Sunday, June 12, 2011

Technology and the Political Sex Scandal

Kate Zernike spins away the Weiner sex scandal, blaming technology, "Naked Hubris":
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.
Yep, just another summer sex scandal in D.C. Move along. You wouldn't even be looking if bloggers hadn't intruded on the privileged ways and means of the official D.C. Democratic establishment.

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