Porn king has six more Republican sex scandals to reveal

After eliminating claims which could not be verified, the magazine has lined up some half-dozen “foolproof” cases — complete with corroborating evidence and affidavits — which it promises to “out” this week at a special “invitation only” media event.

Naturally, a shudder of revulsion — and fear — has gripped Washington. Such is the reputation of the city now that Hustler’s more respectable rival Playboy has a specialised “sex tour” of the city’s political hotspots. Yes, it includes the White House and the Capitol.

Flynt’s prospective action is the latest in a series of developments that has seen the American media descend along a slippery slope of scandal mongering. All of last week, the media was abuzz with another story about President having fathered a son with a black hooker. The story first originated in the tabloid world, was picked up by a cybergossip, and found its way into the mainstream media including the Washington Times, MSNBC and Fox media.

The story has nowturned out to be a lemon with a DNA test of the 13-year boy not corresponding to the President’s DNA. But the damage has been done. Questions about the story even reached the White House briefing room last week.

“The trajectory is becoming a familiar one: Stories of dubious provenance, ignored by the traditional press, find a home in the fringe media or supermarket tabloids; the reports make the rounds of the Internet, where they transmogrify and take on a new life; soon, they bubble up to the surface on talk radio, cable talk shows and late night monologues; finally they appear in more traditional conservative publications. The story achieves a level of acceptance at every stage,” says media critic J D Lasica of the Online Journalism Review. But the media outlets are defending their actions, saying they were merely reporting on the claims of a woman who did in fact undergo a DNA test. Besides, in the current prurient “anything goes” atmosphere engendered by the Monica scandal and the story of thesemen-stained dress, no story is too improbable. Some, like Harvard University legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, argue that it is Kenneth Starr and his supporters who have given the media a “green light to break down the locks of Congressional closets.”

It may now fall upon the venerable United States Senate to stem the flow of such licentious reporting. It transpires that while the Senate may indeed call witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky, to depose in the impeachment trial beginning later this week, the lawmakers may shut the media out of the proceedings. The prospect has dismayed the media, which was looking for `pictures’ to milk some more ratings out the story that is beginning to turn off the public.

The White House, meanwhile, is manfully trying to work itself out of the crisis. The man in the centre of it all, President Bill Clinton, will reportedly deliver his annual State of the Union address on schedule on January 19, right in the middle of the impeachment trial. Amid frenzied speculationabout whether the First Lady would bid to become Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton late next year, the White House was formulating a response to the summons from the Senate in the impeachment trial.