In a perfect world, Ashley Alexandra Dupre's celebrity clock would be at 14:59 and ticking. Alas, ours is not a perfect world and fifteen minutes can last years. What reality shows, skin magazines, and musick producers will burden us with her into the next decade?

I'm beginning to suspect much of Ashley Alexandra Dupre's sob story is as phony as her plethora of names. A video report by the Associated Press shows the house where former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's call girl grew up. It's practically a mansion. The homelessness and poverty she describes on her since-pulled MySpace bio, it seems, was of the voluntary variety, if it existed at all. And abuse? I'm interested in what kind of abuse. Getting grounded? A family friend described the circumstances surrounding Ashley running away from home: "She crashed up [her stepdad's] Porsche and wanted another one, and he wouldn't give it to her, so she left."

Dupre may have briefly had it rough upon leaving home, but her bio on MySpace strikes me as something designed to give her "street cred." Remember all of Vanilla Ice's "word to ya mutha" and "I'm from the streets" talk? It turned out he was just a regular suburban dude. Methinks something similar is at work with this young lady's biography. One of the perverse aspects of contemporary culture is the desire to muck up, rather than spruce up, one's personal history and roots. Alas, to go from oppulence to whoredom does not an inspiring narrative make.

There is a Marxist script, which an earlier post to some degree resembled, that posits that poverty is the cause of vice, that prostitution, theft, the drug trade, and much else that scourges our world results from economics. The world is rarely that simplistic. My earlier juxtaposition of Moneybags Eliot and Poor Ashley contained a poetic truth but a prosaic falsehood. In this particular case, that narrative did not fit no matter what Ms. Dupre's invented biography claimed. Greed, not poverty, catapulted Ashley into the world of high-priced prostitution. And lust, not a Fort Knox bank account, catapulted her client into that world as well. Hopefully boredom will catapult the rest of us out of their story.

Dan, it is the era of the victim and the underdog. Many claim to be the victims of (insert disease/abuse/condition here).

Remember early in the campaign when Obama and Clinton were nearly arguing who was the underdog?

I am not sure where all of this comes from, but much of it has to do with the shirking of responsibility. It is easier to excuse our child by saying they have ADHD rather than teach them manners. Also, the child's poor behavior cannot be blamed on the parents for their lack of guidance.

Have you noticed drug commercials lately? Most of them overuse the word "suffer." I am slowly removing that term from the writings on my website. Suffering is a state of mind, NOT a condition.

One's childhood is never a precursor for behavior. Nor is it an excuse. We all have power to overcome our past and choose our own behavior (with few exceptions). But in this day and age where the "buck" seems to stop nowhere, it seems easier to blame a bad experience rather than strive to overcome it. Hence the tendency to create a lousy youth, rather than accept responsibility for destructive behavior.

Be well,

Sponge

I think you're on to something, Sponge Daddy. Good comment. I think the drive to root for the underdog, or imagine oneself the underdog, may be related to the impulse to drag down the successful, e.g., anti-NE Patriot off-field conspiracy theories explaining their on-field success, anti-monopoly lawsuits against Microsoft, the glee that greets the fall of a high officeholder into scandal. Here's Ms. Dupre, raised in a house more gaudy than almost any I have been in, claiming poverty. Sure, the rich can become poor--and rich girls who runaway at 17 generally do so. But it strikes me as a sign of something psychologically troubling when one manufactures a nitty-gritty background when reality was much more pleasant.

She sleeps with people for money. Any way you look at it, it's 4ucked up and so is she. This type of ana1ysis only serves to keep this story alive. Pointing it out allows us to dismiss any feelings of empathy or pity for this poor kid. The whole thing is a tragedy.

This chick might have surfaced for her fifteen some how, some way, no matter what. But her cheap rise to infamy was really quite by accident and was the result of Spitzer getting caught in an IRS flytrap.

Now that she's there, it's hard not to marvel at how attractive spoiled poor little rich girls start out living high and work really hard to live low. I suppose it’s especially easy for them to go down when they know that they have a safety net of affluence and comfort to go back to anytime they want.

Paris Hilton started it, that filthy h0 Kim Kardashian has refined it and Reality TV has perpetuated it and has made it seem somewhat legitimate.

hey you aint big time unless you ho it up. i cant waite till danica patrick does her porn flik.

How much do you think this girl has been ofered (since this story broke) to do a hard-core porn? She'll either do that or get a clothing line of some sort. It speaks volumes about where some peoples heads are at but it seems that being invloved in a sex scandel isn't a bad way to launch or re-launch a career.

Unlike Paris Hilton, Monica Lewinsky or Pam Anderson this girl is actually sh*t hot. She'll probably end up dating one of the washed up 80's hair metal dudes. Ashley and Axl Rose, a match from heaven.