Sex and the Citizens, by John Ostrander

John Ostrander

John Ostrander started his career as a professional writer as a playwright. His best known effort, Bloody Bess, was directed by Stuart Gordon, and starred Dennis Franz, Joe Mantegna, William J. Norris, Meshach Taylor and Joe Mantegna. He has written some of the most important influential comic books of the past 25 years, including Batman, The Spectre, Manhunter, Firestorm, Hawkman, Suicide Squad, Wasteland, X-Men, and The Punisher, as well as Star Wars comics for Dark Horse. New episodes of his creator-owned series, GrimJack, which was first published by First Comics in the 1980s, appear every week on ComicMix.

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9 Responses

  1. Russ Rogers says:

    I think you missed the Rudy Giuliani and Judith Nathan scandal. This was an extramarital affair that Giuliani used creative accounting practices to cover up while he was mayor of New York. He provided Nathan a car and police driver at the city's expense. She made the driver chauffeur her family around like it was her private Taxi service. http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007…This was a heterosexual, Republican scandal that may have proved as much Giuliani's undoing as a Presidential Candidate as his clumsy political strategy. His campaign was so ruinously still born that's it's hard to know exactly what's to blame for it's failure. But, this scandal isn't about the tawdry sexual secrets, the real meat of the scandal revolves around Giuliani's off-hand abuse of money and power.I think Hillary's campaign for President has been hurt by Clinton's affairs. Some admire her courage and fortitude, being able to maintain and seemingly strengthen her marriage after the series of infidelities by her husband. I have heard others express it as a sign on weakness on her part, that she did not kick Bill to the curb and dump him back when they were in office. It's rhetorical, but I doubt that "the Woman Who Divorced the President" could have been able to even get elected to the Senate. Then again (and I know, this is an unfair characterization), it's hard to see where someone's loyalties lie, when they are able to find the strength to continue to love someone who has repeatedly, personally betrayed them.

    • John Ostrander says:

      Guliani is, as we all know, a special case. I expect photos and a story of how transvestite Rudy was caught in a tryst with candidate Rudy having sex with himself.

  2. Russ Rogers says:

    John, you wanted to find "Kristen," well here she is: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/nyregion/12cnd-…And if you want to get more personal, here is her MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/ninavenetta

    • John Ostrander says:

      She was found in my local paper, too. I suspect LOTS of papers are running with it. The Springfield newspaper in the Simpsons is probably carrying it. I also note that she can't be found for comment and her lawyer is not commenting AT THIS TIME — which suggests to me that he's fielding offers.

      • Russ Rogers says:

        Then again, she might just be a scared young woman, who has found herself thrust into the international spotlight and she doesn't know how to respond. Making money off the tabloids might be sleazy. Is that MORE or LESS sleazy than being a prostitute? Is earning something from her infamy a way up from the social gutter or is it a lateral move? She wants to be a singer. If she has talent, is it moral or justifiable for her to use this bit of infamy as the launching point for a career?

  3. Rick Taylor says:

    It's always the righteous ones that have the furthest to fall.

  4. John Tebbel says:

    So instead of trading her body for rent (she gets 10% of the pimp's price) this one might get a house out of the deal. Lot's more than she bargained for but not exactly a new leaf or a new chance. When the fame-maker called, her lucky number was up. And, btw, according to very serious documentaries on HBO, the prices compare to what they get at the Chicken Ranch. They probably don't put that on the web site.

  5. mike weber says:

    "There are those of you out there who don’t regard politics as necessarily pop culture. And then there are those of us born in Chicago."Boy howdy on that – a fond family legend is of the time my great-grandfather (this would be the Bohemian draft-dodger, i think) came along to re-open his saloon in Cicero one Sunday afternoon, and discovered future Mayor Anton Cermak perched on the bar while the guard dog sat patiently by; apparently Cermak had been passed out in one of the booths when he closed the joint for the mandated four hours (or whatever) on Sunday morning.I think great-grandad is still voting the Democratic Party line in every election.More recently, i used to spend a lot of time in New Orleans and Folsom LA – the state where a semi-official Democratic Party slogan in a primary was "Vote for the crook – it's important!" and where a political analyst once remarked of two candidates for Governor, one of whom had already been convicted once of embezzling, i believe – "The people like [Candidate B], but they don't trust him. They trust [Candidate B], but they don't like him.""Bill Clinton was the President of the United States who couldn’t keep it in his pants. He had more than one sex scandal and apparently learned nothing from his first escape. "I think Clinton more or less thought that the same rules of engagement (as it were) that had been in effect during the Kennedy years would cover him, too. He's brilliant but sometimes not too bright.Hart might well have been able to ride it out, but he demonstrated his tendency to panic in a crisis and withdrew before he needed to. Which is just as well with me, because a man who would panic like that is *not* what we need in the Oval Office. (Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan becomes President precisely because the President is one such, who completely blows a crisis and has to step down.)I just read a piece that says CNN is saying that, perhaps, they made a bad choice of on-air political commentator:"[CNN brought in] former U.S. Attorney Kendall Coffey to comment on the scandal involving New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The cable news network made no mention of the fact that Coffey himself was forced to quit his job in 1996 after he was accused of biting a topless dancer at an adult nightclub." (http://imdb.com/news/sb/2008-03-13/#11)The Miami Herald remarked that he was, perhaps, overqualified as an analyt on this, or words to that effect.

  6. Elayne Riggs says:

    I thought David "This is not my beautiful governor" Byrne had a pretty good comment about all of this on his blog: "why haven’t we been provided the names of clients one through eight? It goes without saying that all are wealthy men, and there are probably a few other politicians among them. The prostitution ring — the Emperor’s Club V.I.P. — was under federal wiretap, so they MUST know the identities of the others. There are probably a lot more than nine clients too, eh, so why have their identities not been released? Though they vigorously deny it, it sure smells like a Republican setup." Wheels within wheels!