No Happy Ending Here
Posted on February 7th, 2010 by adminWe’re never short on political scandals here in Illinois and it didn’t take long after this last election-the next day, to be exact- for this latest one to blow up involving the newly elected Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Scott Lee Cohen (In Illinois, Governor and Lt. Governor run completely separate from one another). Turns out Cohen was arrested several years back for holding a knife to an ex-girlfriend’s throat, a fact he was open about during the campaign process, but apparently nobody paid any attention to it until he won the primary. Thanks for keeping the voters informed, media. You fucking suck, as always. Of course the kicker here is that said girlfriend in Cohen’s case was convicted on a prostitution charge in 2005 at the “Eden Spa”, the same place Cohen met her. He says he didn’t know she had been convicted of prostitution, others are saying the place was well-known for prostitution. The media, of course, are saying all sorts of stupid shit, as well as posting this poor woman’s mugshot on the cover of the paper with words like “hooker” and “convicted prostitute” in the headlines, leaving us to wonder who exactly is running for office here.

The Republicans are secretly thanking you, fucker
Now, this Scott Lee Cohen guy does seem like a grade-A douchebag, but part of me kinda believes him when he says he didn’t know his girlfriend was a “prostitute.” She probably wasn’t, but you also have to realize a lot of us keep secrets, even from loved ones and family. She probably was giving “straight massages”, as he thought, at the Spa but every so often if a client came in and offered the right amount of money, he would get a happy ending. It happens all the time. Suburban cops, who have nothing better to do with their time, thought it would be a fun to set up a sting on said massage spa and trick some cute girl into agreeing to give him a hand job with his regular massage. As bad as that situation was for her, I’m sure she never thought that 5 years later her ex-boyfriend would be running for political office and she’d have to re-live this hell all over again, with the media digging for details of her personal life, even though she’s not running for office herself or even still dating this guy. Apparently she’s still employed at the same spa (in a different location) and now she’s got nosy Tribune reporters showing up at her workplace trying to make appointments with her to see if they can get a “happy ending” too. Her livelihood and income is probably now at serious risk, as well as any future employment opportunites. And let’s remember here, she was originally the victim in this case.
I don’t know this woman involved in the scandal but I can imagine that she had friends and family that had no idea of her life or her arrest and now it’s front page news for the world to see. It scares the hell out of me because this very well could be myself or one of my industry friends in the exact same situation. One of our ex-clients or ex-boyfriends decides to run for office or has a high profile job and next thing you know, it’s us being thrown into the spotlight even though we did nothing to put ourselves there. How do you move forward when you’ve been disrespected by the media in this way? Remember Ashley DuPre, the escort is the Elliot Spitzer scandal? She’s now writing for the NY Post, one of the many media outlets that disrespected her during that scandal. Not exactly the wisest career moved in my opinion, but I’m sure she figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
While members of the Illinois Democratic party are pressuring Cohen to step down, perhaps some good might come out of this scandal. Perhaps people will come to the realization that A) sex workers are everywhere and let’s get over the “oh my God, that’s awful!” fucking hysteria surrounding this type of work, B) Just because someone agreed to give an undercover cop a hand job at a spa once doesn’t mean she is a “prostitute.” It means she was set up, and lastly C) People should be outraged that their tax dollars are being spent on undercover “prostitution” stings at massage spas. Really people…isn’t this what the news outlets should be reporting on? The fact that precious Illinois tax dollars are being wasted on what hardly amounts to a crime? But no, now the focus has shifted away from Cohen, who’s done things much worse that what this woman did and on her, just so they can throw around words like “hooker” and “prostitute” instead of “domestic abuser” and “tax cheat” in the name of selling papers.
There really is no happy ending here, for anyone involved. Cohen will hopefully resign, the scandal will blow over in a week or so, but this woman’s reputation has been damaged forever. And you can sure as shit guarantee that come November we’re going to have a Republican elected governor of Illinois.


