The food-stamp economy
On the last day of every month, shoppers at Walmart load their carts with food and household items and wait for the midnight hour. Is this the new normal in America? Full Article
Spitzer's call girl could parlay infamy into payday
Related Video
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The $1,000-an-hour prostitute reportedly hired by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer may soon make much more than that, turning her 15 minutes of infamy into a tidy sum of money.
Since 22-year-old Ashley Alexandra Dupre was identified by The New York Times late on Wednesday as the governor's paramour, the prostitute and aspiring singer's songs have become the most popular downloads on a music-sharing Web site and at least one magazine is prepared to pay her for a nude photo spread.
Proving the adage there's no such thing as bad publicity, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt told the Access Hollywood television program on Friday that he plans to offer Dupre $1 million to pose nude in his magazine.
Earlier this week, the woman told the Times she was worried about paying her rent this month after the escort service she worked for was shut down by federal officials.
The newspaper reported Spitzer was heard on a federal wiretap last month arranging a tryst with a prostitute called "Kristen," whom the paper identified as Dupre.
Spitzer resigned on Wednesday and apologized for his "private failings," but did not refer specifically to the report.
According to Dupre's MySpace page (www.myspace.com/ninavenetta), she left home at 17 and moved to New York, where she is trying to pursue a music career.
Her R&B- and pop-tinged songs "What We Want" and "Move Ya Body" are ranked as the two best-selling songs on the AimeStreet.com music sharing Web site.
A spokesman for Aime Street, which uses a demand-price model where users pay more for popular songs, would not confirm how many times Dupre's songs had been downloaded. But he said "Move ya Body," which was uploaded to the site around 2 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Thursday, rose to the highest download price (98 cents) faster than any other song in the site's history.
Dupre's page on the site has been viewed more than 300,000 times and artists get a 70 percent cut of sales. If 1 million copies were sold, as some media outlets have estimated, then she's already made more than $680,000 from her notoriety.
New York radio stations, including the top-rated Z100, have been playing her music on the airwaves. Her profile on the social networking Web site MySpace has had over 7 million page views.
Penthouse Magazine Group president and publisher Diane Silberstein has said the men's magazine would consider offering Dupre a nude cover shot.
On Friday, The New York Post ran five pages of revealing pictures of Dupre from a 2007 photo shoot purportedly to promote her music career.
