The Stripper and The Mayor: America's Non-Story of the Day

The internet was abuzz with “news” Thursday that U.S. Senate-hopeful Cory Booker had engaged in an innocuous Twitter friendship with a Portland-based stripper.

Buzzfeed broke the story Wednesday of the innocent-enough messages between the media-savvy Newark mayor and selfie-obsessed stripper, Lynsie Lee.

(Word to the wise: The Buzzfeed story and Lee's Twitter page—both pages pretty much entirely—are extraordinarily not safe for work. You've been warned.)

Under the headline "NSFW: Cory Booker’s Interesting DMs With A Portland Stripper," Buzzfeed's Ben Johnson compiles a deep stack of NSFW photos before getting to the DM in question:

• Booker: “And the East Coast loves you and b the East Coast I, mean me.”
• Lee: “Well now I’m blushing :)”
• Booker: “It’s only fair.”

In the age of Anthony Weiner, that's really a non-story.

Lee's response to Buzzfeed is conspicuously buried below all the eye-catching NSFW stuff:

"He was just flattering me. It began with me sending an actual tweet saying that the west coast loved him, especially me. So he replied with that just to flatter me :)"

While Booker himself has yet to respond to the brouhaha directly, a spokesperson for his campaign did comment.

“I think it’s pretty well known that the mayor talks with people from all walks of life on Twitter,” spokesperson Kevin Griffis told Buzzfeed. “Really, the most shocking part of this story was learning there is a vegan strip club in Portland.”