The XX Factor: What women really think.

Richard Blumenthal Discovers Erotic Services

The last time I had the misfortune of noticing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, he was leading an attack on virtual beer pong. Now, in the wake of the (surprisingly well-kempt!) "Craigslist Killer," he has apparently turned his prosecutorial gaze toward Craigslist's "erotic services" section. Tracy Quan, writing in the Daily Beast, thinks Blumenthal is exploiting the public's ignorance about the Internet for a few minutes of airtime:

Craigslist is no more to blame for a homicidal attack on a working woman than is the Marriott hotel where Julissa Brisman was killed, or the BlackBerry her accused killer probably would have used to establish contact with her. Questions arise about whether Markoff's alleged violence is linked to a gambling problem—he was arrested while en route to Foxwoods in Connecticut—but it would be impolitic and irrational to call him "the Foxwoods Killer." Why are we applying a different logic to Craigslist?

The dubbing of Philip Markoff as the "Craigslist Killer" seems as unfair to Craigslist as the term "Swine Flu" is to Iowa pig farmers. Sites like Craigslist may or may not make the practice of sex work more dangerous, but the Internet almost certainly helps law enforcement track violent Johns. Investigators got to Markoff through his IP address, and prosecutors are using Craigslist to try to locate other potential victims. At any rate, Craig himself says the "erotic services" section is staying put, P.R. disaster be damned.

If Looks Could Kill

In Dave Cullen’s recent Slate piece about what we learned from Columbine, he writes that “the first lesson is really one that we have unlearned, which is that there actually isn't a distinct psychological profile of the school killer.” Nor, I imagine, is there one for a Craigslist killer, but that hasn’t stopped the CNN morning news anchors from expressing repeated shock that the man who was charged on Monday with the murder of a woman he met on Craigslist is a 22-year-old medical student. An article in the Boston Globe today has the headline “Charges conflict with portrait of clean-cut student,” and the attached photo gallery highlights the issue. It’s not just that he’s a med student. It’s that he’s an attractive, broad-shouldered med student with a big white smile and a well-pressed polo shirt. Just as last week’s Susan Boyle clip drew attention to just how strongly we (especially those girls in the audience!) expect our pop stars to be hyper-groomed, thin and beautiful, the circulating photos of Philip Markoff remind us that, as Cullen mentioned, we still expect killers to be greasy-haired, scrawny, and perhaps trench coat-clad. Well, ugly chicks can sing. And preppy hunks can kill.