Brad Sherman Exposes the ‘In-Flight-for-You’ Problem

Brad Sherman's in flight for you. Problem. California Congressman a Democrat, Brad Sherman, is defending himself after being photographed on a commercial flight staring open mouth at images of scantily clad women on his iPad. According to Metro and other outlets, the 71 year old Democrat says he wasn't watching porn, just scrolling the for you tab on X, formerly known as Twitter. You. He told Punchbowl News that the images came up via the algorithm and added, not sure this is the quote he really wanted to see everywhere. But he added, if I see a picture of a woman, might I look at it longer than a sunset? Yeah. Okay. The photos went viral, with one user asking why a member of Congress thought it was appropriate to look at that content on a plane. A public plane was in a private charter. White House communications director Stephen Chung piled on, calling Sherman a total gooner, slang for an explicit content addict. Sherman insists the content wasn't pornography, but admits it was not appropriate. And this isn't the first time a lawmaker's screen habits have caused a storm. In 2022, British Member of Parliament Neil Parrish resigned after getting caught watching porn in the House of Commons. Okay, so what's the real message here? If you're a politician, a CEO, someone in the spotlight, realize that if you're in public anywhere, people are watching what you're looking at on your screen. So you want to look at porn, you got to go home and close the door. That's the bottom line. Okay. I don't want to make too big a deal out of this because I don't care who you are. You could be someone who does nothing but search for an intellectual, scholarly treatise on third world economics from the 1950s. And if you spend enough time on the Internet and you're on any social media platform, all sorts of images are going to pop up of scantily clad people, of things that many people feel that are inappropriate. So you just got to realize that. And we've all been in a situation, something pops up. Maybe you were with friends or family. You click that down. So, no to the Democratic congressman, you can't stare at it longer than you'd look at a sunset. Now, I don't know how long he looks at sunsets because I. Obviously you're not supposed to look directly at the sun for any period of time, but I've got a beautiful sunset in the back of my house that I could see from our living room, our great room, and sometimes it's beautiful for half an hour. Is he staring at scantily clad women for More than half an hour? I don't know. Look, I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. This story has gotten particular play on the Fox News Channel and a lot of conservative outlets because their attitude is anytime something makes a Democrat look foolish, boom. That pushes our algorithm because our audience loves to see it. I'm not giving this extra push and I'm not hiding it either. I'm giving it to you straight. You do have to realize that if you are in a public place and a public official and people know you, what you look at on your screen, if it's got naked people, sexy, scantily clad people, someone is going to take a picture of it and it could be a scandal and unfortunately it could be the number one thing that defines your career. Because I'll be honest with you, I follow Congress more closely than a lot of people. I'm not really that familiar with California Congressman Brad Sherman until now. So that's the danger of getting caught with something like this. The other big revelation, and it's not a new revelation to you, which is we do not live in an era of privacy anymore. What you're looking at in public especially is not going to be seen as a private action. Now fortunately, we're not quite at the point where every single person in public life has to worry about everything they've ever searched on the Internet. Although we might not be that far away. You can certainly well remember when Judge Bork was going through his confirmation hearings and a big deal was made about the public record of what movies he'd rented at a Blockbuster Video and it was something like two mild mannered R rated movies and that was a mild controversy. Those days seem quaint, but you have to imagine we're not that far away from political op ed or, excuse me, opposition research. People cracking computers of politicians and searching their entire search history. So does that mean anyone who's ever looked for anything on the web or researched something that could be embarrassing is going to have their career ruined? I don't think so. But it's yet another reason to scare away good people from from public office. It's all well and good to say our politicians are all crooks. I don't actually think they're all crooks, but increasingly you could make the case that all of our politicians are people who are narcissists who will do anything for attention and have absolutely no sense of shame because they're going to be subjected to things that no sane human being with normal sense of self would ever want to endure. And not just in political life, the highest echelons of the corporate world. Now, many people have probably forgotten this. I try to forget, but it wasn't that long ago where Jeff Bezos was hacked and used. And I didn't look, but I certainly heard about it. Completely naked images of his were leaked to the media and reported. You know, when you're in the news as much as he is, you can just sort of blot that out. But for most people, that would be enough to really scar them for life. So I do have some sympathy for Congressman Sherman. But I also think, you know, you're a 71 year old member of Congress, some really hot, sexy, scantily clad woman, pop or man, I guess, pops up on your screen. You need to click down on that in about half a second, not longer than you're watching a sunset.