Conspiracy Theory: The Carrie Bradshaw Effect
Washington intern wants to bring sexy back
By Leela Pereira, senior writer
Posted on September 18, 2006

The troublesome thing about skimpy lingerie is that it leaves no place to stow a moral compass. Not that I’m in the market for either, per se. I’m thinking of Jessica Cutler. The notorious ex-congressional intern wants new lingerie, her Web site states. She also wants money, a best-selling book and a television show. Her “gimme” attitude is tiresome. She is as pesky and obvious as lipstick on a collar, and she just won’t go away.

Cutler, whose blog of Capitol Hill sex-capades made national headlines in 2004, has turned her notoriety into a full-time job. Apparently, now that she no longer receives gifts and cash from Capitol Hill clients, she needs a supplementary income. Shortly after coming forward as the authoress of the tell-all blog “The Washingtonienne,” Cutler posed nude for Playboy and landed a $300,000 book deal, according to The Washington Post. Her fictitious novel, published in 2005 and reissued in hardcover this summer, follows the life of a Washington, D.C., intern who derives a secondary income from men whose libidos and bankrolls recall Howard Hughes (but whose fame is not commensurate).

I wonder if Ms. Cutler’s book mentions the juicy aftermath of an intern’s sex scandal, though. Over the years, “fund-raisers” by promiscuous interns have steadily increased:

Gennifer Flowers, the television reporter who cavorted with President Clinton during his governorship, published two tell-all books between 1995 and 1996, and posed nude for Penthouse magazine in 1992. Flowers now owns and operates a cabaret club in New Orleans, according to The New York Times. In a May 2000 interview, Paula Jones, Clinton’s next paramour, refused to pose nude for magazines. She appeared in Penthouse five months later, claiming that she needed the money to establish a college fund for her children. Former intern Monica Lewinksy published a tell-all book in 1998, signed on as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers and established her own handbag industry.

Cutler will soon best her predecessors’ schemes. According to New York Magazine and The Washington Post, Cutler sold her novel’s rights to HBO, and the cable network is developing a sitcom for 2007. Unfortunately, Aaron Sorkin did not sign on as head screenwriter. However, Sarah Jessica Parker’s production company will co-produce the show. Should we be surprised?

Parker’s “Sex and the City” established a precedent for sassy television shows which depict women’s empowerment and self-sufficiency. As Carrie Bradshaw, Parker and three flirtatious friends declared their freedom from standard female sex roles by subsisting on cosmopolitans, the Rabbit and the entire male population of New York. Set all these props — including the men — against a Capitol Hill backdrop, toss in a handful of brazen female interns in Prada, and the result is HBO’s “Washingtonienne.”

Perhaps Parker and HBO believe they have devised a winning formula for shows that satisfy both viewers and network executives. But Cutler’s underlying story speaks of performing sexual favors for money. How will HBO disguise a young woman’s congressional copulation as something other than a lack of personal dignity overcompensated by greed? Inevitably, the sitcom would grossly distort women’s empowerment. However, Cutler, Parker and HBO do not deal in women’s empowerment, but in paychecks. Cutler claimed in 2004 that the tedium and poor wages of her intern job drove her to become a congressional plaything. Apparently, not much has changed since then. Thus, even if the self-respecting world wants to move on without Cutler, cable television hopes female viewers will soon be toasting the ex-intern — with cosmopolitans, of course.

Leela Pereira is a senior history major.