Are you or have you ever been a Hillary Clinton supporter?
If you are, beware. Mwaaahhaaaa. The sexist screed merchants are going to get you. We’ll “discover” who you are and divulge everything about you! Regardless that it’s already been known for years. It’s the new McCarthyism. We’ll smear your name and reputation in hit posts, too, with progressive diarists copying the crap to spread it around. It’s enough to make you want to take a big nap.
Hey, but that’s what happens when a woman decides to back Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Obama fans go berserk, finding it fun to ramble on about my radio show, which I launched via a buy-time effort in Las Vegas, or my years writing about relationship, marriage, as well as the sex industry, the latter wild ride I chronicled in a book I proudly self-published, because no one would buy it as it didn’t contain any sex (I was brought in to organize the biz side of the site). Considering my picture was plastered inside USA Today at the time, standing with the creator of the once all-female site (one male), it’s not like I’ve ever tried to hide anything I’ve done professionally. Oh, and smearing me through scurrilous lies by saying I wasn’t disclosing for whom I was writing is another whopper. Obviously, a lot of people have way too much time on their hands.
Funny how all of this only became interesting 10 years after the fact, when male Obama supporters got upset because a feminist female writer was telling the truth and raising hell in the process. But it’s time to address it after the latest screeds, which are being copied in diaries across political new media sites.
The question at the top of this essay was posed by one commenter over at Democratic Undergound, amidst the vile that has become the “progressive” blogosphere during Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy. That’s the foundation on which some people have decided to come at me, on the premise of revealing something that has been in the public arena for years. That these people didn’t know these simple facts proves that clicking on “about” on my nav bar is just too much for some. That they stole copyrighted photos may come back to haunt them, however, because if the photographers find out their agents will indeed pounce. But that’s not my problem. What was the final tipping point that inspired this overblown blogging?
If I weren’t effective they wouldn’t be targeting me. By the way, thanks for it. Being a Clinton supporter has certainly brought attention and vilification, but it’s added more entries to my hate mail page. I wear the insults as a badge of honor.
I self-published a book. I did radio interviews across the country when the book was published. From my “about” page at the time of this essay, which was available if the amateur assassins had done their homework (that gets regularly updated):
Additionally, Taylor’s investigative work into the sex trade business, prostitution and phone sex spanned over 10 years and included interviews with real desperate housewives, single, married and divorced women, religious of all stripes, and lots and lots and lots of men (well over 1,500) and women (when she was relationship consultant and columnist for alt newsweekly LA Weekly). Taylor’s experience, research and expertise was excerpted in Net.SeXXX: Investigating Sex, Pornography, and the Internet by Dennis Waskul, a Utah professor who calls Taylor’s book “a great gutsy story about something that is normally written about from a distance.”
Working as managing editor to the first soft-core porn site to make significant money on the web, which consisted almost entirely of model’s pictures and couples’ stills when I was there, run by women, was a wild ride, believe me. (The place I worked was featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, because of the financial angle, because she beat “Playboy” online, inside US News & World Report, and beyond.) I went to the site to establish an “editor’s desk,” as it was named, to write about politics, endeavoring to be the first female to do on the web what Hugh Hefner had done in “Playboy.”
See, I had good political instincts and was forced to create my own spot if I wanted to take them out for a spin. So that’s exactly what I did.
I was among the first female political editors at the dawn of the internet boom. That it was on a women-run soft-core site just meant I’d have a huge audience. Hefner proved people care about politics and issues, so I hoped to take a page from him (especially since Playboy wasn’t cooking online yet).
I took on Ken Starr when he arrested Susan McDougal, ranting about the unfairness while getting emails from all over the U.S. (and beyond) on the subject. It was a gas. But it ended very badly, as I thought it would. One of the strippers submitted her “column” for one of the site’s news magazines, which was my job to edit and produce, that created a fantasy to go along with pictures of her disrobing at an elementary school playground in broad daylight. I refused to publish the column or the pictures, which caused a shitstorm with my boss overruling me. So, I walked out.
What made a former Miss Missouri to the Miss American Pageant (and Miss Friendship to the Miss Teenage America pageant) want to investigate the world of relationships, dating and sex in the first place, let alone becoming a political editor through carving a place on a female-run soft-core pictorial site? Well, the politics was in my blood because of my brother and because I grew up when the modern feminist movement exploded.
The adult industry has always been adventurist where new technology is concerned, take the VCR, and so when I saw an opportunity to exploit this chance to create my own political editor spot I jumped at it.
The job was a continuation of the curiosity into relationships, marriage and sex, which began at the LA Weekly, where I was a very successful “relationship consultant” and lovingly called personal ad goddess. I operated out of the classified department and also had an “advice” column where I wrote about politics whenever I could, though my primary writing job was to sell the personals and give “advice” about how to hook a mate. After a while the LA Weekly political shop decided they didn’t like what I was writing, maybe because they didn’t control it, so they demanded my columns be slapped with an “Advertisement” label. I couldn’t have cared less, because I loved writing and was just thrilled to have found a way in to do it.
I’ve done a lot of things in my life, but politics has always been my passion. I write about some of it here. It was my big brother and sister who really got me started, when I spied them crying over John F. Kennedy’s death. That’s where my one-woman show began, which I performed in L.A. back in 2005.
People in politics start from different places. I started out as a performer, making it to Broadway, to L.A. to do a little acting, always playing activist when I could, loving every single minute of my life. I don’t regret a move, a day, a job or one minute. I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished.
Don’t like my writing. Don’t read it.
Don’t agree with me. Fine.
Don’t think I’m sufficiently accredited. Life’s been the best teacher I know.
The expertise I’ve gained has come the hard way, because I’ve never had the money to do it any other way. I’ve lost everything more than once and would stack my judgment against anyone else. Foreign policy research also is solid, though I consider myself a student of the experts.
I was born a Missourian.
Harry Truman became president after starting as a haberdasher. Simple beginnings can be the stuff of great things for hard working people. That’s my story and it’s nowhere near the end.
So, if you have any questions about where I come from or what you’ve heard on the web serve it up. I’m an open book for anyone who’s fair and honest, which is in short supply in this primary season.
But if I’m the target, I must be doing something right.
This essay has been edited, links corrected and added, graphic replaced.
