Public Affairs

Paul Apostolidis

Description

Public affairs-or sex scandals-involving prominent politicians are as revealing of American culture as they are of individual peccadillos. Implicated in their unfolding are a broad range of institutions, trends, questions, and struggles, including political parties, Hollywood, the Christian right, new communications technologies, the restructuring of corporate media, feminist and civil rights debates, and the meaning of public life in the "society of the spectacle." The contributors to Public Affairs examine, from a variety of perspectives, how political sex scandals take shape, gain momentum, and alter the U.S. political and cultural landscape.The essays in Public Affairs reflect on a number of sex scandals while emphasizing the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, certainly the most avidly followed and momentous sex scandal in American political history. Leading scholars situate contemporary public affairs in the context not only of earlier sex scandals in American politics (such as Thomas Jefferson's and Sally Hemings's affair), but also of more purely political scandals (including Teapot Dome and Watergate) and sex scandals centered around public figures other than politicians (such as the actor Hugh Grant and the minister Jimmy Swaggart). Some essays consider the Clinton affair in light of feminist and anti-racist politics, while others discuss the dynamics of scandals as major media events. By charting a critical path through the muck of scandal rather than around it, Public Affairs illuminates why sex scandals have become such a prominent feature of American public life.Contributors. Paul Apostolidis, Jodi Dean, Joshua Gamson, Theodore J. Lowi, Joshua D. Rothman, George Shulman, Anna Marie Smith, Jeremy Varon, Juliet A. Williams

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• USA
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 14 janvier 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385387
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Public Affairs

edited by Paul Apostolidis and Juliet A. Williams Public Affairs

Politics in the Age of Sex Scandals Duke University Press Durham & London •

2004

©  Duke University Press

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of

America on acid-free paper 

Designed by C. H. Westmoreland

Typeset in Times Roman with

ITC American Typewriter display

by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

Contents

1

2

3

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Sex Scandals and Discourses of Power Paul Apostolidis and Juliet A. Williams 

Sex Scandals in U.S. Politics: Theoretical, Social, and Historical Contexts Normal Sins: Sex Scandal Narratives as Institutional Morality TalesJoshua Gamson Power and Corruption: Political Competition and the Scandal MarketTheodore J. Lowi Hardly Sallygate: Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Sex Scandal That Wasn’tJoshua D. Rothman

Class, Race, and Gender in the Clinton Scandal On ‘‘The Dalliances of the Commander in Chief’’: Christian Right Scandal Narratives in Post-Fordist America Paul Apostolidis Narrating Clinton’s Impeachment: Race, the Right, and Allegories of the SixtiesGeorge Shulman Sexual Risk Management in the Clinton White House Anna Marie Smith

Privacy and Publicity, and the Conditions of Democratic Citizenship Privacy in the (Too Much) Information Age Juliet A. Williams

It Was the Spectacle, Stupid: The Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr Affair and the Politics of the GazeJeremy Varon Making (It) PublicJodi Dean

Notes on Contributors  Index 

vi Public Affairs

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank a number of people who helped us conceptual- ize this project and bring it to fruition. Rose Corrigan, Cynthia Daniels, Judith Grant, David Gutterman, and Jill Locke provided helpful com- ments on our work at a panel for the Western Political Science Asso- ciation. Thanks also go to the following faculty members at Whitman College, whose thoughtful reflections on our drafts were indispens- able: Julia Davis, Tom Davis, Susan Ferguson, Tim Kaufman-Osborn, Jeannie Morefield, David Schmitz, Lynn Sharp, and Bob Tobin. At UC-Santa Barbara, we are especially grateful to the faculty members in the Law and Society Program and the Women’s Studies Program, and to Constance Penley of the Film Studies Department.We are addi- tionally grateful to Judith Grant and to three anonymous readers for all the hard work they devoted to this project and for their insightful criti- cisms. Finally, we thank our editor, Valerie Millholland, and all those at Duke University Press who have provided us with their invaluable professional assistance. Some of the essays in this volume have been previously published elsewhere, either in whole or in part. Parts of Paul Apostolidis’s essay ‘‘On ‘The Dalliances of the Commander in Chief’: Christian Right Scandal Narratives in Post-Fordist America’’ appeared as chapter  in Paul Apostolidis,Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ), copyright  by Duke University Press, and is reprinted with permission. Jodi Dean’s essay ‘‘Making (It) Public’’ appeared inConstellations. () and is reprinted with permission. Joshua Gamson’s essay ‘‘Normal Sins: Sex Scandal Narratives as Institutional Morality Tales’’ appeared in Social Problems. (May ), copyright  by The Society for the Study of Social Problems, and is reprinted with permission. Parts of Joshua D. Rothman’s essay ‘‘Hardly Sallygate: Thomas Jeffer- son, Sally Hemings, and the Sex Scandal That Wasn’t’’ appears in

Joshua Rothman,Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, –(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), copyright  by the University of North Carolina Press, and is reprinted with permission. An earlier ver- sion of George Shulman’s essay ‘‘Narrating Clinton’s Impeachment: Race, the Right, and Allegories of the Sixties’’ was published in the online journalTheory & Event. (), copyright by the Johns Hop- kins University Press, and is reprinted with permission. An earlier ver- sion of Anna Marie Smith’s essay ‘‘Sexual Risk Management in the Clinton White House’’ appeared in Lauren Berlant and Lisa Duggan, eds.,Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Inter- est(New York: New York University Press, ) and is reprinted with permission.

viii Public Affairs

PAUL APOSTOLIDIS AND JULIET A. WILLIAMS

Introduction Sex Scandals and Discourses of Power

n the day before President Bill Clinton left office, the news broke that he had struck a deal with the Office of the Indepen- O dent Counsel. Clinton admitted to having provided false tes- timony regarding his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. In ex- change, the soon-to-be ex-president received immunity from prose- cution for perjury and related offenses. Pundits wrangled over whom the deal favored, Clinton or his accusers. They agreed, however, that most of the public was simply relieved to see the matter of the Clinton- Lewinsky scandal finally—apparently—brought to a conclusion. Yet the dogged persistence of the scandal through the very last hours of the Clinton administration hardly allowed for much optimism that sex scandals would remain off the main docket of the electronic court of public opinion for very long. To the contrary, the timing of the deal transparently signaled the determination of the contestants to use every available advantage in fighting the battle at hand, and thus por- tended no ebbing of blood lust as similar occasions arise in the future.

The Deepening Muck of ScandalThere is a general sense among poli- ticians, commentators, and the American public at large that at some point during the past fifteen years, a line was crossed. After the ex- posure of Gary Hart’s infidelity (on the good shipMonkey Business) ended his  presidential primary run, after Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment nearly derailed Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, after Bob Packwood’s ignominious exit from the U.S. Senate for just such behavior, and especially after Bill and Monica, Americans from most reaches of the ideological spec-