Sex Scandals Gender And Power In Contemporary American Politics

Examining how gender impacts political sex scandals in the United States, this book explains how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and identifies why these events have serious consequences for our political system. The increasing tabloidization of politics and focus on politicians involved in sex scandals is both problematic and important. When a major political sex scandal occurs, it occupies as much as 25 percent of all news coverage in the United States. Even if people may deny it, they enjoy "consuming" and talking about political sex scandals. Written by a former journalist who has frequently explored the intersections of politics, sex, and gender in the United States, Sex Scandals, Gender, and Power in Contemporary American Politics investigates how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and why these events have great significance in our frenzied media environment. The book makes use of comprehensive descriptive data (including statistics) to explain how political sex scandals are a representation of society's broader gender dynamics, conveying subtle messages about power and morality. It addresses the roles of men and women in political sex scandals over time, the increasing tabloidization of politics, and the often-overlooked consequences of sex scandals for the political system. Author Hinda Mandell also documents how scandals' multiple negative effects for the politicians themselves and for society include turning politics into a spectator sport, contributing to the mistrust of government, the questioning of politicians' competence and judgment as a group, and politicians' diminishing effectiveness in office.

A collection of essays that examine the construction, disgrace, and consequences of political sex scandals from various academic disciplines.

Examining how gender impacts political sex scandals in the United States, this book explains how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and identifies why these events have serious consequences for our political system. The increasing tabloidization of politics and focus on politicians involved in sex scandals is both problematic and important. When a major political sex scandal occurs, it occupies as much as 25 percent of all news coverage in the United States. Even if people may deny it, they enjoy "consuming" and talking about political sex scandals. Written by a former journalist who has frequently explored the intersections of politics, sex, and gender in the United States, Sex Scandals, Gender, and Power in Contemporary American Politics investigates how political sex scandals contribute to the mistrust of government and why these events have great significance in our frenzied media environment. The book makes use of comprehensive descriptive data (including statistics) to explain how political sex scandals are a representation of society's broader gender dynamics, conveying subtle messages about power and morality. It addresses the roles of men and women in political sex scandals over time, the increasing tabloidization of politics, and the often-overlooked consequences of sex scandals for the political system. Author Hinda Mandell also documents how scandals' multiple negative effects for the politicians themselves and for society include turning politics into a spectator sport, contributing to the mistrust of government, the questioning of politicians' competence and judgment as a group, and politicians' diminishing effectiveness in office.

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

This book explores the convergence of gender, race, and social identities in the often-exclusionary arena of American politics. Contributors examine contemporary issues as they relate to candidate positioning, acceptance, and clashing ideologies that pervade America’s political landscape.

One of the most popular shows to come out of Shondaland, Shonda Rhimes’s production company, is ABC’s political drama Scandal (2012–18)—a series whose tremendous success and marketing savvy led LA Times critic Mary McNamara to hail it as “the show that Twitter built” and Time magazine to name its protagonist as one of the most influential fictional characters of 2013. The series portrays a fictional Washington, DC, and features a diverse group of characters, racially and otherwise, who gather around the show’s antiheroine, Olivia Pope, a powerful crisis manager who happens to have an extramarital affair with the president of the United States. For seven seasons, audiences learned a great deal about Olivia and those interwoven in her complex world of politics and drama, including her team of “gladiators in suits,” with whom she manages the crises of Washington’s political elite. This volume, named for both Olivia’s team and the show’s fans, analyzes the communication, politics, stereotypes, and genre techniques featured in the television series while raising key questions about the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and viewing audiences. The essays range from critical looks at various members of Scandal’s ensemble, to in-depth analyses of the show’s central themes, to audience reception studies via interviews and social media analysis. Additionally, the volume contributes to research on femininity, masculinity, and representations of black womanhood on television. Ultimately, this collection offers original and timely perspectives on what was one of America’s most “scandalous” prime-time network television series.

This book examines citizens' attitudes about sexual harassment in the #MeToo era, seeking to determine how much these attitudes may have changed over the past few years. Using an innovative experimental research design, the authors look at how people react to allegations of harassment made against a fictional member of Congress. They consider whether those reactions vary with the offender's party affiliation, gender, and response to the allegations. Appropriate for students, scholars, and general readers alike, this book offers a timely analysis of an important political issue.

Americans have long believed that the private lives of their politicians are important indicators of their fitness to lead and of their ability to defend and uphold American values. For many, a sex scandal renders a person ineligible, or at the very least questionably qualified, for public service. In Compromising Positions, Leslie Dorrough Smith questions the assumption that sex scandals are really about sex-- that is, that they are primarily concerned with the discovery of sexual misconduct. She argues that they are, instead, a form of cultural storytelling that uses racial and gendered symbols to create a collective sense of national worth and strength. Smith shows that sex scandals involve the use of four very powerful social tools--gender, race, politics, and religion-- that together create a rhetoric about what America is, who is eligible to formally represent it, and what types of symbolic religiosity such leaders must display to legitimize their power. Americans tend to condemn or excuse the sexual misdeeds of their politicians depending on the degree to which the individual in question reinforces evangelical interpretations of "American values" and a "Christian nation." Such values include not just moral integrity, but strength, courage, and conquest. As a consequence, sex scandals are less likely to occur in cultural moments when the public is open to reading a politician's moral lapse as a symbolic form of national dominance. Put simply, when a leader is perceived as strong, domineering, and necessary for national health, many people will find ways either to overlook his illicit sexual behavior or somehow read it as an American act.