Yesterday, we asked Daily Kos readers to help name the ever-growing scandal concerning Rudy Giuliani's expensing of his adultery to the taxpayers of New York, and his subsequent hamfisted attempts to hide his shame. And as always, you responded with gusto. We received over 1000 comments on the thread, the vast majority of which were suggested scandal names. Most of the proposals were very good. Some were remarkably effective. But there was one particularly apropos suggestion that tied together the sex, the taxpayer abuse, and the Rudyific Enycean nature of the scandal in a package as pretty as a Manolo Blahnik box.
I refer, of course, to Sex on the City. Sex on the City: your official 2007-08 Rudy sex/money/coverup scandal name!
The provenance of the term Sex on the City is a bit obscure. The first to propose it in the contest thread was Mr Hinky Dink (dink), but it soon became clear that earlier in the morning, Atrios had used it as a post title. Yet Atrios would have to concede that Keith Olbermann had used the term the previous night, on Thursday's Countdown. But the trail doesn't end there -- our own Kagro X appears to have coined Sex on the City Thursday morning, less than 24 hours after the sordid story broke on the pages of the Politico. Will forensic nomenclaturists find an even earlier occurance of the term? Perhaps. But its popularity, combined with its perfection, led the editors to conclude that it was unquestionably the name for this scandal.
There are a number of terrific runners-up that deeply impressed the panel, and which merit public kudos. In no particular order, we liked: Mojotroll's Fornigate (despite the general prejudice against - gate suffixes), Sanuk's Rudy's General Erection Fund, and 69/11 (proposed by any number of commenters, and with an origin as murky as Sex on the City's). But one of the runners-up stood out as being particularly worthy of future use, as it perfectly complements Sex on the City. I refer to chumley's America's Playa, which henceforth will be the official nickname for Rudy during the denouement of the Sex on the City scandal. (It's worth noting that chumley is a WGA member. Could Jay Leno have claimed America's Playa before DKos, but for the strike? We'll never know.)
So there you have it. America's Playa, starring in Sex on the City. Make sure that you use both terms as often as possible while discussing Rudy's shame. We know we will.
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