Couple weeks ago, I gave a top secret briefing to a select few at an undisclosed location in Detroit, which by the way has the trippiest, technopoppiest airport I've ever floated through in a harmonic trance. Apparently Brian Eno's Music for Airports has had some belated, residual influence. But I digress. The topic of my informal chat was the power and glory of being a columnist at Vanity Fair, apart from those irksome times when I frisked at security for trying to smuggle in a ferret for Anna Wintour, who dotes on the little rascals. Again, I digress. I told the rapt assembled that a certain phrase had been hovering in the hallways of Vanity Fair. The phrase was "Honduran hookers." I wasn't quite sure what it pertained to, since nobody at 4 Times Square tells me anything since I started this blog for fear that I might "blab." But it was evident that the phrase had some significance, a larger relevance; it wasn't just a reference to someone's outrageous, recently submitted expense account. Now the mystery is over and we--and I--know what the relevance of the term "Honduran hookers" is. Unless of course they weren't actually hookers, simply overenthusiastic hostesses for Washington visitors. Perhaps some forthcoming trial or two will help clarify matters.
I won't give away any of the other sordid details, except to note that the piggish greed and gobbling corruption of "Duke" Cunningham and crew detailed in Judy Bachrach's piece go beyond Gilded Age excesses into La Grande Bouffe.
