The Adolescent Mind of Washingtonienne

By Juliet Eastland, Bitch Magazine. Posted October 20, 2004.

"I have a 'glamour job' on the Hill. That is, I could not care less about gov or politics, but working for a Senator looks good on my resume. And these marble hallways are such great places for meeting boys and showing off my outfits." So begins The Washingtonienne, the short-lived blog of one Jessica Cutler, a young Capitol Hill staff assistant since dubbed the "New-insky" for her chronicling of kinky sex among D.C.'s power elite. Using her e-nom de plume, Cutler spent a few weeks earlier this year posting online commentary regarding her job, her shoes, and her liaisons with six Hill-dwelling dudes – er, Men of Power – ranging from MD ("Dude from the Senate office I interned at") to R ("aka 'Threesome Dude'") to F (married government chief of staff paying her for sex). This cash-dispensing, anal sex-loving crew will presumably be fleshed out, so to speak, in The Washingtonienne's upcoming eponymous novel, for which she recently received a reported six-figure advance (from HyperionDisney, that avatar of family values).

What with the hubbub about the 26-year-old Cutler and her sexcapades, I decided a read-through would be in order, and I curled up the other day with the blog and a martini in a state of high anticipation. I was expecting salacious. Purple. Titillating. Highballs and low morals, detailed with evil glee and sophisticated immorality.

Not.

In fact, it was the opposite: as I read, I started to feel gawky, uncomfortable. Giggly. I fought the urge to make prank phone calls and toilet-paper the house. I was regressing. I finally realized why: with the exception of the sex-for-money scenes (okay, all the sex scenes), this twenty-something's blog read a lot like my own eighth-grade diary. Squirming with embarrassment, I recognized the hallmarks of myself at age 14 – the self-conscious coquetry ("Item! A new contender for my fair hand"), the supreme self-confidence ("I know I'm hot and everything") juxtaposed with adolescent gawkiness ("I got nervous and acted weird. Shit!"). Most of all, I was struck by the resilience of youth, the ability – for better and for worse – to move forward from difficult experiences without emerging scarred for life. Cutler may be down ("I feel bad about what I did to MK") (translation: "I feel bad about cheating on a serious, long-term partner") but she's not out. Turns out that "new stuff from Martha Stewart!" facilitates the healing process just as well as, say, honest communication.

It's fitting that Cutler's blog was originally brought to light by another blog: Political e-gossipmonger Wonkette broke the "news" of Ms. Cutler's online journal several months ago, and if the writing style is any indication, the friendship between Wonkette and Washingtonienne is off to a beautiful start. "WASHINGTONIENNE SPEAKS!! WONKETTE EXCLUSIVE!! MUST CREDIT WONKETTE!! THE WASHINGTONIENNE INTERVIEW!!" So Wonkette hyperventilated last May, fanning the embers of a sophomoric blog into a scoop and trumpeting her own role as star-finder in the process. Attracted by the scent of all those capital letters, other Web-trawlers and bloggers converged, and soon Washingtonienne was appearing in rants and raves throughout the virtual world (e.g. Wizbangblog, Swamp-City, PoliticalWire), all bristling with feedback from readers – and, of course, linking to each other.

Given the fuss, it was only a matter of time before the debacle ensnared more mainstream print media outlets. The Washington Post interviewed Cutler, while Playboy went one better and paid her to pose nude. (Never one to miss a business opportunity, the magazine has since posted a casting call on its web site: "Attention Interns: Pose for Playboy Magazine!") Our culture rewards self-promotion in exactly the way the self-promoter would want: with visibility, in this case literally. The preliminary groundwork for that visibility is relatively easy thanks to the Web, where increased accessibility of information breeds increased appetite for information, and vice versa. The more press that was generated about Washingtonienne, the more readers wanted to know, and the more press was generated, and the more readers wanted to know. Cutler was happy to oblige.

But given Washingtonienne's sophomoric prose and extremely short lifespan, what's the brouhaha about? Well, we all love a guessing game. (Although if you have anything to do with government, chances are the list of suspects – identified by their initials and their positions, governmental and sexual – will be easily deciphered. For the rest of us, it might be time to learn the names of our elected officials.) And no, none of the suspects works at the political level of Dick Cheney. "Absolutely not," Ms. Cutler tells Playboy. "I think I would have tried to cash in on that earlier." (Good lord, whom to root for in that battle?) And do we even need to acknowledge that we get off on sex and power? Who can resist a peek at the salaciousness seething behind the sober suits and marble halls of American government? Finally, we love a good villainess – a sexually voracious woman incurs our particularly punitive wrath. Slut! Whore! we cry, wringing our hands, our eyes glued to her cleavage.

Juliet Eastland’s writing appears in print and online venues. She lives in New York City.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from MediaCulture! Sign up now »