Description:
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.Brief description: Hinda Mandell is a professor in the School of Communication at RIT in New York, where she was the director of the university's journalism program from 2020-2024. Mandell is editor of this volume, Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation; editor Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); co-curator and co-editor of Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism (RIT Press, 2019); a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018); the author of Sex Scandals, Gender and Power in Contemporary American Politics (Praeger, 2017); and co-editor of Scandal in a Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). As a journalist, her work has been published in Politico, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, among other publications. An avid DIY'er who loves to unleash creativity in others, Mandell is the founder of her university's annual Zine Fest. Her scholarly inquiries into collaborative handcraft as change-agents have been published in Craft Research, the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and forthcoming in the Journal of Feminist Scholarship. She is on the international advisory board of the Journal of Craft & Communities and on the editorial board the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, and her research has been funded by the Center for Craft and Fiber Art Now. In 2020 she was a guest artist with Visual Studies Workshop, whose residency funded the production of her artist book, "The Yarn Must Live: A Polemic on a Pandemic and Public Art," which was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2017, she has organized maker interventions on issues of social reform tied to geographic place reaching 2,000 craft participants. She is also under contract for an upcoming book with Rowman & Littlefield, Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. She's been interviewed by The New York Times and The Associated Press, among other global outlets, on the importance of making objects by hand. She is on Instagram: @crochetactivism.
Review Quotes:
"Mandell offers a painstakingly researched, revealing, and amusing exploration of sex scandals in U.S. politics. . . . This makes for a highly detailed and comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of sex scandals, as well of the underlying realities of power relations among men and women in politics. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty." --Choice
"Mandell's analysis of what she calls the scandal of 'political sextracurricular activities' is extensive, in both time period and methodologies (textual analysis, online surveys, two different sets of interviews). The thread of gender woven into this project makes it particularly distinctive as well as significant, as Mandell examines political wives, women engaged in scandalous behavior with politicians, and the rare female politician involved in her own sex scandal. This multidimensional analysis is an important contribution to the conversation about political sex scandals, the media attention they garner, and their many potential consequences." --Joan L. Conners, Charles J. Potts Professor of Social Sciences, Randolph-Macon College, USA "Mandell takes the complicated topic of political scandal and adds important new analysis and insight about gender. Scandals receive a considerable amount of media attention because they are sensational and titillating, but Mandell digs deeper to investigate their larger consequences. Beautifully written and powerfully argued, this is an important addition to the literature on scandal." --Alison Dagnes, Professor, Shippensburg University, USA "Engaging and funny. Hinda Mandell weaves sex scandal stories into a twisted tapestry that shows us new dimensions of gender and power, new dimensions of political machination, and new dimensions of scandal as a political genre. At once juicy and erudite, this is the book to read on contemporary sex scandals." --Joshua Gamson, Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco, USA