Wonkette
Yesterday evening, your editors got more than a dozen breathless tips that the “real” reason Trent was resigning was that he was about to be outed in a gay sex scandal. We had a number of reasons that we didn’t post it, including: one of us felt Trent was too cheap to pay for it, even if he wanted it; we all agreed not even a closeted gay man would wear his hair like that; we’d been burned on a story like this before and hate having to issue corrections; and if he was trying to hide his gayness, he would never in a million years dress like this.
This morning, HuffPo gets the actual gay escort on the record: “How these ‘quotes’ have been fabricated are beyond me. The Senator is someone I have had no personal dealings with, ever.” Nicholas followed this up with a post on his own site in which he says “I have not, nor have I ever seen or had contact with Senator Trent Lott. It’s as simple as that. It never happened.” So, yes, we’ve seen the item; no, we aren’t believing it without more evidence than one man’s say-so; and just because there’s some Schadenfreudeny truthiness to a story doesn’t mean it’s actually, you know, true.
