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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bloggers not immune to sexploitation

Frank Sennett The Spokesman-Review

It’s old hat for obscure, anonymous bloggers to post intimate personal details the rest of us might only whisper to confidantes over too many drinks. But now famous folks and media conglomerates alike are getting in on the too-much-information act.

Leading this tacky charge? Jane, the magazine with no last name, recently launched a blog featuring Sarah, a woman whose last name seems to be the only thing she won’t share with the world.

Jane calls Sarah’s blog The Virgin Chronicles. A related note by Senior Writer/Editor Katy McColl (finally, a last name!) asks, “What would you do if your 29-year-old friend asked you to help her lose the big V?” Well, if that friend was Sarah — accurately described by McColl as “a tall blond with a nice rack” — I admit giving her a blog wouldn’t be my first thought.

But that’s just what the folks making the big Condé Nast bucks decided to do. “We want to hook her up with as many guys as possible,” McColl enthuses. “There’s bound to be a prince — or at least someone bed-worthy — in there somewhere.”

Improbably calling Sarah “shy (and) somewhat self-conscious” (compared with other women publicly seeking sex?), McColl nonetheless promises she’ll deliver in-depth accounts of her hook-ups as visitors vote on which Romeo she’ll grapple with next.

Lest readers become confused by blog posts headlined “Getting Lucky” and “Hi, I’m Sarah. Hook Me Up.” — or by such jottings as, “I am a comic/girl Friday who had this idea that I would try to lose my virginity by the time I turn 30 this November” — Sarah posted a “Just to Clarify” note last Thursday.

“I am not saying that I am determined to sleep with a guy by midnight on my 30th. Not at all!” Of course not! Where could we have gotten that idea?

Speaking of getting ideas, Jane’s sister pub Glamour beat Sarah to the seeking-sex-in-the-city punch by launching its own interactive hook-up blog, See Alyssa Date, in early August. “We had no idea about the Glamour blog,” Jane editor-in-chief Brandon Holley told the Huffington Post last week. As for Sarah? “We’re not asking her to lose her virginity,” Holley insisted.

Either Sarah’s faking the virgin act to boost her writing career, or she’s making a desperate spectacle of herself so that she might actually get sweaty with her first Mr. Right Now before hitting the big 3-0. Should we vote on which possibility is sadder?

But the saddest turn in this emerging genre may be the blog battle that played out this month on the MySpace pages of Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and former Miss USA Shanna Moakler, his soon-to-be-ex-wife.

After the stars of MTV’s “Meet the Barkers” filed for divorce, Moakler wrote, “i am very devestated and very much heartbroken over the demise of my marriage and for the upset of my family.” She later added, “i feel like im in a nightmare and i just wanna wake up and pretend it never happened.”

Barker, who misnamed (and, naturally, misspelled) his MySpace page “immawinnerbaby,” then accused Moakler of infidelity and posted a day-in-the-life rundown (since removed) of her alleged lack of parenting skills. He wrote that his wife slept in while he changed dirty diapers, and went out so often their kids referred to the nanny as “Mommy.”

His screed ended with this unintentionally hilarious howl of rage: “I WAS INFORMED BY OUR REALTOR SHANNA WAS DOING DANCING WITH THE STARS (why wouldn’t she tell me, right?)”

I don’t know about those other accusations. But allowing your spouse to discover secondhand that you’re appearing on a Z-grade celebrity game show is slam-dunk grounds for divorce in California.