Sexual scandals of the rich and famous have occurred since the colonists first settled in America. Now as the sexual mores of the country have changed, it seems that the country likes nothing better than a good sexual scandal. They have changed from a time of public shaming and evolved from a morality tale to an entertainment distraction.
Sex Scandals America Overview
Author David Rosen chronicles sex scandals in America--the comedy, the tragedy and the hypocrisy. He strips away the masks and gets down to the naked flesh of human sexual politics and morality. Sexual hypocrisy is examined in an historical context to expose the reality of a sexually confused culture.
Sex Scandals America chapters include:
- A Preface
- Introduction: Sex Scandals in America
- Birth of a Nation
- Revolutionary Generation
- Making of Modern America
- A Nation in Crisis
- Recovery & Renewal
- Sexual Counter-Revolution
- America’s Sex Wars
- Afterword: Scandals & 21st Century America
The book concludes by speculating that, with Obama’s victory and the defeat of the Christian right, the culture wars have finally subsided. Sex scandals have changed from cause to hang someone to merely fodder for late shows such as that of Jay Leno.
Sex Scandals America Excerpts
Americans love sex scandals, and nothing better tells the story of America than sex scandals. Nothing captivates the nation’s attention more than the exposure of an illicit tryst involving a president or congressperson, tycoon or celebrity. The scandals preceding the 2008 election involving John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, like earlier ones involving Larry Craig and David Vitter, made front-page headlines, but played only a minor role in the election outcome. However, the rash of sex scandals involving Mark Foley, Don Sherwood and Rev. Ted Haggard contributed to the outcome of the 2006 election as Bill Clinton’s Oval Office intimacy with Monica Lewinsky helped propel George W. Bush into the White House in 2000.
Sex scandals are not new to Washington’s political class. Gary Hart’s tryst with Donna Rice might have cost him the 1998 presidential nomination. The 1970’s adulterous affairs of powerful Congressmen Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays with their respective mistresses, Fannie Fox and Elizabeth Ray, led to public disgrace and the end of their long political careers. The outings of Gary Studds, who had sex with a male page, and Barney Frank, who facilitated his male lover’s gay prostitution ring, seem lost in the mist of the political past. However, Edward “Ted” Kennedy’s fateful car ride with Mary Jo Kopechne in Chappaquiddick, MA, on the night of July 18, 1969, is still the Achilles’ heal to an otherwise notable career of public service.
Clinton’s dalliances seem relatively innocent when compared to other presidential indiscretions, many of which have been effectively hidden over the last two hundred years. For example, little media attention was paid to the sexual accusations leveled against George W. Bush. Once upon a time, the extra-marital sexual relations of former presidents were discreetly hidden, understood to be outside the bounds of acceptable journalism.
As evident in the 2008 electoral contest, unproven sex scandals were raised about both major party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, but quickly disappeared under careful public scrutiny. However, they illustrate the deeper changes that mark sex scandals today: They are political acts and no longer merely moral judgments.
Sex Scandal America tells the story of sex scandals that have enveloped presidents and many other public notables. It does this by laying out the history of scandals from the country’s earliest settlement to today, from Pocahontas and the Puritans to George W. Bush. It shows that scandals do not take place in an historical vacuum, but acquire their meaning as part of the larger sexual culture in which they occur. In doing so, the book reveals how the nature of scandal has changed over the four centuries since Europeans first settled the New World.
The scandal is a public spectacle intended to serve two contradictory social functions. First and foremost, a scandal is a morality tale, a public ritual intended to punish or shame the perpetrator. Second, particularly over the last century, the scandal has changed, increasingly becoming a form of entertainment, intended to distract or fascinate the public. The shift in the social function of the scandal is a measure of how moral values of the secular marketplace are increasingly replacing the power of religious tradition. Nothing demonstrates this better than the evolution of scandals involving political figures.
Excerpts with permission of Key Publishing House.
About the author:
David Rosen is a culture and media critic who lives in New York City. He received a B.A. in Philosophy from City College and an M.A. in American Labor Studies from Rutgers University.
Rosen,David. Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming. Toronto, Canada, Key Publishing House, 2009
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