Assuming that you believe, as you have previously stated, that there should be a legal place in society for sex workers, and sex work; and assuming that you believe in the right of women to contract their labor, and to dictate their contractual terms for themselves; does it really matter whether or not Letterman paid Birkitt's way through law school, or granted her any other material favors that he didn't offer to anyone else? Assuming it is in fact the case - not that I actually believe that it is - that Letterman and Birkitt did, in fact, have an explicit exchange of sexual favors for material perks, so long as Letterman does in fact continue to honor his contracts with all of his other employees by paying them what he has agreed to pay in exchange for the services they have agreed to provide, is this then not just a case of a woman further contracting her labor and/or services, and dictating her own contractual terms, if not formally than perhaps informally?

Just something I have been pondering. Perhaps the question is a little half baked, but I do think it is worth considering, and wrestling with, in this context.

For myself, I wouldn't mind seeing the exchange you describe as legitimate -- but I must say there are expectations of equal treatment by other employees.

Does not "equal treatment" consist of equal pay for equal work?

Assuming that it is the case - and once again, I don't actually believe that it is - that Letterman and Birkitt did, in fact, have an explicit exchange of sexual favors for material perks, than would it not be true that Birkitt did, in fact, offer Letterman services above and beyond, and in fact even outside of the realm, of what other Late Show staffers had agreed to offer him? If so, once again assuming that Letterman honors his contracts with the rest of his employees with regard to what he has promised to pay them for their labor and services, and assuming that there isn't any undue disparity between employees in pay for the specific, show-production related services that they have all agreed to provide, is it not the case that Birkitt's compensation for said extracarricular services, whatever that may be, is nobody's business but Letterman and Birkitt's?

Are these not the logical implications that the position in favor of decriminalizing sex work, which I and you and Tracy have all espoused, has with regard to workplace sexual relations?

...there are built-in incentives to generate profits by charging as much as the market will bear, and to avoid offering care to anyone who, you know, might actually be sick.

How are these incentives not present in Obamacare? His plan is still dominated by private health "insurance" companies. Neither his plan nor the status quo will contain costs. All his plan will do is prop up the current, unsustainable, third-party-pays system by forcing those who can't afford it, or who simply choose to opt out, to pay for it.

The only people who can truly objectively valuate healthcare, and thus, contain costs and create incentives for competitive discounting, are individual consumers - precisely the people that are being insulated from that responsibility under both the status quo and Obamacare. Until you have reform on this level, you aren't going to fix the cost problem. And until you fix the cost problem, you aren't going to fix the access problem.

Because it is so pervasive. My default setting is: Objects in magazine are other than they appear.

The more important question, I would posit, is why the hell do you care. Its just a picture in a magazine. That's all. Nothing more.

....I will concur with The Jim in giving kudos to Tracy for acknowledging and owning up to the mistake she made in the first place.

“What went on was not consensual. There’s cooperation. There’s participation. But consent implies sound mind and body and that wasn’t the case.”

Although I hold MacKenzie Phillips to be the ultimate authority on her own experience of her father, and don't think that anyone should be second guessing her on this, I must say that I'm not sure I agree with her on the above statement.

Consent, in a sexual context, implies conscious desire, and it is in fact possible for someone who is not of sound mind or body to nonetheless consciously desire sex with someone. The fact that such conscious desires are at times ephemeral, and that acting on them could be ill advised, and a prelude to regret, doesn't make the moment of desire any less real, or the sex any less consensual. Nor does the fact that unscrupulous people occasionally take advantage of such moments make the moments themselves less legitimate.

If Phillips is saying - and it sounds a lot like she could be - that she never really consciously desired sex with her father, and that he took advantage of other feelings she had for him in order to pressure her into a sexual relationship that she never truly wanted, then one can say that what happened between him and her was not consensual. However, the above statement she made doesn't seem to acknowledge the sometimes fuzzy line between regret and victimhood, and in cases like this, I think its especially important to acknowledge and make clear that distinction.