SEX SCANDALS II

My old pal Shane chimes in on my Weinergate post from a couple of days ago:

I agree with your commenter from this standpoint: I'm aggravated with Weiner in the same way I was aggravated with Clinton for being careless. you have to be aware of how the game is played and keep yourself above it, or you won't amount to shit. I don't remember anything useful coming out of Clinton post hummers, and I really dug Weiner and his energy and gravitas, and now he has nothing left of his political career except to be a joke, and it's because he should have had more sense. for me it's not about morals or any of that nonsense, it's you have to be smart enough to keep your job, and keep it effective in a playing field that will stone you right out of town at the first crack of a public fart. damn shame.

And here's a little background for my response. From AlterNet:

The Breitbart Effect

Weinergate, as it has been dubbed by pundits across the political spectrum, must be the lamest (non-)sex scandal to come down the pike in years, yet it seems to be getting as much play as Watergate.

That such trivia as an adult sending relatively benign photos and “racy messages” to other consenting adults should be of interest to anyone besides the Representative's wife – much less the making of a week-long “news” story – is obviously a sad reflection of our shallow, sex-and-celebrity-obsessed culture.

But it's also a testament to what you might call the "Breitbart effect" – the ability of conservative activists to push a news story to the forefront of the national discussion, and hold it there for an extended run. Breitbart, like the Drudge Report and a host of other dedicated right-wing provocateurs, has learned the value of gaming the refs – of hounding the mainstream media with angry and unsubstantiated accusations of “liberal bias” for so long the latter tend to overcompensate and give prominence to whatever story the activists are interested in amplifying.

More here.

Actually, I would add to the "working the refs" dynamic a pre-existing media lust for sex and sensationalism, that is, a non-ideological need for reporters and news organizations to swim in the sewers because it is a cheap and easy way to bring in readers and viewers to look at ads, which is how the news makes its money--there is also a bonus with scandal mongering, unlike real reporting, in that it is highly unlikely to offend powerful interests which might heavily fuck with news organizations. But "working the refs," a love for tits and ass, or explosions and bitch-slapping, whatever causes the self-sustaining political and media sex scandal maelstrom effect, is, at the moment, beside the point. What deeply concerns me is that the maelstrom effect exists at all.

I am very sympathetic to my buddy Shane's anger with Weiner. Apart from the New York representative's blind support for the vicious policies of Israel toward the Palestinians, Weiner is one of the few guys in Congress who actively speaks out against entrenched corporate interests, and unlike, say, Bernie Sanders, who as a socialist has even better rhetoric, Weiner is actually fun and interesting to watch. And he has seemingly thrown it all away. Down goes one of the better defenders of the faith, and he could have avoided it by keeping the little Weiner in his pants.

But it kind of strikes me as terribly misguided to blast someone you support for breaking non-existent, but nonetheless devastatingly powerful, rules that are extraordinarily unfair. And these unwritten rules, which are something to the effect of "public figures cannot be sexual beings," aren't simply unfair; rather, they are repressive to the entire nation. That is, there is absolutely nothing wrong at all, at all, with sending dick pictures to consenting adults over the internet. Millions of Americans do this every day. Millions of Republicans do this every day. And many of those Republicans serve in Congress and are currently demanding that Weiner resign his office for...well, I'm not sure why they think he needs to resign. It's just like "Sex! Bad! Sex bad! Burn the witch!"

Yes, Weiner dicked himself, in a big way. But we have a choice here: we can condemn him for breaking these rules that exist solely for the purpose of scoring political points, or we can condemn the entire unhealthy, anti-sex, anti-democracy dynamic that has everybody in a Scarlett Letter style Puritanical and hypocritical tizzy right now. I mean, what's worse, breaking these fucked up rules, or the fucked up rules themselves?

Further, when, if ever, are conscientious Americans going to put a stop to it all? It seems to me that the best time to call bullshit on this kind outrage is when it is blasting out of TV sets and taking up miles of column space in newspapers. Indeed, finding one's own personal reasons to join the mob - that is, making it not about the sex, but about the realpolitik - makes no difference in the grand scheme: instead, it just makes the mass of torch and pitchfork waving citizens appear to be much larger than it actually is. That is, the DC assholes, politicians and pundits alike, don't care if liberals who are angry with Weiner have their own reasons for it. To them, the more the merrier. That anybody is angry with Weiner at all, for whatever reasons, simply serves as justification for their own sick sense of self-righteousness.

In short, registering anger with Weiner for not being smart enough to keep his job does nothing but feed the fire, making things even worse for everybody in the long run.

I know who the enemy is, and it's not Weiner. Rather, it's this amazingly disgusting practice of castigating political enemies for their perfectly normal sexual behavior in order to advance a repressive political agenda that has nothing at all to do with a Congressman's sex organs, and everything to do with throwing the poor and elderly out in the street to fend for themselves. I won't have anything to do with it.

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