Weiner and the News Cycle
“And maybe if the Internet didn’t exist? Like, if I was running in 1955? I’d probably get elected mayor.” – Anthony Weiner
An interesting statement that’s not as simple as it seems. On the face of it it appear that Weiner is blaming the internet for his lack of self control in using it. This sounds childish (and it is) but what he’s really saying here makes sense.
We all have urges and how we handle our urges defines us as human beings. When one is put in the public eye the way they handle their urges is put under a microscope. Is this fair? Not necessarily. But in Weiners case, as a politician who put himself in the public eye, he must take the good with the bad. The good is whatever came with having political power. The bad is that he could have no personal life because the public was always watching.
Unfortunately for Weiner the public didn’t have to look too hard to find something to criticize him on. He handled his urges publicly on Twitter.
But what if it was 1955 and there was no internet? Would Weiner have fallen the way he did?
We’ve had government officials who have done much worse than Weiner and gotten away with it. Keeping this in mind to be naive enough to believe that Weiner’s Twitter stupidity was the only thing happening in Weiner’s case would be silly. Weiner was a Congressman who was still rising at the point of his faux pas. There obviously were people gunning for him and he gave them what they needed when he stepped into a sex scandal, which may be the hardest thing for anyone in the public eye to overcome.
But getting back to the point, it’s not the internet that’s to blame for Weiner’s downfall. It’s the faster news cycle that comes with it. Taking this point further is that the internet actually feeds the stories to reporters. Weiner is just one example of this.
If it were 1955 Weiner’s sexual proclivities would have been easier to cover. The slower news cycle meant people and their handlers could do more damage control of a story before it went public, usually with the next day’s newspaper. Weiner did not have that advantage.
One correction I’d like to make to Weiner’s statement is that if this were 1955 he would probably still be a Congressman.
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