The spotlight has now turned on Ashley Dupre, the girl known as Kristen, who figured so prominently as the mystery call girl in the downfall of the governor Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer has fallen from grace, from his lofty heights. But it may well be the Ashley Dupre is just starting to be a rising star though in infamous circumstances.

Shocking though it may be, a man in high position taken down by his own weakness and foibles is sad and tragic news, but history is strewn with such incidents.

Attention is now on the girl with whom Spitzer met in the Mayflower Hotel on February 13. She is identified as Ashley Dupre, 22 years old. Her original name was Ashley Youmans, which was legally changed to Ashley Rae Maika DiPietro in 2006, taking up her step-father’s surname. But now she is calling herself Ashley Alexandra Dupre or simply Ashley Dupre. That is the name she is known by on her MySpace page.

Curiosity is clearly high as to how such a girl ended up as call girl in the high-powered prostitution ring the Emperors Club VIP which serviced rich and high-society clients such as Spitzer. I think it’s not just a matter of prurient interest, but people are naturally drawn to the story of the “small guy”, in this case the small gal, who tangled with the big and powerful.

It turns out that she comes from a broken home, which she left at 17, as she says on MySpace, and she has used drugs and been broken and homeless. Music is her first love, and she started working as a singer when her musician boyfriend discovered her singing Aretha Franklin’s Respect in the shower. She moved to Manhatten in 2004.

Obviously, her music career has not quite taken off, and she needed to do other things to get by financially. At 22, she is responsible for her own actions, and she is not a victim, and she has not claimed to be one, though, herself shaken by the turn of events, she says she does not want to be thought of as a monster.

It seems, while people may not condone her particular acts and choices, that she is a symbol of the tragedy of young people in America. It’s almost unthinkable to those outside the US to find that in the richest and most powerful country in the world, a young girl like Ashley could so easily and without any real sense of compunction let herself into such a sordid career.

Yet, who knows, in this world of upside-down values, this may be what will shoot her to fame and fortune. Magazines like Hustler and Penthouse are already trying to offer her assignments.

BWE panelists Paul F. Tompkins and Jessica St. Clair act out Governor Spitzer’s resignation speech
…the way it should’ve been