Weinergate, the Internet and the changing future of the political scandal

Although the media has dubbed Representative Anthony Weiner’s recent nightmare a “sex scandal,” this term ignores just how revolutionary the incident is in comparison to past indiscretions. Unlike previous scandals, this one did not involve a physical relationship; indeed, it did not even involve “sex.” What it did involve was the Internet—and the implications could change politics forever.

Before we get into the implications, though, here’s some background. On May 27, Weiner sent a link via Twitter to a 21 year-old woman in Bellingham, Washington. The link led to a photograph featuring a man’s bulging underwear. Weiner removed the link minutes after it appeared on his Twitter page, but it was too late—people had already seen the image. At first, the congressman denied ever posting a photo. He claimed that his account had been hacked and even proclaimed his innocence on an interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. Many people, including me, thought he was telling the truth and that the furor would quickly die down.

We were wrong. On June 6 conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart published a shirtless picture Weiner had sent to another woman. When Breitbart implied that he had more photographs, including one of Weiner’s exposed manhood, the congressman was forced to hold a painfully uncomfortable press conference. The conference revealed that this was not the only picture of Weiner, and that he had repeatedly engaged in this type of behavior for more than three years. Add that to the fact that some prominent Democrats are calling for his resignation, more than six women have already admitted having online relations with Weiner and Weiner’s wife is pregnant, and you have a political scandal fit for the history books.

With the Internet, the world of politics is becoming more transparent than ever before. This can be a good thing. With most citizens armed with cell phones that can capture video and instantaneously post it to the web, governments find it harder and harder to lie. Syria is a perfect example of this—although its government has banned foreign journalists from entering to cover recent unrest, citizen journalists have been able to post videos online showing that nation’s brutal suppression of its own people. But this implication can also be negative since politicians’ private lives—and, indeed, our private lives—are now exposed to a greater degree than ever before.

Second, this incident reinforces the notion that, once something is on the Internet, it is there permanently. When you’re in a position as important as Weiner's, people are obviously going to be interested in what you’re doing. More importantly, you'll have enemies who would love to uncover compromising information about you. Weiner must have known that he was putting himself in danger by having lewd conversations with women on the Internet; the only surprising thing to me is that this has been happening for three years. So what was Weiner thinking? My guess is that he probably wasn’t doing much thinking at all. It will be interesting to see if other politicians are at risk due to things they have already posted on the Internet.

Politicians can’t treat the Internet the way many other people treat it if they expect their privacy to be respected. They can’t participate in social media unless they expect their online “friends” or followers to be scrutinized, they can’t talk to others without expecting a permanent transcript of that text to be available and they sure as hell can’t give out lewd pictures of themselves to others. That Weiner did all three of the above is discouraging, mind-boggling and, frankly, absolutely stupid. Perhaps Weiner's older generation doesn’t understand the record-keeping nature of the Internet, or maybe Weiner’s male instincts overruled his brain in this particular case, but for someone with ambitions for the governorship of New York to have fallen so far and in this way really marks a new era for American politics. Scandals have brought politicians down before, but the Internet has never played the main role to the extent that it has for Weiner. I’ll even go so far as to say that if you have future political ambitions you should take your Facebook down before you run. If you ever run for office, you can safely bet that your opponent will look for dirt on you, and, in this evolving political climate, the Internet will be the first place he or she will look.

One thing is certain: this won’t be the last Twitter-fueled scandal. The Internet is changing politics, and, with most members of Congress having been born before the Internet-age, we can expect more scandals of this nature to crop up as the next Internet-savvy generation of young people emerges on the political landscape.