By Douglas J. Hagmann
As we have seen with the disgraced and disgraceful Anthony Weiner, sex sells and dominates the media anytime a salacious story breaks. You didn’t have to be a detective to have turned to your wife, husband, or to anyone in the room during any one of the televised media interviews with this twisted twittering congressman as he evaded direct questions about the purveyance of his private parts to say “he did it and now is trying to cover it up.”
He even became surly with reports’ questions about his extra digit in this digital age. Apparently, he learned nothing from history. From Wilbur Mills’ dalliance with Fannie Fox in 1974 to the “Monkey Business” of Gary Hart two decades later, and the Condit affair with the murdered Chandra Levy that dominated headlines in the summer of 2001, Weiner all but dared the media to further expose his digital digressions. And they did. And Weiner cried.
The process is not new to police and investigators. The tears that follow digressions and denials are usually those of remorse of being exposed – pun intended – and not due to the act itself.
For the next extended news cycle, expect the media to converge on digital images of the lawmaker’s lewdness, analyzing the zeroes and ones that makeup today’s images as if they were scrutinizing the former Soviet launch codes. Like sharks to chum in the water, the media will pursue Weiner’s tweets as well as his denials steeped in narcissistic hubris until the story reaches its natural climax.
Like Mills, Hart, and Condit, Weiner will become another entry in Washington’s growing list of sexually scandalous debauchery. Despite its salaciousness, it will eventually be relegated to a mere footnote in American history. It will be of no historical significance except in the lonely and narcissistic existence of Anthony Weiner.
Nonetheless, you can bet that the collective corporate media will relentlessly pursue this story, turning over every distasteful digital fig leaf. Although they should not give a pass to this depraved digital denizen of DC, their interest in an act that has yet to suggest criminal behavior speaks volumes about the state of the media in America today.
Followers of the American media certainly like their share of salacious stories. Just look at the statistics of all internet news articles involving shameful behavior versus those of more historical significance. Side by side, a story that details the sad exploits of an obnoxious Weiner will receive more interest than an article that explains our current foreign policy with Israel and the Middle East or the economic dangers we presently face. That does not dismiss the proper placement of the former in the scheme of legitimate news, but illustrates how easily the media can exploit the attention of the majority of Americans at will.
Our current focus on the salacious versus the historically important results from a generation of illiteracy at the hands of a progressive media. Many within this generation receive their news from the intellectually deficient or the deliberately deceptive, from the likes of Jon Stewart to Stephen Colbert and beyond. Such venues exist as pseudo-news, and current event shows for the often factually and morally impaired and frequently invite equally deficient or deceptive shills as guests to subtly mock issues of substance while pushing matters less taxing to one’s grey matter, all to the cackling delight of an enthusiastic studio audience.
Beyond those popular venues vacant of factual information, we have the actual cable and network news shows engaged in their methods of deception through their biased depiction or omission. What is reported in these venues is agenda-driven as well. So too, is what is not reported, decided at office levels far above the broadcast studios.
As over a half-century of television news has shown, one thing is sure. Sex scandals make for good ratings. As I write this, another thing is equally sure. Like finely tuned symphonies conducted by a single conductor, each network is “all in” on getting the goods on Weiner or whatever is not yet left to the public’s imagination. Generations of intentional conditioning or “dumbing down” the masses have created this fertile environment of intellectual bankruptcy.
It is for these reasons that most young Americans today believe the impeachment of former President William Jefferson Clinton was a direct result of having sex with “that woman.” That fable is still perpetuated by the aforementioned pseudo-news personalities who trivialize everything important in America while attacking our morality and ethics. The truth that Clinton was impeached for lying under oath is even marginalized by the fact that the lies were related to his sexual exploits, including by some in the corporate media.
It should come as no surprise that already, the media has spent more air time and print space on the digital transmissions of a congressman than on the digital manipulation of a federal document by the highest office in America.
It should come as no surprise that the media has intentionally shamefully ignored the continuing questions of Barack Hussein Obama’s possible complicity in producing a forged federal document. Instead, the Weiner scandal, of virtually no historical significance, will carry the day over the more historically significant. Obviously, I am referring to the Certificate of Birth produced by the White House and having the imprimatur of Barack Hussein Obama II himself.
The journalistic process, or what is left of it, should be busy analyzing the digital manipulation of the Obama document rather than the Weiner digit.
Soon, however, the elephant in the room will just be too big and malodorous to ignore, even for the corporate media shilling for Obama. More importantly, it will not be because of the media but in spite of it. It will be a matter too big for Jesse C. Lee to control, despite his taxpayer-funded White House position as a modern-day head of a combination “Ministry of Truth” and Nixonian “plumber’s unit.”
As an investigator, I, for one, seek to make that happen. Around, over, under, or through Jesse C. Lee.