Well, not just rehashing—it seems there's new news to be brought to the table! NY Daily News wants everyone to know that Spitzer was a total brute, choking call girls left and right. Or at least choking one call girl, during some roleplay. Kink-friendly publication that we are, we'd like to remind you all that what matters is not whether Spitzer choked a girl during sex, but whether or not he got prior consent and respected her boundaries. Subtleties we're sure the mainstream media will take note of, absolutely.

· Eliot Spitzer choked her during sex, claims high-end call girl (nydailynews.com)

McLennan, an aspiring actress and former Canadian junior tap dancing champion from Montreal, came to New York in 2000 and didn't catch the acting break she needed. Broke and single in 2003 and not knowing how she would pay her rent, she followed what was a surprisingly short series of leads into prostitution. But not the street kind: the limo and rooftop pool kind.

And that in three years it was all over isn't the story of the book. "In retrospect," McLellan told Fleshbot from Montreal, "there are only elements that I wouldn't repeat. Like the drugs. But I can't say it wasn't a great time or that I didn't learn a lot."

McLellan's rise from $700 an hour to more than $2k per session is fairly short. While she believes she is good at what she does, is well-read, articulate, and engaging, McLennan doesn't think of herself as model-beautiful. We get the impression that the world is ready for someone like her to occupy a space rather than submitting to her will.

"Post-9/11," McLennan said, "maybe people were thinking of other things."

She covers the logistics of the escort agency New York Confidential in a style that is less bookish and more like a MySpace blog. There is an inevitability about events with unclear antecedents, as if 20 years might need to elapse before we see the Why. As it is, "The Price" is valuable because it paints a picture of a New York where being the city's Number One Escort is something that can be advertised in New York magazine. What made this possible? That's a different book.

In "The Price," McLennan's world goes quickly from penury to shopping sprees where she spends $15k before lunch and, while we see some lean times and an absent dad in her childhood, we don't get the impression that she is damaged goods. She's got boyfriend trouble, sure, sometimes the other escorts get jealous, she wonders whether she should tell the Hollywood agent she's servicing that she's also an actress - but all of it seems so normal. She seems devoid of the baggage that accompanies women in most mass market sex worker narratives.

"Well," McLennan said, "that's because I'm a normal person."

Perhaps because all of the famous characters are still around, McLennan does not name most names, but this serves the narrative in that "The Price" is procedural and not a tell-all; we become more fascinated with her closets and the thread-count of her sheets than we do with who the famous quarterback is.

"Those were the reasons/And that was New York" said McLennan's countryman Leonard Cohen in "Chelsea Hotel #2" which, when you think of it, also paints what someone else might call sordid in a more matter of fact light. As New York Confidential unravels with the imprudent Page Six boasting of its owner, Jason Itzler, as McLennan becomes more mired in drugs, and as events sail toward their inevitable "Behind the Music" conclusion, we still know from the fact that we are reading an autobiography that "this just happened" and it couldn't be that bad.

And it isn't. McLennan got charged with money laundering for her role in the agency, is back in Canada as the manager of a spa, and is doing her book tour, spending a little time, no doubt, on Ashley, an escort acquaintance whose involvement with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer caused him to resign. But "The Price" is not about Ashley, and it is almost not about McLennan; it's more of a mash note to New York City and the things that are possible there if you are a voyageur sans baggage.

· Buy "The Price: My Rise and Fall As Natalia, New York's #1 Escort"
(amazon.com)

Well, the tawdrier the real thing, a pornic take on it almost seems to make the original look less harmful, as if a porn adaptation confirms how silly it is already. The same happened with Hustler's "Da Vinci Load"; it really improved on the book.

Mike Horner is particularly hammy in the role of New York Governor Eliot Splitz-her, and it is right and just that the adult industry still has some older performers around to add the right touch of Leslie Nielsen to parts like this one.

Students of history will be happy that Gov Lov pays attention to detail. The Governor is known as a man who cleans up the streets and, when he makes his assignations over the phone, is quoted a $4,000 fee.

But a porn movie unbound from its conventions, even if it is a topical movie like this one, won't fly. So Gov Lov needs to find other people to look at than just Horner and Cassandra Cruz as his special lady, thus trumped up scenes with different, vaguely-related pairings (Angela Stone as The Squirting Lobbyist, for example).

Unlike many hot-off-the-presses porn, however, this movie also has a bona fide B story. We meet two FBI surveillance agents, played by Van Damage and Veronica Jett, who get so caught up in the governor's shenanigans that they just can't help themselves.

The Governor is well-known to the escort agency, and he is set up with Kristen (Cruz) and they get to know each other (after the required funds are deposited in the agency's bank account).

After their tryst, they have the following conversation.

"Now this is going to be our little secret?" he says.

"Of course," she replies. "No one will ever find out."

As a movie specifically designed to be purchased by casual consumers, Gov Lov has all the porn world has to offer: speedy turnaround, a little humor, not too much talking, and some sense that these things could really happen. And Hustler put a little extra effort into the packaging, which is nice, since we're talking about people's lives here.

- Review by Gram Ponante

Gov Lov: The Eliot Splitz-her Story
Studio: Hustler
Director: Stuart Canterbury
Cast: Mike Horner, Cassandra Cruz, Kayla Paige, Angela Stone, Emma Heart, Veronica Jett, Kissy Kapri, Van Damage, Marcus London, Dino Braco, Kissy Kapri

· Order "Gov Lov" (gamelink)
· Hustler (hustlervideo.com)

Honestly, we don't think it even looks like her — that seems to be happening a lot these days — but then, the idea that Ashley would get thrown out of a hotel in Miami and then take her top off for a bunch of drunk frat boys isn't so farfetched either. Plus, it was five years ago ... which would have made the now (supposedly) 22-year-old, um ... 17? Maybe Joe should check those archives again before he gets himself into more trouble.

· "ASHLEY DUPRE IN 'GIRLS GONE WILD' VIDEO" (nypost.com)

Previously: Everything Else You Wanted To Know About Hookers (But Didn't Care Enough To Ask)

. . .

· Spitzer's fall offers glimpse into sex business (newsday.com)
· The Double Lives of High-Priced Call Girls (nytimes.com)
· Porn vs. prostitution: Why is it legal to pay someone for sex on camera? (slate.com)
· Johns Help Each Other Find the Right 'Internet Sex Provider' (wired.com)
· Cassandra: The really annoying thing about Eliot Spitzer (timesonline.co.uk)
· Smerconish: Legalize hookers (daveralis.com)
· Europe does sex scandals better (latimes.com)
· No sex scandals for women in power (freep.com)
· Hop on: we are taking sex tourism global (telegraph.co.uk)
· Threesome With New Jersey Guv Out-Trashes Spitzer Scandal (Gawker)

* * * * *

Previously: The Curious Case Of Client No. 9: An Honest To Goodness Political Sex Scandal, Today's Gubernatorial Sex Scandal Update: The Apotheosis Of Ashley

As a former state attorney general, Spitzer was extremely well-versed in the law and (more importantly) how law enforcement works—federal investigation techniques, wiretapping, complex money laundering manuvers. He even prosecuted several high profile prostuitution investigations cases himself, so it's baffling that he would not only partake of the company of ladies of the night, but that he apparently made almost zero effort to conceal his actions. The most interesting revelation is that he was not a high-profile client caught up in a prostitution racket; the call girls were the ones who got caught up in an investigation of him. It was his own bank that tipped off the IRS about suspicious transactions, which eventually lead to the bust of the Emperor's Club last week.

Oh yeah, there's also the hookers. Everyone seems to be delighting in the screenshots of headless torsos and "diamond" ratings and interpretations of antiquated federal laws, but mostly they seem to enjoy the opportunity to call people "whores" in polite company. Because it's about sex, you see, and we have to pretend that it's dirty and evil, even though we all secretly get a big kick out of it because we all realize that the greatest harm done so far is that a young woman was "transported" across state lines for immoral purposes. (Oh, and he maybe liked to bang prostitutes without condoms, but that's a different scandal altogether.) Our dream of a sex-positive governor leading the fight against harsh and outdated criminal laws will probably not come to pass, but we are pleasantly surprised that this case has led at least a few people to ask why prostitution is illegal in the first place.

There's been a lot of comparisons to sex scandals past and how remarkably easy it's been for most politicians to hang on and save their careers, but there's one key difference between those earlier offenders and Spitzer. He paid for it. Cheating on your wife is forgivable, but a tough on crime crusader breaking the law is not. The consensus seems to be that indictment or no (the real unfairness with prostitutions laws is that it's very difficult and rare to prosecute johns, although they pretty much have this one dead to rights), Spitzer will not be the governor for long. That's too bad, because the longer this discussion goes on and the more we realize that anyone can and will pay for sex, the greater the chance that our attitudes and our laws might actually change. Of course, that also means all the horrible "Spitzer Swallow" jokes will continue indefinitely, but we suppose you can't have everything.

· Revelations Began in Routine Tax Inquiry (nytimes.com)
· Spitzer's Apology Video + Did One Of These Ladies Take Down the Governor? (Gawker)
· Spitzer Linked To Hooker Probe (thesmokinggun.com)
· "Why is prostitution illegal?" (slate.com)
· "Have you been a whore?" (wakingvixen.com; see also "The World's Oldest Profession" audio @ wnyc.org)
· "Eliot Spitzer's Whores" (Wonkette)
· Foes push for Spitzer's resignation over link to prostitution ring (cnn.com)
· Washingtons most infamous hotel room for now (Examiner.com)
· Clinton Campaign Removes Eliot Spitzer's Name From List Of Endorsements (radaronline.com)
· Sex scandals in U.S. politics (reuters.com)

· "Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring" (nytimes.com)
· Online Hooker Ring Busted - March 6, 2008 (thesmokinggun.com)