New York Post goes all the way with stunt assigning

To paraphrase golfer Bobby Jones' famous quote about the young Jack Nicklaus: Even though I began my career at the Boston Herald, the New York Post is now practicing a form of tabloid journalism with which I am not familiar.

First there was the recent decision to hire Ashley Dupre, the prostitute who helped bring down former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, as a romantic advice columnist. Now today the Post splashes a front page story about how one of its reporters traveled to Las Vegas and spent $500 to "hire" the state's first legal male prostitute.

Mandy Stadtmiller is an entertainment writer for the Post, as well as a New York-based comedienne, and it turns out she didn't actually have sex with Patrick a.k.a. "Markus." But the stuff she does write about is gross enough. Sorry, no excerpts, read it for yourself if you dare, or care.

In Hollywood, they call it "stunt casting" - hiring someone famous or infamous who brings little to the production besides publicity. Chalk this little bit of "stunt assigning" to more desperate attention seeking from the Post, which has seen its circulation fall off the cliff recently (down 30 percent in 30 months). Watching the Post these days is a bit like watching NASCAR - who knowns what flaming car wreck of journalistic depravity awaits just around the next bend?