Technology and the Political Sex Scandal
By KATE ZERNIKE
NYT
In 1791, while serving as secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton began an affair with Maria Reynolds, blackmailing her husband for several years to allow it to continue. When a muckraker exposed the affair and the cover-up, Hamilton turned to the communications technology of the day to defend himself, publishing a pamphlet in which he argued that he had never abused any public resources.
More than two centuries and many scandals later, Twitter has replaced pamphlets as the medium of the moment – and become the new means for politicians to engage in sexual misconduct. Now, it is Representative Anthony D. Weiner, under pressure to resign after he first denied and then admitted “sexting” lewd messages and pictures of himself in his underwear via Twitter to college students and a porn star, among other young women. (The New York Democrat has defended himself — plus ça change — by arguing that he did not abuse public resources in his misdeeds.)
Certainly there are things particular to Washington that make sex scandals as predictable as swampy weather in July — and to politicians in general, especially lately, as the recent scandals involving Arnold Schwarzenegger (child out of wedlock) and John Edwards (child out of wedlock, and last week indicted for allegedly lying over his affair) have served to remind.
But technology keeps adding new and in many ways more seductive temptations to the mix. And this is happening at a time when, many argue, a more prying press corps, stricter public standards and greater partisanship have combined to make Washington oddly more puritanical than it once was. Hamilton, after all, had confessed his affair to investigators in Congress several years before he was actually exposed for it. But 15 years after the House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton, revealing lurid details of his sexual dalliances with a White House intern, most politicians now know that they can’t count on the press or their peers to stay silent about straying.
(More here.)
NYT
In 1791, while serving as secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton began an affair with Maria Reynolds, blackmailing her husband for several years to allow it to continue. When a muckraker exposed the affair and the cover-up, Hamilton turned to the communications technology of the day to defend himself, publishing a pamphlet in which he argued that he had never abused any public resources.
More than two centuries and many scandals later, Twitter has replaced pamphlets as the medium of the moment – and become the new means for politicians to engage in sexual misconduct. Now, it is Representative Anthony D. Weiner, under pressure to resign after he first denied and then admitted “sexting” lewd messages and pictures of himself in his underwear via Twitter to college students and a porn star, among other young women. (The New York Democrat has defended himself — plus ça change — by arguing that he did not abuse public resources in his misdeeds.)
Certainly there are things particular to Washington that make sex scandals as predictable as swampy weather in July — and to politicians in general, especially lately, as the recent scandals involving Arnold Schwarzenegger (child out of wedlock) and John Edwards (child out of wedlock, and last week indicted for allegedly lying over his affair) have served to remind.
But technology keeps adding new and in many ways more seductive temptations to the mix. And this is happening at a time when, many argue, a more prying press corps, stricter public standards and greater partisanship have combined to make Washington oddly more puritanical than it once was. Hamilton, after all, had confessed his affair to investigators in Congress several years before he was actually exposed for it. But 15 years after the House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton, revealing lurid details of his sexual dalliances with a White House intern, most politicians now know that they can’t count on the press or their peers to stay silent about straying.
(More here.)
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