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Sex Scandals and the Media: Why Anthony Weiner and Bill Clinton Are Not Comparable
Posted June 08, 2011 at 02:45am by Ashley

Tonight's episode of The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC had an interesting topic, brought on by the media firestorm over U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY)'s penis picture and ensuing possibility that it may force him out of his current line of employment:

Would former President Bill Clinton, in the midst of his Democratic primary campaign for that office in 1992, have survived the Gennifer Flowers scandal in the midst of today's "new media"?

O'Donnell, for his part, answered that question with a resounding "no". In trying to prove his point, he set up a "time warp" segment wherein he brought together fellow pundits Jonathan Alter and Margaret Carlson, played old clips of the scandal unfolding, and conducted a conversation in the style of the supposed "new media"'s overtones, with the apparent aim of showing that Clinton indeed would not have survived today's sensationalist media's standards.

Although O'Donnell's segment was interesting and a bit intriguing to me as a viewer, I found myself disagreeing with it for a number of reasons. Some of the reasons involve Bill Clinton's case in and of itself, whereas others have more to do with O'Donnell's characterization of the media then and now, and I'll attempt to lay my criticisms out in the remainder of this post.

1) Media coverage of scandals was already relentless and sensationalized by 1992.

Let's face it: American culture is one that is utterly obsessed with scandals, controversies, and anything in-between. Many of us, whether we want to readily admit it or not, express some level of delight in seeing people in positions of power or privilege - be it Hollywood celebrities or politicians - experiencing an embarrassing moment and/or fall from grace, and as such, we eagerly devour the details of any such scandals that come along.

This culture has extended to politicians in a degree similar to now since at least Watergate, when the most powerful man on the planet at that time was brought down by the scandal of the century, broken by the pre-"new media" vanguard of newspapers and terrestrial television outlets of the day, yet still managing to reach enough American households to provoke a tidal wave of anger that convinced Richard Nixon to resign his office.

The same sort of sensationalism and scandal, albeit one befitting sexual hijinks (the stuff people love to giggle about around the water cooler) and not general criminal misconduct, most definitely applied to Bill Clinton during the Gennifer Flowers case. In fact, one could argue that it was easier for the Flowers case to get the average American's attention, as one must remember that CNN and its brand of twenty-four-hour cable news were already well in existence by 1992.

Bill Clinton, of course, was able to make his case regarding the Gennifer Flowers affair in a special thirteen-minute version of 60 Minutes that also served as Super Bowl XXVI's lead-out program. The Nielsen ratings for that interview estimated a total of 24,851,000 viewers, putting the ordeal on a public stage so large that one would think the general public would've been readily armed with the sort of knowledge that would've empowered them to derail his career over perceived moral shortcomings if they had seen fit.

2) Bill Clinton was no Anthony Weiner.

As Frank Caliendo so eloquently put it during one of his comedy routines, Bill Clinton could stand in front of you, claim that he wasn't actually there, and get you to believe it.

Having seen a good deal of Bill Clinton's speaking and campaigning, I'd have to wholeheartedly agree. Whatever your own personal tastes or opinions of the man, I don't believe there's really any denying that the American populace saw a sort of debonair, Southern charm in Clinton's way of carrying himself that they didn't and don't see in Weiner's in-your-face, stereotypically New Yorker attitude.

There's a reason Democratic primary voters fawned over Clinton when everything was said and done, and that's because he had the tact, charisma, and general know-how to wade into a figurative firestorm of scandal and still find a way to come out on top. This skill went beyond wading through said scandals, of course, and led in large part to his defeat of George H.W. Bush - a man seen as virtually unflappable at the peak of his popularity - that November.

3) Anthony Weiner was already a natural target for the media to latch onto.

Consider what I said of Anthony Weiner's "in-your-face, stereotypically New Yorker attitude" earlier: Put plainly, he was a sucker for attention. In this day and age of Congressional gridlock against a Democratic President's proposed policies, he loved placing himself in front of any camera or microphone he could conceivably locate, eager to share yet another soundbite about how much Republicans or other conservative opposition to the policies of the day sucked. Weiner crafted himself into a man that Republicans loved to hate in the post-Ted Kennedy era, relishing the spotlight as he drew the ire of more and more of his adversaries.

As such, it should not come as a surprise that this media - the same entity that covered all the minutiae of Tea Party unrest in the leadup to the 2010 midterms with bated breath - was all too eager to jump onto a story that could potentially hasten the downfall of one of the right's foremost boogeymen.

The same, of course, could not be said for Bill Clinton. Yes, the Republicans hated him, too, but after he used his "distinguished Southern gentleman" attitude in responding to scandal or conducting himself in general, who did you really think the public was going to side with?

Where Weiner had bombast, Clinton had a suave and pragmatic air of seeming like everything was squarely in his control. He was a conniving politician, to be sure, but his skill led him to do it in a style that seemed to calmly snooker the Republicans or other critics whenever they blew up on him, not yelling for the sake of yelling like Weiner was prone to doing.

I respect Lawrence O'Donnell as a political commentator and enjoy his show, but I simply do not think it is accurate to treat Anthony Weiner's scandal as being one and the same as Bill Clinton's scandal with Gennifer Flowers, nor do I think it to be particularly accurate to paint 1992 as some far-away time in which politicians could do dastardly things and easily recover from them, all because of the supposedly less-watchful eyes and ears of the "old media". It's tough to be caught with your pants literally down in a position of power, be it 1992 or 2011.

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