CWT263: The Ephemeral Nature of Scandal: From Lewinsky to Biden

When Ken Starr went after Bill Clinton during his Preisdency, Starr tried to emphasize that the case is not about sex. It is about power and abuse of power, and they talked about the scandal reflecting a deep sense of loss of the country's innocence, and all that sort of stuff. But the political press was, practically speaking, having none of it. Sure, it got a lot of coverage, but so did OJ, the JonBenet Ramsey murder, and a whole bunch of other things from the 1990s that people tend to forget about now. Similarly, people were acutely discussing Edward Snowden’s decision to leak to Greenwald at one point, but now that's become largely an irrelevancy. The public can only care about something for so long, then they shift that intense focus over to the next distraction; also remember Obama's "death panels" and "FEMA camps"...