Politically Erect

Or why Bill Clinton and Anthony Weiner should meet for a beer if they haven’t yet.

It’s all about politics – what you eat, what you wear, what you drive, where you shop, where you party. We’ve let politics get in our lives in every way possible. Yet, there is one area where politics first came in and never left – our bedrooms. Sex and politics are as strongly connected as fashion and politics. On the one side they’re both about recycling ancient ideas and making them fresh and inspiring, and on the other, they’re both about dating (campaigning), foreplay (televised debates), and culmination (election win). Surveys have shown that sexual appeal is one of the most important given reasons for electing a candidate by voters – in other words, cute politicians get elected and less appealing ones get dumped. Look what happened to Richard Nixon – nobody wanted to fuck him, so he fucked everyone. Clearly, a discussion about politics ultimately becomes a discussion about sex and a discussion about sex becomes ultimately a question of politics. Yet, if both are inextricably linked, why do we still play shocked when a politicians get exposed in sex scandals? When it’s about Berlusconi and his ongoing sex parties, nobody really cares, since everyone has given up on the Italian, but in other countries, especially the fanatically religious and sexually uptight United States of America, sex scandals escalate to a national crisis.

Repeating History

If you thought that political sex scandals are a tacky accessory of the 90s, you better check your history lectures again. Back in 1802, the first sex scandal involved a mixed-race slave named Sally Hemings owned the president Thomas Jefferson. DNA tests have been inconclusive, but (confirmed) rumor has it that the affair between them resulted in the birth of 6 children. May 2011 history repeated itself and Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted of having fathered a child with his maid which resulted maybe in the governor’s decision to go back to making movies again. A couple of centuries after the initial sex scandal, the Larry Craig scandal was an incident that began on June 11, 2007, with the arrest of Larry Craig—who at the time was a Senator from Idaho—for lewd conduct in a men’s restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Craig later entered a guilty plea to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct on August 8. As a result of the controversy surrounding his arrest, subsequent guilty plea, and pressure from his fellow Republicans, Senator Craig announced his intention to resign from the Senate at a news conference on September 1, which was to become effective on September 30. After failing to withdraw his guilty plea, on October 4, Craig released a statement refusing to resign as senator for Idaho. In December 2007, eight gay men came forward to the Idaho Statesman newspaper alleging either sexual encounters with Craig, or attempts by Craig to engage in sexual encounters. Four of the men gave the newspaper graphic, recorded details of their alleged sexual encounters.

The Ultimate Political Sex Scandal

And yet, none of the above is a political sex scandal you would initially refer to. Lewinsky, on the other hand, is a name that rings a bell in everyone’s mind. While I was constantly wondering back in the late 90s what peaches had to do with impeachment, the biggest sex scandal of modern time was sky-rocketing newspaper sales and sinking Bill Clinton’s ratings. 13 years later, this is still the most remarkable sexcapade in the White House. On the evening of Saturday January 17, 1998, the internet gossip merchant Matt Drudge posted a story that opened the most sensational scandal season in the history of the American presidency. He reported that Newsweek magazine had killed a story about President Clinton’s sexual relationship with a former intern. The next day he had her name: Monica Lewinsky. The mainstream media were slow to catch up, but by the following Tuesday they were reporting that Clinton was being investigated for encouraging others to lie to cover up the affair. For the next year the story dominated the headlines as Clinton was investigated, impeached and eventually found not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors in a Senate trial.  Monica Lewinsky was 21 when, as a White House intern, she delivered pizza to the President, flirted with him, flashed her thong and began an 18-month relationship that involved oral sex, phone sex, an infamous incident with a cigar, a great deal of soul-searching about what he really felt for her and then increasing fear and panic as it became clear that the relationship could become public.

Wiener Gate

The “Weinergate” (coming from Anthony Weiner, the now former congressman’s last name) has been the perfect storm for news coverage, involving social media, political scandal, and fun word play given Rep. Weiner’s last name. In case you’ve blacked out for the last month, here is the scandal fresh out of the oven:

May 5: Twitter user @patriotusa76 (real name: Dan Wolfe) begins tweeting about “sex-scandal pics of a ‘big time’ Congressman.” He references a tweet from someone with the handle @goatsred, who says “A big bomb about to burst : Rumor on the Right Coast is that a ‘big time’ Congressman was caught with a mistress. There are pix and a top five Right-Wing blogger has them.”

Next: A photo of a man’s erection is posted on yfrog (a picture sharing website) under the Twitter name @RepWeiner. The photo is also tweeted to Gennette Cordova, a college student from Washington, from Weiner’s account. According to conservative blog Pajamas Media, the tweet stays up for about four minutes before it is deleted.

May 29: The New York Daily News posts an exclusive, lengthy statement from Gennette Cordova, the student to whom the obscene tweet was directed.

June 1: Media is already all over Weiner and he is the most interviewed man in the US. Early afternoon: Weiner does an interview with MSNBC’s Luke Russert. When asked whether the picture is of him, Weiner says: “I can’t say with certitude.” He does say: “I didn’t send that picture out.” Weiner’s sexting online affair has multiplied and other women were gathered by the shit storm. TMZ reveals that Rep. Weiner “instructed one of his Internet women” — porn actress Ginger Lee — “how to lie about their relationship … and even offered PR help from his team, which could create major legal issues for him.” Apparently, Weiner e-mailed Lee (with whom he had been conducting an online relationship for “a long period of time”) several days after the current Twitter-picture media maelstrom began, asking if she wanted advice about dealing with awkward questions.

June 16: Rep. Weiner announces his resignation from Congress. Holding a press conference at the senior center in Brooklyn where he made his first foray into politics 20 years ago, he says, “I had hoped to be able to continue the work that the citizens of my district elected me to do [but] the distraction that I have created has made that impossible.”

Although some people try to compare Anthony Weiner’s online sexcapades to Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Weiner should try way harder to top Bill’s achievement. There might not be many or any photos from Clinton’s encounters with Monica, but actually this is exactly the point that makes it more interesting and spicy – everyone knows that a lightly dressed body is always more appealing than the naked truth. And besides, if this is what a political sex scandal 2.0 will look like from now on, I am deeply disappointed America’s sexual liberation issues. At the end of the day, Anthony Weiner just had some fun online and forgot to make his accounts private.  Maybe if he wanted to have Clinton-Lewinsky’s impact, he should’ve met with Bill and discussed a strategy over a beer or two.

published originally in HONK! magazine issue 04