Apparently, the little black book isn’t up for sale after all:
Guess what.
Change of plans.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s client phone numbers aren’t up for auction anymore — at least according to her lawyer.
The alleged Washington call-girl madam, recently indicted on federal racketeering charges, has decided she wouldn’t feel right doing business with some gossipy media outfit that pays for sleaze, her attorney said yesterday.
So it is possible that the nation’s capital will not become embroiled in a raging sex scandal after all. Not right away, anyhow.
Sorry.
Instead of selling her list of telephone numbers, Palfrey is apparently giving them away:
Palfrey will give up her 46 pounds of records for free — about 10,000 phone numbers dating to 1993 — for “judicious use” by “a responsible news entity.”
The recipient: “One of the most reputable and respected investigative news organizations in the country,” Palfrey told WTOP radio in an e-mail Monday.
She didn’t say who. It wasn’t The Washington Post. (Rats!)
Palfrey’s goal, Sibley said, is to track down as many men as she can who used her “legal, high-end erotic fantasy service” and ask them to testify on her behalf — to rebut the prostitution allegations, to say that they merely indulged in pricey sexual game-playing with Palfrey’s female employees, not actual sex.
Okay, yea sure we’ve heard that one before. What about the scandal, though ?
“I believe that if this news organization identifies people of significance who used the escort service and it decides to make judicious use of those names,” Sibley said, “then there may be some social ramifications.”
So that’s a yes on the scandal?
“If you want to call it a scandal, you can. But I think potentially it speaks more to the hypocrisy of the Beltway community.”
Hypocrisy in Washington ? Surely you jest.
