Indiscreet Conversations

The iPhone has a new application--a GPS navigational system called Loopt. If you're out and about and you want to know if your friends are in the neighborhood, your phone can tell them where you are and theirs tells you where they are. You're in the loop. With technology like this, it's a wonder anyone has affairs anymore. Total information: constant contact, anytime, all the time. There's almost literally nowhere left to hide.

What is true in our personal lives is increasingly true in our political culture. Jesse Jackson was caught whispering sour nothings about Barack Obama to a fellow guest on Fox News. "Barack's been talking down to black people," Jackson said. "I wanna cut his nuts off."

He thought the mic was off. He should have known better. In 1984 in a conversation with Washington Post reporter Milton Coleman, Jackson referred to Jews as "Hymies" and New York as "Hymietown." "Let's talk black talk," he told Coleman, assuming that meant it would be off the record. When Coleman decided to publish it, Jackson at first denied it, then finally admitted it and apologized. This time there was no denial--there couldn't have been. With blogs, webcams, Facebook and YouTube, there is always a mic somewhere and it is always on.

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