Sex and Power in the Attention Economy

Bill Clinton and his sex scandal.

The US has been a buzz for the last month with the latest Presidential sex scandal. Reportedly, Monica Lewinsky, then 21, started it all as she headed for Washington with her "Presidential Kneepads" - that is with the idea of fellatio with Clinton already her goal. Those imaginary kneepads may have nothing to do with cyberspace, but much of the story is now intertwined with it and related technologies, and thus very much a part of the emerging attention economy.

Lewinsky's "friend" Linda Tripp went from taping a phone call to wearing a "wire" to broadcasting their conversation to FBI agents in hiding; now computer records of the President's every move in the White House have been subpoeaned. Perhaps most importantly, the story first gained attention on the "Drudge Report" on the World Wide Web, and new developments are still revealed first in cyberspace. (Drudge on the Web, all by himself has as much impact as a major newspaper might, although it would be a sleazy and right wing one.) This occurs in a climate in which reporters are more eager to put forward thie own flashy opinions than search out news of any deep significance.

This is a sex and spy scandal but not because Lewinsky is claimed to have any connections to a foreign government. Instead, the head of the most powerful state in history finds himself mercilessly spied upon by that government itself - as well as the press - without a vestige of the privacy that even ordinary citizens, and certainly powerful men, used to take for granted.

The situation shows the deepening clash between the ethos of the old economy, which was primarily an ethos of hiding one's private life from scrutiny, and the appropriate ethos for an attention economy, which is to reveal as much as possible.

As everyone knows, sex is always a powerful means to get attention. But why is this so? The deper reason is worth exploring. At its best, sex between two people is itself an intense exchange of attention involving all the senses and eliciting total concentration. On the other hand, whenever you pay attention to someone even at a distance, both your mind and - necessarily - your body are involved. Thus, the act of attention itself, as a bodily act, always has an erotic component. And receiving attention is also erotic, sexy, exciting, the deeper and more intense it is, the more exciting, no matter from what distance or on what subject.

The relevance of all this to the notion I have been putting forth that the economy of cyberspace is an attention economy is that public sexiness of any kind plays a privileged role. The supposed scandal involving Clinton also magnified positive attention towards him, by emphasizing his sexuality, and also, as Lewinsky's behavior inidicated, his inherent sexiness.

This year's mandatory, televised "State of the Union" address, Clinton's sixth, fell a few days into the scandal, attracting his biggest audience. Usually, his speech has been considered boring, and interminable, weighed down with too many detailed proposals on every conceivable policy area. Yet this year, his popularity as President rose afterwards to its highest levels ever - as much as 79%. This is despite the widespread belief that Clinton did have sex with Lewinsky and then lied about it. That may may make him sound immoral by conventional standards - but the belief clearly helps him.

Tina Brown, editor of the influential New Yorker magazine, suddenly sees Clinton as having "more heat" than any Hollywood star. She is far from being alone. If sex is a plus now, perhaps the standard political wisdom is all wrong. Maybe Clinton would have even higher ratings if he had never concealed any sexual encounters.

It's a clash of two value systems. For the old one, personal privacy and dignity went hand in hand, and revealing intimate details of one's life to the public would be costly and dangerous breach. For the new ethos that comes with the attention economy, being as revelatory as possible can only lead to more attention and is therefore "obejctively " good, as measured by the rewards.

The old economy implied a clear separation between spheres of life such as home and work, making sexuality outside strict bounds a source of embarrassment and discomfort. The new morality actually glories in even quite "kinky" sex, as long as it is revealed unemebarrassedly. Most Americans, in fact, are titillated but far from shocked at Clinton's putative behavior. Even if the accusations are demonstrated to be true, we don't want Clinton to go.

What about Clinton's lying, if he did, as we mostly believe? In the realm of attention, what counts is appearances, and so there ultimately can be no lying, except as a kind of performance, to be judged on its own terms. We can believe Clinton had sex with Lewinsky, like him the better for it, and admire his denials as well.

Even the investigation and prosecution become basically a game, a sport, itself an object of attention, to be judged independently of any higher truth or any greater good to come from it. And one of the reasons Clinton comes off better than the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, is that he makes it clearer to us that he knows he is playing this game.