We're all whores on the hamster wheel of life. And I mean that in the most respectful sense.

The w-word has taken a ride through the cultural wash/dry/spin cycles after someone in Jerry Brown's camp used it to describe rival Meg Whitman's alleged deal for police union support in a recorded conversation that was made public.

People reacted as if we were still living in Puritan Massachusetts.

It was "hate speech," said the National Organization for Women's president. "Women know exactly what's going on here," Whitman scolded at last week's gubernatorial debate.

Yes, we all do: politics. The same as when Whitman's campaign manager, former Gov. Pete Wilson, described public employee unions as "whores." Whitman's claim that this was somehow "different" and Brown's petulant apology were false modesties in the extreme.

Even Gavin Newsom, of all people, couldn't resist the party. "Up until the whore comment, things were going great" for Brown, the mayor told Politico, sitting at the Balboa Cafe in the middle of San Francisco's most notorious fleshpot bar triangle.

"Whore," both the concept and the word, are pretty familiar in the political arena. (At least with the oldest profession you know where the money is coming from.)

" 'Whore' could mean a million things," Marlene "Brandy" Baldwin, San Francisco's last grand madam, told me a few days ago. "Like, if you're married to your business and neglect your family, you're a whore."

Giving up something you'd rather not surrender in order to get something you want - this is also how our larger society works. No one is infallible in that way.

This is truer nowhere more than in politics, where principled hardball always gives way to horse trading. But that doesn't mean politicians should smear each other and, frankly, offend hookers by comparison.

"A whore isn't such a bad thing," says Baldwin, who ought to know. "A girl putting herself through college by having a little relaxed time with some CEO who can give her more information than she'd get anywhere else is a good thing for her."

Still, some women were offended by the Brown campaign saying, basically: What's a rotten girl like Meg doing in a nice place like this? Others were just confused.

NOW endorsed Brown after the "whore" tape came out, then chastised him, saying anyone who uses the word should be fired. Finally, NOW's national president, despite her earlier "hate speech" comment, told Talking Points Memo that "Meg Whitman could be described as a 'political whore.' "

If a pillar organization of female empowerment can't figure out how it feels about whether that's an appropriate word to attach to women, how am I supposed to?

"Imagine these people calling each other whores," says Baldwin, who entertained plenty of businessmen, politicians and other assorted fat cats over several decades. "And when the whole state is going under." Exactly.

Canada, where people just seem to have an easier time in general with social services like health care, is now proposing to put escort-service employees in the federal government's job bank. Why can't we be that enlightened?

Canadian dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who successfully sued to get that country's prostitution laws tossed out, insists that one "unsavory occupation I would never apply for (is) politician."