Used to be, the press couldn't talk enough about sex

But even now, as Hookergate may just have taken its first major victim, the AP is swallowing and dutifully disgorging the administration's spin: Staff shake-up.

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, nudged from the helm of a spy agency still reeling from intelligence failures before America's worst terrorist attack and faulty information that formed the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq.

The decision was the latest in a series of moves by President Bush to shake up his team and reinvigorate his second term. A successor to Goss could come as early as Monday, a senior administration official said.

Making the announcement from the Oval Office, Bush said Goss' tenure had been one of transition.

"He has led ably," Bush said, Goss at his side. "He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives."*

A five-year plan someone else -- effective immediately -- will have to execute.

Right.

Hookergate's got all the elements for a damn fine media frenzy...disgraced congressmen, the CIA, lavish parties, the Watergate hotel, hookers for gawd's sake...but all we get from the EMESSEM...

chirp, chirp

...nothing?

In fact, they pretty much have to have their respective noses rubbed in the mess to get them to pay attention.

Does it just not fit the media's world mental picture? Republicans, sex? Pah! Just can't be. In the beltway reporter's mental image, though, Republicans would gladly fuck over a caribou grazing in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, but prostitutes? No waaaaay. It's enough to make a reporter's head explode.

Because I just don't get it. This story could really sell a lot of bird cage liner, but the press is more interested in Patrick Kennedy, hallucinating during a bad Ambien trip?

* "Analysts whose analysis this administration will ignore, and operatives we'll expose for petty, partisan reasons," the president did not say.