Week 7: Thoughts on Ch. 5 of "Image Ethics in the Digital Age"

"The public absorbed all of these dirty secrets without seeming to turn against the miscreants; all of the "exposed" members of Congress were reelected... and, of course, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton failed to remove him from office." p. 109

Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, Anthony Weiner, David Petraeus. The list of US politicians caught up in a sex scandal is a long one, and these are just the ones in my lifetime that I can name off the top of my head! Internationally, the scandals and infidelity of politicians Silvio Berlusconi, Strauss-Kahn, and Nicolas Sarkozy, also caused a stir. But it seems that infidelity and sex scandals are much less of a big deal abroad than they are in the US - citizens of those countries continue to re-elect politicians, despite how much dirty laundry laundry is aired out, using the argument that their personal lives are of little consequence, especially if they are a good leader. It doesn't seem to be quite the same in the United States. Often, these scandals seem to happen to politicians running on a campaign that totes the importance of family values, making the said politician coming off as a liar and a hypocrite. It seems to me that the private and personal as the public and political is more intertwined in US politics, and thus potentially more damaging. Yet after each scandal, people begin to question whether or not who their congressman is sleeping with actually matters in terms of hard effects - does it really affect them?

Increasingly, people are starting to feel that it doesn't, and politicians are bouncing back stronger than ever from these scandals, as evidenced by the Anthony Weiner campaign for mayor and Mark Sanford's congressional reelection bid. (More on that here: http://online.wsj.com/article/AP7d2aaaad145e4f119b4b2c9353398395.html )