Original subtitles

WOMAN: Burn the witch!

NARRATOR: Political sex scandals are best dished out...

WOMAN: Another scandal

for Italy's embattled prime minister.

NARRATOR: ...with a heaping spoonful of hypocrisy.

MAN: You find that the louder someone shouts

about sexual normality...

MAN: I didn't send the photograph, this hacker did.

MAN: I am not gay.

MAN: ...the more likely it is they'll be exposed as a fraud.

WOMAN: I love watching a bad person fall.

I love it.

[wolf whistle]

MAN: It's interesting, it's titillating,

and it's better them than us.

WOMAN: Mrs. Robinson has admitted to the affair

with Mr. McCambley.

MAN: A 59-year-old woman with a 19-year-old guy?

You couldn't make that up.

MAN: Today, I'm announcing my resignation from Congress.

MAN: Yeah! Goodbye, pervert!

DR. DREW PINSKY: We don't like hypocrisy,

that's someone we're not gonna forgive.

NARRATOR: Shameless hypocrisy.

CROWD: Shame on you!

NARRATOR: Theirs...

NEWT GINGRICH: There's no administration

with less moral authority than the Clinton-Gore Administration.

NARRATOR: ...and ours.

DAN SAVAGE: Half of America is thinking,

'I've gotten an oral sex from someone who isn't my wife.'

ANN COULTER: I do think Monica Lewinsky

was a victim in that.

BILL CLINTON: You're dealing with, in some ways,

the most mysterious area of human life.

♪

MARTY KLEIN: Sex scandals are like a pressure valve,

it's the opportunity to see important people brought down.

NARRATOR: What triggers a major political sex scandal

and rocks the foundations of power

varies widely across the globe.

In many cultures, any taint of marital infidelity

can bring down a leader.

RuRAOULPAUL CHARLES: Most politicians are owned

by Joe and Betty Beercan.

They have to kowtow to them.

If that politician revealed himself for what he really is,

that same person would not have voted for him.

NARRATOR: Yet in some European countries,

taking lovers is one of the unwritten perks

expected of those in power.

CAROLINE HELDMAN: I think they view US sex scandals as quaint.

In many European countries,

monogamy for politicians seems like a pretty outdated concept.

GIULIA SISSA: In a Catholic political culture

and religious culture,

there is an expectation of sinfulness,

of the fact that politics is erotic.

There is that kind of thrill

that goes with leadership, with celebrity.

KLEIN: Europeans do have a different attitude

about sexuality.

You know what you call a nude beach in Italy, right?

It's called a beach.

NARRATOR: Yet, even in Italy,

there is sexual behavior that crosses the line into scandal,

and nobody has tested the limits of the Italian tolerance for sex

like Silvio Berlusconi.

WOMAN: Another day, another scandal

for Italy's embattled prime minister.

VALENTINA MARTELLI: Silvio Berlusconi was

four-time prime minister of Italy.

During some of those terms,

he was somehow involved in a sex scandal

which was called Bunga Bunga.

NARRATOR: The exact origins and meaning of the term Bunga Bunga

are varied and obscure.

But in 2010, Italians adopted it to describe tales

of highly sexualized private parties.

MAN: In what some Italians see as a gloss on his image

and others as a disgrace,

various sex scandals involving call girls and wild parties

have been splashed across the Italian and international media.

NARRATOR: Bunga Bunga was widely accepted as boys being boys.

Then in January 2011, Berlusconi was charged

with having sex with an underage girl,

a criminal matter according to Italian law.

[speaking Italian]

SILVIO BERLUSCONI [TRANSLATED]: In the face of an accusation

of this nature, I will react.

I will explain exactly what the situation is.

I will still have the Italians on my side.

WOMAN: Throughout the scandal,

Berlusconi has maintained high approval ratings.

But is this one step too far

for Italy's notorious prime minister?

NARRATOR: Italians openly mock

the men of the Bunga Bunga parties

who were said to have worn pig masks as they caroused.

MARTELLI: When the trial started in 2011,

people took the streets of Rome to protest about that.

Women were mad because they were fed up

of being treating as an object.

They were angry of the fact,

the association between Berlusconi and girls

was just sexuality.

HELDMAN: Consensual sexual scandals

in most European countries are pretty acceptable,

but the Berlusconi scandal crossed a line

because he had sex with a minor.

NARRATOR: In June 2013, Berlusconi was declared guilty

and sentenced to seven years in prison.

But he remained free while the case was appealed,

and one year later, he was acquitted.

MARTELLI: The judges found him not guilty,

because at that time,

he could not officially note the age of the girl,

she could have lied.

NARRATOR: Immense power often shields the high and mighty

from the legal fallout of sex scandals.

But back in 1991, it was the sexual dynamics of the workplace

that took the spotlight.

The world watched as Anita Hill testified

against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

ANITA HILL: His conversations were very vivid.

He talked about pornographic materials,

depicting individuals with large penises.

JULIET WILLIAMS: It was shocking to hear Anita Hill

talking about sex before a panel of senators

in this austere space.

On the other hand, it was kind of shocking

that nobody had ever been talking about this kind of thing

in public before, given just how commonplace the behaviors are.

[wolf whistle]

NARRATOR: Ever since women entered the workforce

and started to climb the corporate ladder,

they've had to be mindful of who might be eyeing their skirts.

MICHELE B. GOODWIN: This was just normalized.

Running around a table from your boss

was just simply something that a lot of women put up with.

MAN: Next week, anytime, I'm free anytime.

DAVID EISENBACH: This was kind of like the 'Mad Men' era,

you know, guy made a pass at his coworkers,

and, you know, you just had to roll with it.

And that really lasted through the 1980s.

GOODWIN: It's not until women were becoming lawyers

and doctors and entering the business world

that sexual harassment in the workplace was something

that these women had the capacity to try to challenge.

NARRATOR: In 1984, Australia became one of the first

countries in the world to outlaw unwanted sexual advances.

In 1986, the US Supreme Court confirmed that sexual harassment

that creates a hostile work environment

is a form of discrimination.

Five years later, in the dignified setting

of a Supreme Court nominee hearing,

the unseemly details of workplace harassment

bubbled out.

HILL: He got up from the table to get the Coke,

looked at the can, and asked,

'Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?'

NARRATOR: Anita Hill was a law professor

and former colleague of Clarence Thomas

who was a conservative judge and nominee to the Supreme Court.

In the confirmation hearings,

Judge Thomas' workplace behavior,

as described by Professor Hill, came under intense scrutiny.

GOODWIN: There was information that was provided

to the Senate Judiciary Committee

about Justice Thomas having been alleged to have committed

sexual harassment against one of his subordinates,

Miss Anita Hill.

WILLIAMS: What followed was unprecedented

in the history of senate confirmation,

in the history of broadcast television.

MAN: Professor, do you swear to tell the whole truth

and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

HILL: I do.

WOMAN: Anita Hill sat before the Senate and told her story.

HILL: He commented on what I was wearing,

in terms of whether it made me

more or less sexually attractive.

He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films

involving such matters as women having sex with animals

and group sex or rape scenes.

SARI LOCKER: Everyone watched,

we all heard about the pubic hair on the Coke can.

We all heard about Long Dong Silver.

MAN: In fact, he never did ask you to have sex, correct?

HILL: No, he did not ask me to have sex.

He did continually pressure me to go out with him.

NARRATOR: He summarily dismissed Hill's allegations

and defended his legal track record.

He also suggested the attacks on him were politically motivated.

CLARENCE THOMAS: As far as I'm concerned,

it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks

who, in any way, deigned to think for themselves.

NARRATOR: The hearing soon turned into

a high-stakes version of 'he said, she said.'

LOCKER: Americans were very divided on this case.

They didn't know whether they should believe her

or whether the racial issues and the political issues

were really at the forefront.

MAN: In Compton, California,

people still can't believe a black woman is his accuser.

HELEN HENSON: I feel she has betrayed us 100%.

GOODWIN: They created T-shirts that said, 'The bitch lied!'

WOMAN: It didn't seem to me

like, like she was telling the truth.

WOMAN: The allegations that Clarence Thomas

sexually harassed a coworker and have caused such a stir,

the accuser held a news conference

to deny she engineered the last-minute disclosure

for political reasons.

HILL: I came to Washington

because I was asked by the Senate.

I did not initiate this investigation.

MAN: The clerk will call the roll.

MAN: Mr. Adams.

MR. ADAMS: No.

MAN: Mr. Biden.

MAN: Clarence Thomas does have the votes for confirmation

as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

NARRATOR: Clarence Thomas was sworn on to the Supreme Court

in October of 1991.

He continues to serve today as an intensely private figure

who has rarely spoken from the bench.

And Anita Hill's testimony continues to reverberate

throughout the land.

EISENBACH: The Clarence Thomas hearings provided this way

in which we could have this greater discussion

where what you say in the workplace

can actually be damaging and offensive.

MAN: Sexual harassment

is a matter

of deep and personal concern.

MAN: Unwelcome affection.

MAN: If you want to get along,

it will be beneficial to you to be a little bit nicer to me.

NARRATOR: In the early 1990s,

claims of sexual harassment in the US more than doubled.

In the coming years,

training in the dos and don'ts of sexual interaction

became a fixture of the American workplace.

WOMAN: Larry.

LARRY: I'd like, I'd like to...

WOMAN: Not that again, please.

MAN: Allegations of sexual harassment

will be treated with the seriousness they deserve.

WILLIAMS: We didn't have that way of speaking

until brave people like Anita Hill came out

and told it like it is.

HILL: Despite the high cost,

it is worth having the truth emerge.

NARRATOR: One year after the Anita Hill hearings,

a charismatic Southerner rose to the White House.

The scandal that erupted around him

threatened to destroy not only the man in power,

but a woman perceived to be all but powerless.

PENN JILLETTE: We should've protected her more.

We should have attacked the people that attacked her more.

NARRATOR: It was a shocking scandal involving the president,

an intern, accusations, and denials.

CLINTON: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

MAN: Hold on.

MAN: They are the tapes that almost brought down a president,

the secret recordings that made Monica Lewinsky

one of the most famous women on Earth,

and which have left Bill Clinton facing an impeachment inquiry.

MONICA LEWINSKY: We didn't have sex, Linda!

LINDA TRIPP: Well, what do you call it?

LEWINSKY: We fooled around.

TRIPP: Oh.

WOMAN: Back, move back, move back.

WOMAN: God help this poor little Monica.

NARRATOR: Most political sex scandals feature

a person in power and a person seduced by power.

And nowhere is the inequity of power so stark

as in the affair between the president and the intern.

TRISTAN TAORMINO: Power is always operating.

In our sexual fantasies, there's almost always a power dynamic.

Someone is at the mercy of someone else.

DITA VON TEESE: Powerful men,

they connect with you really well,

they don't just look past you.

They're, like, connecting, sizing up,

maybe stealing part of your soul while doing it.

I don't know. [laughs]

CLINTON: Thank you. Thank you very much.

HELDMAN: I could understand how Monica Lewinsky

could've fallen into this trap.

Having met Bill Clinton and been in his tractor beam

which he directs at to you,

and you're the only person that he's looking at,

and you're the only person who matters in the world

in that moment.

NARRATOR: Anyone can fall under the spell of great power.

JILLETTE: I was not a fan of Bill Clinton,

but I would've had oral sex with him,

because that's a great story.

NARRATOR: So, singling out a young woman for doing so

might be the height of hypocrisy.

DAN SAVAGE: When he ran for president in '92,

there were rumors about him being a bit of a dog,

and we elected him anyway.

So, discovering some years later

that he was the person we already knew him to be,

didn't pull back the curtain,

it didn't reveal Bill Clinton to be a hypocrite.

NARRATOR: In January 1998, allegations surfaced

of a sexual liaison

between Clinton and a young White House staffer.

Apparent proof came in the form of recorded phone conversations.

Monica Lewinsky had a confidante named Linda Tripp

who secretly made the tape recordings.

LEWINSKY: The first time I ever looked into his eyes,

I saw somebody totally different than I had expected to see,

and that's the person I fell in love with.

I was a 22-year-old foolish kid,

and there was this charismatic, powerful man

who was showing interest in me, and I think I was swept up.

NARRATOR: But it wasn't love that swept up Monica Lewinsky,

it was a hurricane-force sex scandal.

REPORTER: It's a high-profile investigation

in the hands of Kenneth Starr.

JOHN KING: Questions about the president's private sex life.

LARRY KING: It's like an X-rated steamy sex novel,

embarrassing and humiliating.

WOLF BLITZER: This material is quite graphic and lurid.

EISENBACH: One of the interesting things that happens

during the Monica Lewinsky scandal is,

how do we talk about it,

because talking about it got to the essence

of the alleged crime.

LOCKER: I was about to go on the air

to talk about Monica's blue dress,

and the producer came running over to me

right before we were going on

to say, 'Whatever you do, don't say the word semen.'

So I said, 'Well, how am I supposed to refer to this stain

on the blue dress?'

And the producer said, 'Just call it a human stain.'

NARRATOR: The president tried to wipe the stain

from his presidency on January 26, 1998.

CLINTON: I want you to listen to me, I'm gonna say this again,

I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

These allegations are false,

and I need to go back to work for the American people.

Thank you. [applause]

SAVAGE: People are like, 'Of course he lied about it.'

All of us cloak our sexual experiences and desires

in a little bit of obfuscation.

Half of America is thinking,

'I've gotten a [bleep] from someone who isn't my wife.'

NARRATOR: In August, Clinton became the first

sitting president to testify before a grand jury.

CLINTON: If the deponent is the person

who has oral sex performed on him,

then the contact is with, not with anything on that list,

but with the lips of another person.

EISENBACH: When Clinton says he does not have sexual relations

with Monica, well, what is sexual relations?

What is, what is, what counts as sex?

And Clinton's defense is, 'I didn't have sex with her.'

Yeah, I mean, oral sex, but that's not sex.

CLINTON: This is, you're dealing with, in some ways,

the most mysterious area of human life.

I'm doing the best I can to give you honest answers.

NARRATOR: The Republican opposition seized on the scandal

as a reason to initiate impeachment proceedings.

But though the president was subjected to withering

an unprecedented attack

in an effort to remove him from office,

he had the armor of high power.

Monica Lewinsky had no such protection.

MARGARET CHO: I think that you,

in this particular case,

really saw American misogyny

at its very, very worst.

Monica Lewinsky was really, really shamed,

body shaming, slut shaming.

She became a vilified character,

yet Bill is sort of glorified.

REPORTER: Miss Lewinsky was admitted here,

cleared in the White House more than a dozen times.

Many questions...

HELDMAN: The amount of public vitriol that we aim at women,

who are the other half of most political scandals,

the fact is, you are seen as the other woman,

you are seen as a social pariah,

and that label tends to stick with women.

KING: You're a victim in a sense?

I mean, you're a figure of the 20th Century.

LEWINSKY: I don't want to use the word victim,

but all of the details of what happened,

that's the culmination of it.

ANN COULTER: I do think Monica Lewinsky

was a victim in that.

I mean, she was, she was a very young girl,

she did stupid stuff, she did really stupid stuff,

but I do, I do feel sorry for her.

JILLETTE: Those of us, we should've protected her more.

We should've attacked the people that attacked her more.

NARRATOR: Bill Clinton survived impeachment proceedings

with his power and popularity intact.

It took Monica Lewinsky decades to recover

from the stigma of the scandal.

[applause, cheering]

HELDMAN: More recently, she did a TED video on bullying,

and she should know,

she was the first kind of victim of Internet bullying.

NINA HARTLEY: And she has a master's degree,

she has done something with her life,

and they will not let her forget

something she did when she was 21 years old.

So, how stupid is that?

KING: You're always gonna be Monica Lewinsky.

LEWINSKY: Yeah. KING: Right?

NARRATOR: Yet, some of the politicians who cried loudest

for the president's head during the sex scandal...

CRAIG: Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

NARRATOR: ...were soon to receive their own comeuppance.

COULTER: Larry Flynt started soliciting information

about any Republicans who had had affairs,

and a few came out of the woodwork.

BOB LIVINGSTON: I shall vacate my seat.

FLYNT: That was a very proud moment of my life.

♪

ANDY COHEN: I hate hypocrites, and unfortunately,

there are so many hypocrites in Washington.

It never fails to amaze me.

NARRATOR: The campaign to bring down the US president

is rich with irony and hypocrisy.

LIVINGSTON: We want the American people to know

that they're gonna get

good, clean, honest, efficient government.

NARRATOR: Because some of the president's most vocal opponents

had unzipped things other than their mouths.

SAVAGE: You had House Republicans

impeaching a president for oral sex performed upon him

by someone who's not his wife,

who were all of them, as it turns out,

getting [bleep] from people who weren't their wives!

CHRISTOPHER RYAN: You find that the louder someone shouts

about sexual normality,

the more likely it is they'll be exposed as a fraud.

CRAIG: I'm going to speak out for the citizens of my state

who, in the majority, think that Bill Clinton

is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.

NARRATOR: If there was ever an authority on hypocrisy

from on high, it might be Idaho Senator Larry Craig.

SAVAGE: From his perch in the US Senate,

Larry Craig had spent decades

attempting to tell other people

what they were allowed to do sexually

and not allowed to do sexually.

MAN: The 62-year-old is serving his third term in the Senate

while building a voting record against gay rights.

SAVAGE: He didn't think gay people should have any rights,

thought gay people should be able to be fired,

thought gay people shouldn't be able to serve in the military,

and voted that way.

NARRATOR: By thundering against gays and President Clinton,

Craig earned high approval ratings

from social conservatives and religious groups.

CRAIG: Thank you.

NARRATOR: But his private behavior was a different matter.

MAN: A plainclothes sergeant running a sting operation

observed Craig in an airport men's room.

The official police report states Craig

was repeatedly tapping his foot,

swiping his hand under the stall divider,

and peeking into stalls.

NARRATOR: The Minneapolis Airport men's room

had a reputation as a place where coded body language

signaled a desire for a gay hookup.

CHO: The fact that he knew all of the very elaborate stuff,

like running his hand under, how do you learn these hand signals?

It couldn't have been a mistake,

he wasn't, like, asking for paper or anything,

which is the signal is this to put your...'I need paper.'

MAN: The senator denies he's gay.

Suspicions of homosexual activity

have followed Craig since 1982.

EISENBACH: Here he's coming up after he gets caught

and saying, 'I'm not gay.

I just have a wide stance when I go to the bathroom,

and that's why my foot was trying to play footsy

with this cop in the next stall.'

I mean, come on, man.

INTERVIEWER: Will you definitely resign from the Senate?

CRAIG: You have my statement, that's all I can say, thank you.

COHEN: I hate a hypocrite.

So, these closeted dudes

that are screaming the loudest

about what sinners, people like me are,

I kind of feel like they have it coming.

NARRATOR: After just a week of scandalous headlines,

Craig announced he would resign from the Senate.

VON TEESE: We love watching people like that take a fall.

Hypocrites should take a nasty fall.

MAN: Representative from Georgia!

NARRATOR: One of the most powerful critics

of Bill Clinton's moral failings

was an imposing congressman from Georgia.

NEWT GINGRICH: There is no administration

in American history with less moral authority

than the Clinton-Gore Administration.

NARRATOR: Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House

and third in line for the presidency

shot to power as a conservative intellectual

and champion of family values.

But his private life was no model of virtue.

Gingrich asked his first wife, Jackie, for a divorce

while she was being treated for cancer.

SAVAGE: Newt Gingrich was cheating on his second wife

with the woman who would then become his third wife.

COULTER: You know, it's not a very impressive marital history,

I suppose you could say.

NARRATOR: Even as the president strayed, so did the speaker.

INTERVIEWER: You were in an affair at the same time

that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky

were having their escapade.

GINGRICH: Well, the honest answer is yes.

MAN: The confession makes Gingrich sound like a hypocrite.

NARRATOR: The hypocritical revelations

about Gingrich's second wife, Marianne,

were even more damning.

KING: She says that you came to her in 1999,

at a time when you're having an affair.

She says you asked her to enter into an open marriage.

NARRATOR: Marianne replied, 'No, no, that is not a marriage.'

According to Marianne, Gingrich then sought to divorce her

just months after she was diagnosed

with multiple sclerosis.

WILLIAMS: It took a little bit longer,

but ultimately, his political career

and indeed presidential aspirations fizzled

because of charges of sexual impropriety.

INTERVIEWER: To the president,

sir, you have done great damage to this nation.

You, sir, may resign your post.

NARRATOR: And then, Gingrich's would-be successor

walked into a trap set by an unlikely moral crusader.

FLYNT: I got one goal and one goal only.

Expose the hypocrisy that exists on Capitol Hill.

SAVAGE: Larry Flynt is the publisher of Hustler Magazine

and was appalled, as so many other Americans were,

at the witch hunt and the targeting of Bill Clinton.

FLYNT: Somebody's got to do something.

EISENBACH: And so, he puts this ad in the Washington Post

offering a million dollars to anyone who can prove

that they had sex with one of these Clinton accusers.

FLYNT: I didn't start this.

Ken Starr and Henry Hyde got in the mud first,

I just decided to jump in there with them.

COULTER: Larry Flynt started soliciting information

about any Republicans who had had affairs.

And I guess a few came out of the woodwork

that were surprises.

[laughter]

LIVINGSTON: It was great.

COULTER: And I would say Bob Livingston

was one of the biggest surprises.

NARRATOR: Larry Flynt's ad hit the newsstands

at the same moment Bob Livingston was favored

to assume the House leadership vacated by Newt Gingrich.

FLYNT: Well, we knew he was a philanderer.

We needed proof.

SAVAGE: Somebody apparently had that proof,

or Bob Livingston feared someone had that proof,

because he went into the House and gave a speech

admitting to not having been faithful

and resigned the speakership

before he actually even was officially speaker.

LIVINGSTON: So I must set the example

that I hope President Clinton will follow.

I will not stand for Speaker of the House

on January 6th.

NARRATOR: Livingston quit in 1999.

Bill Clinton remained in power.

COULTER: I think it's fantastic

when the President of the United States

has as a major ally the publisher of Hustler Magazine.

That's fantastic!

FLYNT: That was a very proud moment in my life.

He held a press conference on the steps of Capitol Hill

when he resigned,

and reporters asked him,

'What do you think about Larry Flynt?'

He said, 'Well, I think he's a bottom feeder.'

So they asked me for a comment, and I said, 'Yeah, that's right.

But look what I found when I got down there.'

NARRATOR: Even so, House hypocrisy had yet

to hit its true bottom.

After Livingston stepped down,

Dennis Hastert was elected Speaker of the House.

He went on to serve longer than any other Republican speaker

in American history, all while guarding a dark secret.

In 2016, Hastert stated

he wanted to, quote, 'apologize to the boys I mistreated.'

And quote, 'I took advantage of them,'

when he was a high school wrestling coach.

He earned a 15-month jail sentence

for lying about violations of federal banking laws

after paying hush money to an alleged victim.

SAVAGE: We now know almost everybody involved

in impeaching Clinton was philandering,

or in the case of Denny Hastert,

the hypocrisy was galling and appalling.

NARRATOR: On the other side of the Atlantic,

Europeans often regard American sex scandals as naive.

But then came the incident

that created an international outrage.

GIULIA SISSA: It was a special case.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a French political leader,

finds himself in an American situation,

and the clash of the two erotic cultures becomes explosive.

CROWD: Shame on you!

NARRATOR: American attitudes about sex scandals

can seem both uptight and hypocritical,

particularly when compared to the French.

SISSA: I don't know if we can mention any French president

who didn't have that sort of subliminal reputation

of being a seducer.

SAVAGE: You know, in France, the president, Mitterrand,

had a mistress and another family, basically.

And the mistress and his child by her

were welcomed at his state funeral.

NARRATOR: At Mitterrand's 1996 funeral,

his mistress, Anne Pingeot, and their daughter Mazarine

grieved alongside the president's wife, Danielle.

SISSA: This is a complex life with dramatic moments.

But now, it's time for peace,

it's time for acknowledging

everyone's self-image and dignity.

NARRATOR: The romantic life of another French president,

Francois Hollande, is famously intricate and nuanced.

SISSA: Francois Hollande lived for a very long time

with a powerful woman, Segolene Royal.

They had four children, they were not married,

but they lived together

and had this very united, wonderful French family.

NARRATOR: Hollande and Royal parted ways in 2007

when he became romantically involved

with Valerie Trierweiler.

And in 2014, rumor spread of an affair

between the president and actress Julie Gayet.

REPORTER: President Francois Hollande is preparing

to address allegations he's been carrying on

an affair with this woman.

NARRATOR: And the president's response

to intense media interest in his love life?

NARRATOR: Yet, even in France,

there is sexual behavior that can't be summarily dismissed,

as one of the most world's most powerful men discovered in 2012.

SISSA: It was a special case.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The fact that suddenly a French political leader

finds himself in an American situation,

and the clash of the two erotic cultures becomes explosive.

NARRATOR: In 2011,

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, known as DSK,

ran the International Monetary Fund.

He was also one of the early favorites

in the 2012 French presidential election.

His private life raised eyebrows, but few red flags.

SISSA: He had a notorious sex life

that people more or less knew about.

NARRATOR: Then came May 14, 2011.

REPORTER: Strauss-Kahn is charged with allegedly trying

to rape a maid at this upscale Manhattan hotel.

NARRATOR: After what the maid described

as a violent and sustained sexual assault,

DSK left for JFK Airport to catch a flight to Paris.

Police boarded the plane 10 minutes before departure

and arrested Strauss-Khan.

The sight of a European leader in handcuffs on US soil

shocked the world.

SISSA: When the news spread

about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York,

the reactions were of surprise,

but I would say surprise at the seriousness

of the American reaction.

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN: I still say what happens in the room

is a private thing, unless the prosecutors have proof of that.

NARRATOR: Though he downplayed the charges,

Strauss-Khan resigned from the IMF four days later,

and the seriousness of the charges

began to dawn on the French.

SISSA: What people thought was,

'How silly, didn't he know that he was in America?'

HELDMAN: There's definitely a line that you don't cross

when it comes to sex in Europe for politicians,

and that's the line between consensual sexual relationships

and non-consensual, also known as sexual assault or rape.

CROWD: Shame on you! Shame on you!

NARRATOR: The DSK sexual assault allegations

hit at a time in America when

the echoes of the Anita Hill hearings still reverberated.

WILLIAMS: He has clearly had a long history

of doing what he wants, when he wants.

SISSA: He failed to know the legal culture, the moral culture

in which he was living, and how could he do something so stupid?

NARRATOR: Though Strauss-Khan admitted

to, quote, 'a grave moral mistake,'

charges of alleged sexual assault and attempted rape

were dismissed.

In September 2011,

he withdrew from the French presidential race.

SISSA: Not that because he had that erotic life,

he wouldn't be a good president,

but that he should have been smarter

about the environment in which he was living.

Therefore, people started to say,

'Well, there is something

really, really suicidal

in what he did.'

WILLIAMS: I think the Dominique Strauss-Khan case

shows that Europeans,

just like any other reasonable person in the world,

are prepared to draw the line

when it comes to blatant abuse of power

and objectification of women.

NARRATOR: Having already gone transatlantic,

political sex scandals were about to blow up online.

JIM NORTON: It's one moment, it's, you know,

you're all lathered up talking to somebody.

'Let me see it,' 'Okay,' click, send, your life is ruined.

COHEN: I thought his screen name was awesome.

Carlos Danger.

I want to [bleep] that dude.

NARRATOR: The digital age has ushered in

a new kind of sex scandal.

Instantaneous, explosive...

[crowd chanting]

NARRATOR: ...and sometimes bitterly ironic.

EISENBACH: The Anthony Weiner story really reflects the power

of the male libido to destroy yourself.

SYDNEY LEATHERS: I kind of feel like I'm part of the most boring

sex scandal ever, because there was no actual sex.

[laughs]

So weird.

NARRATOR: In 2011, New York Congressman Anthony D. Weiner

was serving his seventh term

and married to his politically connected wife, Huma Abedin.

Then came a puzzling and eye-opening message

from the congressman.

LEATHERS: He had accidentally Tweeted a photo of his...

wiener, I guess, in his underwear.

ANTHONY WEINER: We're trying to figure out

exactly what happened here.

WILLIAMS: The mistake is that he thought he was sending

some of these images privately,

and it turned out that briefly,

they were posted to his public Twitter account.

NORTON: It's one moment, it's, you know,

you're all lathered up talking to somebody.

'Let me see it,' 'Okay,' click, send, your life is ruined.

COULTER: If you're a sitting member

of the House of Representatives

and you start sending out photos of your penis on Twitter,

yeah, it might make the news.

WILLIAMS: He denied everything.

WEINER: I didn't send the photograph, this hacker did.

NARRATOR: Within a month, he acknowledged sending the photo

and sexting with several women, and Weiner faced the music.

WEINER: Today I am announcing my resignation from Congress.

MAN: Yeah! Bye-bye, pervert!

NARRATOR: Two years later,

Weiner was staging a remarkable political comeback

running for mayor of New York City,

and leading in the polls.

JIM SIDERIS: He stood by the people

when the city was going through hard times,

he didn't abandon the city!

WOMAN: All of New York are going to make sure

that you are the next mayor.

NARRATOR: Candidate Weiner was also running

as a changed and humbled man.

WEINER: There is no question that what I did was wrong,

this behavior is behind me, I've apologized to my wife, Huma,

and I'm grateful that he has--she has worked through

these issues with me, and that I had her forgiveness.

NARRATOR: Yet Weiner had not kicked the habit.

A leak revealed he was secretly conducting

an intimate online relationship with a 22-year-old woman.

LEATHERS: I was really into politics as a young person,

and I had actually been a fan of his.

Initially, he had poked me on Facebook

and then started to message me,

and I pretty quickly realized that he was flirting with me.

We had exchanged a lot of emails and stuff,

and that's kind of when he made up the Carlos Danger name.

[laughs]

COHEN: I thought his screen name was awesome.

Carlos Danger.

I want to [bleep] that dude.

LEATHERS: It was just this cool, little secret that I had,

and it was kind of fun for that reason.

EISENBACH: He was this close to being New York's mayor, right,

his ultimate dream job.

But he can't stop himself!

He has to continue to do the same kind of sexting.

DR. DREW PINSKY: That's full-on sex addiction

you're seeing there.

And without treatment, that's going to continue.

NARRATOR: By July 2013, Leathers was burnt out on the deception

and the hypocrisy of Weiner's public image.

LEATHERS: He had been number one in the polls at the time,

and I had leaked information to a gossip blog, just saying,

'Hey, he's saying he doesn't do this thing anymore,

I know that he does this thing still.'

Did I want that part of it out there?

Yeah, but I didn't want my name in it.

NARRATOR: Nevertheless, the site BuzzFeed

soon leaked her identity,

and the spectacle of scandal grew out of control.

TAORMINO: It's like it wasn't even that big of a deal,

and yet it caused this huge media circus.

LEATHERS: They went after my family.

They would knock at my door with cameras in hand.

They went to my dad's work and harassed him at work.

I felt worse for my family than for myself even,

it was a really, really hard time.

NARRATOR: While Weiner was exposed as a serial sexter,

Leathers was portrayed as an attention-seeking opportunist.

LEATHERS: It was kind of easy

to run with this narrative about me,

that, you know, I just wanted the attention,

and I wanted to be famous and all of this stuff,

when in reality, I was deeply depressed during that time,

that was, like, the hardest time in my life, ever.

So I just think it's really unfair

for people to judge, yeah.

NARRATOR: Weiner's political star nose-dived again,

and he received just 4.9% of the vote

in the New York mayoral race.

WEINER: We had the best ideas.

Sadly, I was an imperfect messenger.

NARRATOR: Over the course of the scandal,

Sydney Leathers changed from a political idealist

to a tabloid regular, to an occasional porn star.

LEATHERS: I don't think I ever would have done porn

had this scandal not happened.

It just wasn't something that was even on my radar.

NARRATOR: While most sex scandals involved

men behaving badly,

the male gender doesn't have a monopoly on hypocrisy.

SANDRO MONETTI: A 59-year-old woman with a 19-year-old guy?

You couldn't make that up. That's a movie!

NORTON: Men are usually at the center of these scandals,

I think, just 'cause we're more corruptible sexually.

When a guy gets power, all of a sudden, we go berserk with it,

like, I can have sex with her, and then her,

and then go home to my wife.

HELDMAN: All the ingredients

that cause men in positions of power to have sex scandals

are also in place with women,

with the one exception,

that women don't see themselves as being invulnerable.

MONETTI: I'm sure there are female politicians

having sex scandals,

but I've always believed that women are cleverer than men,

so they may be cleverer at covering it up.

NARRATOR: In 2008, Peter and Iris Robinson

were the first couple of Northern Ireland.

IRIS ROBINSON: And so the truth isn't compromised,

Mr. Speaker, I will not be withdrawing my comments.

CROWD: Hear!

MONETTI: These two were the most high-profile couple

in Irish politics for generations.

PETER ROBINSON: And the stronger we stand together,

the more surely we will come through this together.

NARRATOR: Peter Robinson was first minister,

the highest elected office in the land.

His wife Iris was a member of Parliament,

a religious conservative with adamant anti-gay views.

I. ROBINSON: Homosexuality, like all sin, is an abomination.

MONETTI: Mrs. Robinson was very much on a family values crusade.

She was always tub-thumping for the right way to do things,

the very moralistic candidate.

Yet, behind the scenes,

we know that she wasn't practicing

what she was preaching.

P. ROBINSON: My first knowledge

of Iris' inappropriate relationship

came about midnight on the 1st of March last year.

The night that she tried to take her life.

REPORTER: Mrs. Robinson has admitted to the affair

with Mr. McCambley, who is almost 40 years her junior.

NARRATOR: She had been conducting an affair

with a much younger man, Kirk McCambley.

He was 19, she, 59.

REPORTER: Iris Robinson's fall from grace

was as shocking and as public as they come.

NARRATOR: Along with Robinson's hypocrisy

of being a religious moralist,

embroiled in a May-December affair,

there were whiffs of corruption.

REPORTER: The first minister's wife,

her former lover Kirk McCambley,

and the explosive allegation she abused her position

to help him set up in business.

NARRATOR: Mrs. Robinson was accused of securing

50,000 pounds for her lover,

and not declaring monies she personally received.

REPORTER: That contract awarded to Kirk McCambley

to run this café in South Belfast.

Specifically, if the then-alderman Iris Robinson

used her position in Castlereagh Council

to influence that decision.

MONETTI: The public will tend to forgive a sex scandal.

They rarely ever forgive a financial scandal.

REPORTER: As the votes came in,

it was becoming clear this giant of Northern Ireland politics

was about to be humbled in spectacular style.

MAN: Mrs. Robinson must vacate all public offices today.

MONETTI: Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson!

That's the way to do it if you're talking a sex scandal,

an affair with a man 40 years your junior.

I saw this movie, it was called 'The Graduate!'

PINSKY: We don't like hypocrisy,

so someone who seems to be espousing good values

who fails us, that's someone we're not gonna forgive.

NARRATOR: Politicians are often guilty of hypocrisy,

but so are the people they serve.

CHARLES: When there's a political sex scandal,

they're like, 'Oh,' they're talking about it and saying,

'I knew he was bad,

I know he was this, and I knew he was that.'

But the truth is, if that politician revealed himself

for what he really is,

that same person would not have voted for him.

NORTON: Whenever there's a scandal sexually, publicly,

it's not a reflection on the official,

unless they've done something monstrous.

It's a reflection on us and how nosy we are.

NARRATOR: So long as voters place their leaders

on moral pedestals, they're bound for a great fall.

VON TEESE: These people are dealing with things

that other couples are dealing with all the time.

It's very difficult having those dramas unfold

in front of the world.

RYAN: Political scandals are unavoidable

because of the nature of the people who seek office

claiming moral superiority.

'I can't control myself,

so we need to structure society in a way

that the behavior I'm afraid I'll do

is illegal, is controlled, is condemned.'

They want to design society to protect themselves

from their own desires.