People Features

Sex, Nazis and phone hacking: The top scandals of 2011

By Clare Byrne Jan 2, 2012, 13:26 GMT

Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International (R) walks into a hotel with Rupert Murdoch (L) Chairman of News Corporation in London, Britain on 10 July 2011. The final edition of the 168 year old British Sunday newspaper, the News of The World went on sale on 10 July 2011. EPA/FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA

Paris - From philandering politicians to phone-hacking hacks and pro-Nazi rants, 2011 was as rich in scandals as it was revolutions.

The US contributed more than its fair share in the sex category - although what was arguably that country's steamiest scandal involved no sex at all.

'Weiner's the winner,' the Washington Post declared in late December, conferring the title of the Biggest Political Scandal of 2011 on New York Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The unfortunately named Democrat (Weiner is pronounced like wiener, a term for a sausage) landed himself in hot water when he mistakenly sent a photo of his crotch, wearing only underpants, to all his Twitter followers, instead of just the young woman with whom he was flirting over the internet.

Wiener made up a story about his Twitter account being hacked, but later owned up to being the owner of the body in the photographs and resigned from Congress.

Another politician, who shot to fame for being photographed in briefs, also found himself in a pickle.

Former California governor and ex-bodybuilding champion Arnold Schwarzenegger was revealed to have fathered a son more than 14 years ago with a woman who worked for him and his wife, Maria Shriver.

Adding insult to injury, it turned out that the housekeeper was pregnant with Schwarzenegger's child while Shriver, a member of the Kennedy clan, was also pregnant with the couple's youngest child.

The scandal, which nearly ended Schwarzenegger's 25-year marriage, managed to eclipse for a few days THE sex scandal of 2011: the arrest of ex-International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape charges.

Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York came as he was preparing to announce he would run for president of France in 2012. All polls at the time showed him likely to win.

Yet, despite evidence of a 'hurried' sexual encounter, prosecutors later dropped the criminal charges, saying they had doubts about the credibility of his accuser, an immigrant hotel maid.

By then Strauss-Kahn's name was mud as his 'legerte' (meaning 'lightness', his euphemism for womanizing) was laid bare through a flood of revelations and allegations.

Ironically, as his star faded, that of his wronged wife, journalist Anne Sinclair, soared.

A poll conducted for the online women's magazine Terrafemina named her France's Woman of the Year, for her decision to stand by her man - a decision seen by many as heroic.

Among the other prominent figures who became embroiled in sex scandals were US Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain and Zimbabwean prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Cain was forced to suspended his campaign in early December followed repeated allegations of sexual misconduct. Tsvangirai divorced his second wife after 12 days, saying he had been the victim of a plot after Locadia Tembo became pregnant outside of wedlock.

Meanwhile, in Germany, a politician who, like Strauss-Kahn, was tipped for the highest office in the land, was also ruled out of the running after being found to have plagiarized chunks of his doctoral thesis.

Defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenburg, a rising star in Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition, resigned after being stripped of his doctorate by the University of Bayreuth.

The blue-blooded 'cut-and-paste minister', as he was nicknamed, retreated to his castle in Bavaria.

Elsewhere, Germany's past - specifically its Nazi past - continued to provide fodder for scandal.

Star British designer John Galliano got the boot from French fashion house Dior after being accused of anti-Semitic insults in a Paris bar and after a video emerged showing him telling patrons of the bar drunkenly: 'I love Hitler.'

'Your mothers, your forefathers' would all be 'gassed,' he told them. At his trial in Paris, Galliano pleaded substance abuse and got off with a fine.

In Britain, Conservative MP Aidan Burley's Nazi-themed larks caught up with him.

Burley lost his post as a parliamentary aide after pictures and a video of him taking part in a Nazi-themed party at a ski resort in the French Alps found their way into the British press.

News of the World would have had a field day with the photos, were it still in business.

In a supreme irony, the British tabloid that thrived on celebrity gossip and populist headlines, was itself toppled by a scandal after the paper were alleged to have hacked into the mobile phone voicemails of a missing murder victim and victims of the July 7, 2005 London bombings, among others.

The intrusions caused revulsion in Britain and forced media baron Rupert Murdoch to close the paper. The case also triggered an official inquiry in Britain into the workings of the tabloid press.