NEW YORK CITY—After all these years, it's clear that Rupert Murdoch is not a Good Person; it shows in pretty much everything he touches, and his NYC flagship newspaper, the New York Post, is a daily example of what's wrong with him and his philosophy.
Case in point: Alisha Smith. We can't speak to Ms. Smith's entire tenure with the New York State Attorney's office, but we do know one thing, since it's been all over the news recently: Just as the enormity of the Big Recession was becoming known in 2008, Smith helped recover $5 billion from Bank of America for its part in a "broad-based securities fraud that involved selling mislabeled investment instruments on the eve of the global economic collapse of improperly rated toxic assets" (aka bundled bad mortgage securities). So there's a good chance she is one of the Good Guys.
But as everyone in the adult industry knows, sex sells—and one of the underbellies of that marketplace is the New York Post, which on September 17 ran a story about how, when her work day at the State Attorney's office is done, she changes her clothes and name to become Mistress Alisha Spark, one of NYC fetish society's more popular dominatrixes—a position that might have brought in some extra income, although no one seems to be sure about that—but The Post ran with the allegation anyway.
In fact, the entire Post article is clearly a hit piece. Check out these weasel-worded smears:
"Alisha Smith, 36, who dresses demurely as a buttoned-down prosecutor, turns up the heat when she becomes perky persecutor 'Alisha Spark,' a nom de dom she uses when she performs at S&M events for pay, according to a fetish source," The Post's Jamie Schram and Bob Fredericks wrote.
"They pay her to go to the events. She dominates people, restrains them and whips them," they reported the unidentified "fetish source" as having told them.
"Sources familiar with the issue say Smith’s punishment has less to do with her personal pleasure and more to do with the possibility that she profited from it," the piece continues. "It is common in the S&M community for dominatrixes to receive payment for appearances at fetish parties, where they unleash tawdry torments on eager submissives."
Note that nowhere in the article do Schram and Fredericks provide any actual evidence that Smith received any money from her domination activities, but the allegation was enough to send Smith's bosses into spasms of sexual overload, leading them to suspend her from her job on the possibility that she had earned over $1,000 from the activities, which would be against the rules.
(Before we leave the "hit piece" aspect of The Post's story, though, it's notable that Schram and Fredericks link Smith to another "well-known dominatrix, Jade Vixen" who, these sleazebags are quick to point out, had three "male associates [who] have met untimely deaths since 2008"—one in an attic in his Pennsylvania home which was "filled with paraphernalia, including rubber masks and clothes and cans of whipped cream"; another "believed to have died of self-suffocation" (aka autoerotic asphyxia); and an attorney boyfriend of Vixen's shot and killed by a former Vixen client. If you're wondering what any of that has to do with Smith herself—congrats; you've figured out that it's only in there to smear Smith.)
So this past Monday, Smith and her new attorney Gloria Allred announced Smith's resignation from her $78,825 per year job with the State Attorney's Office, saying, "All of the actions towards me [by the Attorney General] have been extremely disturbing because I have never accepted any money or payment from any outside source for anything while I have been employed by the New York Attorney General's Office.''
Enter The Post once again, with another hit piece.
"As if to show she has not a whit of shame about her extracurricular high-jinks," wrote The Post's Andrea Peyser, "Smith brought two photos of herself to the press conference in which she's dressed as her alter ego—in a low-cut pink spandex get-up for Valentine's Day, black spandex for Halloween... Even these pix are tame compared with the skin-tight, see-through dress and heart-shaped pasties in which Smith was photographed at a recent fetish event."
And once again, The Post falls back on its unnamed "fetish source" to repeat the claim that, "They pay her to go to the [S&M] events. She dominates people, restrains them and whips them," after which Peyser opines, "Lordy. Domination, for free anyway, seems to be something for which our former prosecutor can be proud."
"Three years ago, Smith was lauded by then-AG Andrew Cuomo for helping obtain a $5 billion settlement from Bank of America and others in a securities-fraud case," Peyser's piece concludes. "Now she's unemployed. Considering the bruising the kinky one inflicted on the reputation of the state, it's for the best."
Well, it's not as if The Post isn't known for dealing out more than its fair share of sanctimonious horseshit... and of course, it had nothing similar to say when it was revealed that Post owner Murdoch was well aware that his reporters at UK's News of the World were illegally tapping celebrities' and others' cellphones and printing the information found there. (Murdoch's company, News International, just paid $3.2 million to the family of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler for having tapped into and erased the child's cellphone messages, leading police to think she might still be alive months after she had been killed.)
Anyway, it's unclear where Smith will go from here. She may sue the Attorney General's office for wrongful suspension and harassment leading to her self-termination. She'll almost certainly write a book, and her story is certainly perfect fodder for a screenplay.
Hmmm... Hey, VividCeleb, sounds like this might be right up your alley!
H/t to The Legal Satyricon
Pictured: Alisha Smith
