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17.6.11

Political Power, Sex and the 21st Century E-Communication

Anthony Weiner, highly praised democrate representative and candidate for N.Y. mayor resigned this week over his cyber-sex affair that is in the media since may. Mr Weiners activities outside his office duties, which involved sending explicit photographs of his most precious body areas to several femal followers through Twitter and Facebook are still difficult to judge in terms of their moral or political implications, both for his political peers and voters but even more for his wife Huma Abedin. Are they really as immoral as the Washington Times tries to makes us believe, or is this media outcry rather a hypocracy when it comes to our own secret phantasies, that we like to forbid to those who are paid with our tax money ?  I"m wondering what would happened if Mr. Weiner would not have send his "Bulge" pictures and "Shaved Breast" pictures and testosteron-loaded short messages to younger ladies or university students, but to elder house-wives or congress representatives of the republicians ?  Would have Mrs. Nancy Pelosi, congress speaker and his party fellow demanded his resignation with the same mercyless ?  It is really hard to tell how much Mr. Weiner must be considered a liar and therefore banned from the political establishment, or whether he is a victim of the Big Brother media establishment, who is regularily searching for fresh blood to drink.  I wont make any judgement here myself, I think it is about the people who voted for him as representative to decide over his future, and in particular it is about his wife Huma Abedin to consider if she wants to stay with him for the rest of their life.
What I like to suggest here, however is that Weiners affairs highlights the validity of an old issue: that of the erotic component that is related to power. In particular in the sphere of politics, that in Weiners case very simply ment that he had a sort of power over ~ 50 000 people that he represented of his New York district, power is easily gained by questionable personal qualities such as networking, bribing, lobbying. What comes with this political power is an ever increasing media presence, and it was especially the later that Anthony Weiner very obviously exploited for his cyber-sex relationships. If he would have used an anonymous user-name such as "dear-Mr-president" or "democrats-bulge" or "oral-bill" for his twitter and Facebook accounts, instead of clearly showing that it is Anthony Weiner here, your most appreciated and praised democrats futur NY mayor that sends you these steam-hot messages and pictures of his body parts, he would have received much less reponse for this, considering that the photos he send around showed a rather prude clerkes physiology (no tatoos or body piercings or scarves from gang fights or military combats). It was obviously this "added value" of offering his verbal sex and body pictures to young ladies in combination with the thrill of having all this "dirty stuff" with a guy whom the rest of the nation only knows as Mr. Super-Clean and everybodies darling. And for the failure of this attempt, i.e. exploiting a political function that has been given to somebody by his voters to attract femals for love affairs, I praise the public media who exposed this story.

1 comment:

  1. Thats an interesting aspect of the recent affairs among political figures. But I don't think it has to do with the attraction of power. Look around at all the affairs of other celebrities (Tiger Woods, Schwarzenegger, Musicians ...). They are not neccesarily exponents of power, they are just exposed by the madia, same as Anthony Weiner was. And political power is not always associated with an attraction onto certain type of woman. I can't imagine that G.W.Bush, Dick Cheynee or Rumsfield were ever offered an adultery.

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