The only way you haven't heard about the General David Petraeus sex scandal is if you have been living in isolation. It is something that has been on major news outlets like CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, etc. But there is also the fact of the emails that started this whole thing. Flirtatous emails were sent and then later intercepted by the FBI during a cyber investigation. Scandals used to be based on word of mouth or hand written letters. Now we have digital outlets like emails to incrimiate someone. Twitter also takes a role in this. Does something you tweet carry enough weight to get you into trouble. How seriously is a tweet taken these days? Controversial tweets have come into light since the traditional outlets use Twitter as a source for some of their material. Tweets give us an insight intothe lives of the rich and famous and it has build up an obsession. The media has an obsession with sex scandals and it is extremely dangerous, and at times, hypocritical. This isn't the first time that major media outlets have covered something of this magnitude and soething like this isn't limited to political figures. The media thrives on reporting on celebrities and sports figures and who they are spending their nights with. The following is a quote from David Simon about how the media has an obsession and is hypocritical:
I’d held pen and notepad akimbo and reported hypocritically at points. Not a year earlier, I think, I’d been guilty of dragging to the front of the metro section some sad sack who happened to serve on a mayor’s advisory committee — an unpaid position, mind you — and happened to get arrested in a car with a lit marijuana cigarette between his lips. At the price of that misdemeanor, I’d messed that guy up good. Wasn’t my fault he caught that charge; hey, I was just the cop shop reporter calling districts and reporting arrests. Don’t shoot the messenger.And then, I probably left work that night and smoked a joint with the night editor, after which, we went to Burke’s for onion rings. Which we did just about every other night.
David Petraeus has had sex outside his marriage, as have many men and many women. Human sexuality and compulsion are not in any way related to intelligence. It’s not that the dumb or powerful are more prone to messing around, or that the intelligent and powerless do it to any greater degree. It’s that men in general are hopelessly and permanently prone to contemplate sex and furtive romance and, sometimes, to act on it. The reasons they do so are crude, ordinary and inevitable, but not unnatural. Women are also bound to the same tempations as men. I do not indend to justify it or make it seem ok. When married, you make a promise to be faithful to one another and when you aren't you violate that trust.
I’m neither an admirer nor detractor of General Petraeus. But I am most definitely a detractor of what journalism has become in this country, of what passes for the qualitative analysis of our society and its problems. As a future sports journalist, I have had sit on the sidelines and see one of my favorite media outlets destroy what sports journalism is.
It shouldn't matter what postion someone holds in this country, be it public office, or Mcdonald's manager, their sex life is none of our business. The case of our digital privacy is something that is not going away any time soon. If our emails, tweets, and Facebook posts and threads can come back to get us after the fact, we must be careful what we say.