Michael Calderone over at the Politico broke the news today that D.C.’s original foul-mouthed political blog, Wonkette, is leaving the Gawker media empire. Managing editor Ken Layne will personally take the helm of the newly independent Wonkette, as he confirmed in a post on the site today.

There’s some pretty thinly veiled subtext in both the letter from Gawker publisher Nick Denton that Calderone posted, and in Layne’s announcement, that Layne and Denton disagree about the potential Wonkette has to sell advertising. We’ve heard Denton and company basically wanted to wash their hands of taking on political ads, which they found difficult to sell. Layne touts his site’s “six million page views in March, a million monthly unique visitors who are ‘somewhat male, more affluent [and] more educated’ who ‘read Gawker and subscribe to Vanity Fair'” as reasons why he thinks Denton is wrong. The proof, as they say, is now officially Layne’s pudding to produce.

Gawker is also selling their music blog, Idolator, to Buzznet, which recently acquired Idolator’s chief rival, Stereogum, and their travel site, Gridskipper, to Curbed, which is partially owned by Gawker Media.

Over at Fishbowl D.C., Patrick Gavin notes that everyone always complains that Wonkette isn’t as funny as it used to be, whether that golden era was during the tenure of early Ana Marie Cox, late Ana Maria Cox, Alex Pareene and David Lat, or the current crop of editors. We still check in with Wonkette every day. Do you?