For a good time. . . .

A former New Orleans madam went to the press to out Louisiana's junior U.S. senator as an ex-client, because the "bitch" who allegedly supplied him with Washington call girls dared to "throw this number out there without a face, and without telling people what good he's done."

Ladies and gentlemen, now that's original.

Unfortunately, that Jeanette Maier first met David Vitter in the mid-1990s at a fishing rodeo where she and her high-priced whores were hired as "entertainment" for local politicians is not particularly novel in the Gret Stet.

The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, naturally, has the dispiriting details:

After the initial meeting, Maier said she saw Vitter at the bordello and knew him as someone who patronized her call girls. She denied having a personal relationship with him and said he had stopped visiting the establishment by the time it was raided by federal agents in 2001.

"Sometimes we'd cross paths," Maier said of their encounters at the house.

"He was not a big regular client that he's so clear in my mind that I can remember every time he walked in the door."

Vitter, a Republican, did not respond to numerous attempts to contact him for comment.

Maier's attorney, Vinny Mosca, cast doubt on her recollections Tuesday. He said investigators seized a list of client names, nicknames and phone numbers from the brothel, but those documents never implicated Vitter.

"Through all my association representing Jeanette in the case, his name never came up," Mosca said. "It's not on the list. He was not caught on the wiretaps. That doesn't mean he wasn't there, but in all this time I never knew him to be. To my knowledge he didn't go to the brothel."

Vitter this week became the first elected leader outed as a patron of the Washington escort service run by Deborah Palfrey, the so-called "D.C. Madam." He is the first elected official connected to Maier, known locally as the "Canal Street Madam." The only other clients named, a pair of Slidell businessmen, were charged for hiring prostitutes for a private cruise.

The senator apologized Monday night for a "very serious sin in my past" in connection with the Palfrey case, but he made no public appearances Tuesday.

Maier, 48, spoke openly about Vitter's patronage of the New Orleans brothel in an interview Tuesday, as she sat atop the king-sized bed in her Gretna home. The bedroom was decorated in a Southwestern motif, and a rosary hung from the headboard. She puffed on a cigarette as she talked.

She said she decided to name Vitter as a client because she was angry that the Washington allegations made him look like a one-dimensional adulterer, when she sees him as a "good man" who has helped the New Orleans area recover from Hurricane Katrina.

"All I wanted to get across when I saw the paper this morning is this bitch -- she calls herself a madam -- she's gonna throw this number out without a face, and without telling people what good he's done," Maier said, adding that the allegations would "just piss off his wife and create all this havoc in his life."

I COULD BE ALL WET, but isn't it customary for a "good man" not to screw around on his wife? And isn't it standard operating procedure for a "good man" not to lie through his teeth when somebody spills the beans about his philandering when he's running for Congress on a "family values" platform?

From The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:

Former Republican Gov. David Treen, who announced Tuesday that he’s considering another gubernatorial bid, accepted Vitter’s contrition.

“I don’t wish trouble on anybody,” said Treen, who lost to Vitter in a bid for the U.S. House seat in 1999. “I’m not going to condemn him, he has apologized and said he asked for forgiveness, and I take him at his word.”

(snip)

Louisiana Republican State Central Committee member Vincent Bruno on Tuesday called for Vitter’s resignation. Bruno was working on Treen’s 1998 campaign when the story came out about a Louisiana prostitute, who contacted the campaign, Bruno said.

At the time, a Vitter spokeswoman chalked the story up to negative campaigning. Vitter, in a radio interview at the time, called the allegations “absolutely and completely untrue.”

Vitter “was basically dishonest with the voters in the congressional district,” Bruno said. “He was running on family values and it was a bunch of hooey. He’s a phony and it caught up with him.”

OH, YEAH . . . AND THERE'S THIS. We must remember to give Salon.com props for calling it -- big time -- when Vitter was running for U.S. Senate in 2004:

As Vitter geared up in 2002 to run for governor, his bitter race against Treen came back to haunt him. A Treen supporter, local Republican Party official Vincent Bruno, blurted out on a radio show that he believed Vitter had once had an extramarital affair.

The Louisiana Weekly newspaper followed up. Bruno told the paper that the young woman had contacted the Treen campaign in 1999 because she was upset that Vitter was portraying himself as a family-values conservative and trotting out his wife and children for campaign photo ops. Bruno, who declined to comment for this story, and John Treen interviewed the woman, who said she had worked under the name "Leah."

But after nearly a year of regular paid assignations with Vitter, the lawmaker asked her to divulge her real name, according to Treen, citing the account he said she gave him. Her name was Wendy Cortez, Treen said. She said Vitter's response was electric. "He said, 'Oh, my God! I can't see you anymore," John Treen told me, citing the woman's account to him and noting that Vitter's wife is also named Wendy. And Wendy Vitter does not appear to be the indulgent type.

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Vitter, Bruno and others interviewed the alleged prostitute several times in 1999. She also met with a respected local television reporter, Richard Angelico, the Louisiana Weekly said. But Angelico declined to run with the story after she would not agree to go on camera, the paper said. Vitter denied the allegations. But shortly before the Louisiana Weekly was set to publish its story, he dropped out of the governor's race, saying he needed to deal with marital problems. "Our [marriage] counseling sessions have ... led us to the rather obvious conclusion that it's not time to run for governor," Vitter said at the time.

Chris Tidmore, the author of the Louisiana Weekly story, said he interviewed the alleged prostitute by telephone and reviewed the notes of her sessions with Treen and Bruno before publishing his story. He said she had moved away from New Orleans and is now living under an assumed name. Salon could not locate her.

Amid Vitter's denials and the reluctance of his accuser to go public, no newspapers in Louisiana reported on the allegations. And, when Sen. Breaux announced his retirement last December, Vitter jumped into the race to succeed the conservative Democrat. The far-right and confrontational Vitter was the opposite of Breaux, who had been a consensus-builder in Washington with close relationships with Republicans.

GOOD LORD. You have to start wondering whether Louisiana's only chance might involve France buying it back from les Americains.

I don't think Congress is going to be in a giving mood as the New Orleans area continues to struggle in its recovery from Katrina. But fed-up members may be in a mood to sell.