How the Net made sense of Zippergate

With the U.S. Presidency facing its most dramatic crisis since Watergate, the Internet, the town square of the late 20th century, is playing host to much-spirited public debate and individual commentary.

But even more remarkable, according to observers, is the manner in which ordinary people are making use of the Net to lampoon the entire "Zippergate" drama.

Watch the rebroadcast of President Clinton's address to the nation.

"You have to talk about this particular public event," said Dianne Lynch, author of "Virtual Ethics" and the Internet columnist for the Christian Science Monitor. "The kind of creative satirizing going on masks a certain public embarrassment about the topic, which is, after all, a serious topic involving the highest public official. But the Internet lends itself so that ordinary people have a voice there."

The proliferation of personal home pages, chat rooms and bulletin boards online has often been compared to the pamphleteering systems of previous centuries, offering a huge audience to anyone with a computer and modem. But Zippergate, with its particular subject matter -- has inspired hundreds of sites filled with jokes, parodies and irreverent games.

Has Zippergate changed your view of the Web? Add your comments to the bottom of this page.

A site called "Warp the Politician" presents users with face-shots of the main figures in Zippergate, which can be distorted as though they were made out of goo.

"Pop-Up Monica" presents a series of Vanity Fair photographs of Monica Lewinsky. When you click on the picture, a satirical thought balloon pops up.

One site presents several Presidential sound bites which, when played backward, reveal "telling" truths: "I try to articulate my position as clearly as possible," for example, becomes "She's a fun girl to kiss."

And if you want more, a search engine called "GoMonica" is dedicated to helping you do just that.

Exploiting the medium to the max?
Some critics watching the development of the scandal and the reaction on the Internet say the anonymity of the medium means users can treat the events in the White House like schoolyard gossip.

'It's very much like in the fifth grade, when schoolboys would gather in the corner of the schoolyard and tell each other sex jokes.' -- said Ben Bagdikian, former National editor of the Washington Post

"It's very much like in the fifth grade, when schoolboys would gather in the corner of the schoolyard and tell each other sex jokes," said Ben Bagdikian, former National editor of the Washington Post and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California at Berkeley. "It's a way for people to act like adolescents, who've just discovered sex and think they're the first ones to find out about it."

Bagdikian argues, however, that the Internet is partly reflecting the mindset of the national media. Watergate was not about an extramarital affair, after all. "John Kennedy had a far more active sex life than Clinton seems to have, but the standards of news were such then that we didn't report it," Bagdikian said. "This sex stuff has now moved the serious news off of the front page."

The sociology of Net satire
But part of the charm of the Net, after all, is that it brings national events to a personal level of jokes and gossip.

"It makes us all Walter Cronkite," said Josh Quittner, editor of Time Magazine's Time Daily. "Sure, it's narcissistic. That's been its strength all along... the Internet is the great democratizer, it's about what I think, not about what the media thinks."

He argues that the number of Web pages, and the voluminous debate about Zippergate online, shows the public is more interested in the scandal than the mainstream media has been willing to admit.

But while garish satire might be the most obvious show of White House interest from the Internet community, Lynch has found that a great deal of serious debate is also going on.

"If you get into the online communities where people trust each other, where there's a relationship present, and people feel comfortable, they have been moving past the humorous level of exchange and into something more serious and profound," she said. "I've seen people talking about it with a great deal of concern, even mortification... they're talking about the impact that it's having on (the U.S.'s) status internationally."

According to Lynch, who has been researching a column on how the Internet is reacting to Clinton's recent travails, the type of debate online is unlike that found in any other public forum.

"With talk radio, for example, that relationship is very public. People in the neighborhood hear you, and you get feedback," she said. "People who would never express their opinion out loud might be more comfortable doing that in a public forum, where they can maintain their privacy."

Online discussion can also demystify public events that might otherwise seem far-off and depersonalized. "For those online, they become more comfortable and accepting of things with which they can have a familiar conversation. It becomes a fact of life, it's not as shocking."