dagblog - Comments for "No Privacy. Just Privilege"

Mr. Weiner, at his news

Elusive Trope — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:07:07 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Mr. Weiner, at his news conference on Monday, said he had sent Ms. Cordova the underwear photo “as part of a joke.” But Ms. Cordova said the image was not in keeping with the tenor of their previous interactions.
“I still didn’t get the joke part of it,” she said.

It would seem that people are brushing over the fact that in the particular case of Ms. Cordova, this was not virtual flirting (or whatever one wants to call) between two consenting adults. This was one person send a sexually explicit photo to a person who never asked for it. His response reminds me of the employer who is tries to wave off giving unwanted shoulder rubs to a co-worker. It doesn't matter that he wasn't in some direct position of power over her, like a boss or professor. If Weiner had mailed such photographed the old fashion way, my guess the police would have gotten involved. But since it was "tweeted," it somehow seems less an act of a sexual predator and more of an act of sexually dysfunctional idiot. Maybe because tweeting and emailing occur so much more quickly, and everyone has sent this or that to the wrong person, that we see it more as impulsive than the more intentional developing of a photograph, putting it in a envelope, writing the address on the envelope, putting a stamp on it, and then mailing it.

So I disagree that, if Cordova's assertion is accurate, that Weiner's act was of no concern to the citizen. Any politician who steps over the bounds into sexual harassment of even single woman needs to step down.

Yes, I thought of DSK and the

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:21:22 +0000

In reply to Doc, your point is valid, but

Yes, I thought of DSK and the excessive deference (read: enabling) the French press gives to sexual harassers. But the fact the French draw the line too far in one direction doesn't mean where we draw the line is okay.

And yes, I picked on the bigh media, because they're bigger than I am. But as you say, our fragmented new media culture is driving this. But I think that's part of the problem. A grass-roots, bottom-up system that denies basic privacy rights isn't better than a top-down media system. It's just harder to fight.

When Clarence Thomas talking about "high-tech lynchings" he was blustering in self-pity, and he was premature. We've gotten to the high-tech lynching phase now, when people can start a "smart mob," just as vicious as a face-to-face one, to drag someone through the mud. And the traditional authorities either can't stop it, or choose to be carried along. (So maybe, yes, I blame the sheriffs when they join the lynching.)

Fair enough, aa. But even if

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 17:06:43 +0000

In reply to Good essay.You make many

Fair enough, aa. But even if the Weiner scandal is interesting us because it has something to do with what's changing in our culture, and with how we're grappling with sexting and what-not, it's still about our own sex lives, and we're still volunteering him as the symbolic kulturbarer for the rest of us.

Do you know what Clarence

quinn esq — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:36:29 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Do you know what Clarence Thomas is probably doing with all that extra money he's getting through corrupt bribe-taking and such??

BUYING AN EXTRA BIG PENIS!

And then, having special professional staff take special professional pictures of it.

And THEN, tweeting it, to other persons!

[See? So easy to draw the pieces of this story together, and make people sit up and pay attention to the issue of Justice John Clarence Thomas and his Huge New Penis Corrupt Finances.]

But I still like the incident

Flavius — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:09:54 +0000

In reply to P.S. For those who are are

But I still like the incident in the Screwtape Letters. One of the apprentice devils, all pleased with himself , reports to Satan that he has successfully arranged for his target to succumb to a liason.

"You fool "comments the boss." Don't you realize lust often turns into love". .

Good essay.You just remind me

Richard Day — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:10:24 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Good essay.

You just remind me that I hate and detest Mrs. Thomas as much as Clarence!

Doc, your point is valid, but

Michael Wolraich — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:28:00 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Doc, your point is valid, but there there are two additional edges to this sword.

One is the hazy line between privacy and deference. Had Weiner been a French politician, the French media would surely have ignored his salacious tweets, and that's probably for the best. But the same respectful media may well have ignored his behavior even if it constituted sexual harassment, as seems to have happened with Strauss-Kahn. That's not for the best.

The third edge recently manifested in the reporting on British soccer star Ryan Giggs' affair with Big Brother celebrity Imogen. The British media was constrained from discussing the rumor by court injunction, even as the story raged on Twitter and Facebook. At some point, almost everyone in the UK who wasn't "living in an igloo" knew the details, but the papers couldn't mention it until PM David Cameron finally alluded to it in Parliament, thereby concluding the farce.

The fact is that major media outlets no longer have the power to determine what people do not hear about. In the age of social media, castigating journalists for commenting on what everyone is reading anyway is pointless. We are, as you wrote, voyeurs, and we will ogle Weiner's privates regardless of propriety or media restraint.

Ginny Thomas' finances are another story, however. While the media cannot suppress Twitter trends, it still has the power to promote news, and it should use that power to keep us informed of the news that might not make it into our Twitter feeds.

P.S. For those who are are

artappraiser — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:12:38 +0000

In reply to Good essay.You make many

P.S. For those who are are also having the kind of thoughts I am on the Weiner story, I would like to add that it also strongly reminds me of Todd Field's very thought-provoking movie of 2006, Little Children, where one of the themes eloquently addressed is how in modern life sex and lust is being further and further separated from love and passion.

Good essay.You make many

artappraiser — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:02:36 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Good essay.

You make many thought-provoking points on the privacy topic.

I think I might disagree with the penis rant at the start, though.I sense the popularity of the Weiner story is not just that. As I said in this comment elsewhere, Weiner's story strikes me as a story that resounds like and is similar to the fictional Portnoy's story, and it is also the story of a lot of sex in current society among lots of average people.And that society might be using Weiner's story to adjust to those mores. Like with Portnoy's Complaint and similar. And that's part of the reason it has legs.

Likewise the Monica Lewinsky, Anita Hill and Christine Keeler stories "had legs," because they spoke to changed mores that society had not dealt in the open with. The Anita Hill story most strikingly so, where husbands allover the US found out about sexual harassment happening to their wives and girlfriends and sisters. (Whereas Spitzer or Vitter or Gingrich or Larry Craig etc. were in the end were just the same old same old nothing new political sex scandals, i.e., cf. "ma ma where's my pa, gone to the White House ha ha ha.") It is interesting too that the Strauss-Kahn story brought up a "dejas vus allover again" moment where, like with the Lewinsky story, Europeans were going "what's the big deal, why are Americans going so crazy, why are so interested in this?" but this time it is they who are ending up questioning their own related mores. As if some business on that front had been left unfinished, especially in European society.

Enough of that. Back to the topic of changing mores as regards privacy, which is the far more interesting part of your essay in my opinion. I would just like to add to your laundry list of examples. This which I read yesterday is particularly apropos, I think:

Facebook to Be Probed in EU for Facial Recognition in Photos - Businessweek

At first it doesn't seem such a big deal except when you start thinking about all the kinds of crap that could happen with that function.

Then there was this which almost serves an example of how many kinds of things could go wrong with the facial recognition thingie and also suggests the ubiquitous personal photos on the net could be used in the future to get innocent people into Kafka-like fixes:

Londoner says missing Syrian blogger stole her identity
Skepticism surfaces about photos purported to be 'Gay Girl in Damascus' blogger who disappeared this week

more here: Does she even exist? The mystery of the Gay Girl in Damascus

Forgive me for taking away

we are stardust — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:59:55 +0000

In reply to No Privacy. Just Privilege

Forgive me for taking away from the serious nature of your diary for a moment, Doc. But the juxtaposition of this sentence at the top:

"The American entertainment industry exists to talk about penises and the things various penises like" right beside Terminal Tower which is...pretty phallic...was too much for me desist commenting on. ;o) So maybe male-dominated architecture is partly to blame.

And Clarence definitely won't recuse himself from any cases wife Ginny's Heritage Foundation ever had anything to do with. But at least he is a disgusting pervert; Anita Hill got that right.