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Edited on Thu Oct-05-06 01:09 PM by BurtWorm
I'm getting a strange feeling about what I've been reading today, starting with the outing of the 21 year old ex-page from Oklahoma whose IM exchanges with Foley on ABC raised so many eyebrows. If he was 18 when he received those (in 2003), he was not exactly a child, which puts them in a whole different light.
There may be other pages who were younger than this guy with whom Foley was having IM sex. Unless they were *really* young (14, 15, 16) and really didn't want his attention, I'm not sure how much *there* is there. This might have all been legal behavior, slimy or not. I feel it's wise to wait until more evidence of something truly illegal surfaces (statutory rape, sexual harrassment) before assuming that Foley's private behavior is my business.
I also think we don't really know how to talk about what he was doing because we don't have all the facts. It's clear this isn't a case of pedophilia, which would involve prepubescent children. Sexual predation? Is that against the law? There just isn't enough information to say conclusively that Foley was up to something illegal. Immoral? I don't know. I need more facts.
I do have to note that Foley resigned in record time after the first revelation of his trouble with pages came out. Is that a sign of guilt? It certainly seems like it, but who can say for sure, besides Foley and any hypothetical victims? Maybe this was a guy who really could not deal with being out of the closet.
Now turning our attention to Hastert, et al., I also have to note that Foley's behavior had been "reported" to the leadership for years. *Someone* thought *something* reportable was up with Foley and the pages. To tell you the truth, if I was given the e-mail that was first reported, the one the page said was "sick, sick, sick, sick, sick," I would have (in fact DID have) trouble seeing anything "wrong" with it. And yet...knowing that Foley had a taste for the young 'uns, you would think, should have been enough to suggest to someone in leadership that, at the very least, a potential political problem might surface out of this. You'd think they'd want to make sure Foley wasn't pursuing ex-pages who didn't want to be pursued, or be certain he wasn't making a habit of schtupping active-duty ones. And it seems clear that they didn't take even those steps.
And yet...on the other hand...if Foley's behavior was not illegal and only immoral in the eye of the beholder, isn't it ultimately moot whether or not Hastert et al. took the proper steps to make sure it was or wasn't illegal or immoral?
I don't know. I'm nervous that the media will suddenly conclude that Hastert is off the hook because there's not enough substance to the charges against Foley. Then they could turn their gaze on who was behind this leak and dig up a Democrat somewhere to pin the blame on. Then what has been till now a story about Republican hypocrisy, incompetence and corruption will suddenly turn into one about Democratic reaching and doing anything (except something principled) to get back into power. If Foley were a Democrat, of course, we'd be subject to months of stories with no substance. But Foley's not a Democrat.
Finally, I think it's dangerous for Democrats to keep playing up sexual predation and Foley's danger to "children." This is really about the GOP's utter hypocrisy as the "Family Values" party. The ones who should have the most problem with Foley's behavior and Hastert's failure to take it seriously are the authoritarians on the extreme right who form the GOP's voter base. But there's some evidence that a lot of them simply don't care about this, hypocritically enough. To them, Nancy Pelosi's scariness is more of a concern than Denny Hastert's hypocrisy. If that contingent is large enough in enough key districts...well, you can finish the horrible thought, I'm sure.
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