned her blog after Wankette's style, whom she quoted as "I love it that you can get famous [in Washington DC] for just talking." Jessica adds, "How true." Dare I say, "Indeed?"

Jessica sent Wankette the link to her blog, anonymously or not. I've sent Wankette links to my blog. We could ask the A-list bloggers --- isn't self-promotion the most common sort? "Hey, big blogger, please link to MY post."

When the shit hit the fan, Jessica was less than surprised. The extraordinarily rapid identification and firing of Jessica on the 18th still seems odd, but Jessica outing herself to her office-mates would seem even odder. Like any blogger, she was probably delighted at the attention from Wankette's thousands of readers, which might have offset her job loss. And the book deal prospects helped.

From there, both played the story for all it was worth, chummy faux lez photos and all.

Chyort! If this, the biggest pure-blogging news story ever, was all the doings of one chick's over-active imagination, that would really suck. I doubt we will ever know.