
In the bad old days, the exclusive definition of "whore" was someone who offered sex for money. Now they are "sex-workers." In Amsterdam, Holland, there's a statue celebrating them [photo, left]. But the word "whore," still has bite and can be applied to anyone who counterfeits human feelings and manipulates them for personal gain.
Trust is a feeling, and betrayers of trust are whores, making Bernard Madoff one of the biggest in history. At the other end of this scale is an ancient "babushka" sitting on a folding chair on the steps of a Russian Orthodox church in Moscow. Her eyes are closed, she crosses herself every twenty seconds, rocking in pious bliss, the embodiment of sanctity. Tourists snap pictures and drop rubles into her lap.
And who has not received an email of this sort?
"Dearest One,
Sweet Jesus spoke to me about you. My husband, former Surgeon General of Gabon, deposited sixteen million, five hundred thousand dollars in USB Bank, London, to be murdered in a coup by Golomunda Gono. Sweet Jesus told me you will help me reclaim these funds, for which I gladly offer a commission of twenty-five percent.... Yours in Christ."
A creepy scam with phony sanctity that thrusts it into whoredom.
Politics is whore Heaven. Emotion and trust provide rich soil for pandering and deception. Combat-dodger and war monger, George W. Bush, running for president, announced that Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher." Newt Gngrich became a Catholic, wishing himself clean of serial philandering while trying to impeach President Clinton for having a quickie with Monica Lewinsky. John Boehnor invokes religious freedom to rail against a law guaranteeing contraception aid to poor women. Mitt Romney wears faded jeans pretending to be middle-class. (Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and loopy Michele Bachmann believe what they say, making them ideologues, but not whores.)
During the American occupation of Italy after WW II, Rome was full of young women who'd lost husbands, fathers, brothers. Desperate to feed their families, they were not deemed whores, even by the crude standards of American soldiers, and some ended up as wives. American soldiers advised each other on how to spot the whores.
"The whores wear crosses, and the bigger the cross, the bigger the whore."
Still has a grain of truth.