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Now!
Ahhh, as Dr. Susan Block has noted,
it takes a whiff of sex to make a good political scandal these
days. Ex-Rep. Duke Cunningham driving around in his ill-gotten
Rolls Royce; living on his bribe master's yacht; cashing in on
his position to the tune of over $2.5 million and thumbing his
nose at the public barely registered on the outrage scale earlier
this year. Fellow Republican ex-Rep. Bob Ney joined the Duke
in prison for his own bribe-taking escapades, but you'd never
know it from perusing the "liberal media." But, Rep.
Mark Foley's Internet stalking (and worse to come) of teenage
boys cannot be so easily dismissed.
It would probably take a false
confession by a glory-seeking pervert in a decade-old kiddie
porn murder to chase this one off the news nowOK, maybe not.
But, for a scandal that was quietly relegated to the back pages
of every "liberal media" newspaper it first appeared
in, it didn't take long for the aroma de sex to push it to the
front pages.
After wasting some $80 million
of tax dollars hounding Bill Clinton for consensual oral sex
with an adult (though one much younger and of much lesser status),
it's now priceless to see the very same GOP operatives who were
behind that witch hunt scramble. The GOP spin machine is running
at warp speed.
Defending
the Inexcusable
Once ABC broke out the really
disgusting exchanges between Foley and the Pages, it quickly
put an end to the dittohead outrage against ABC and inane defenses
of the indefensible. This irony-challenged writer's missive is
representative of many that have appeared on ABC's website:
"Congressman Foley's enemies
have been trying to drag his private life into the public arena
for years, and his current opponent is no different. This is
merely a case of the congressman being a clumsy letter writer
on a project he should have probably staffed out in the first
place, and is much ado about nothing."
Well, the GOP took little time
in "staffing out" the spin. First it was Bush mouthpiece
Tony Snow presenting the official White House rationale, condescendingly
answering a reporter's question:
"I hate to tell you, but
it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have
been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply
naughty e-mails."
Yeah. "Simply naughty
emails" between a 52-year-old Congressman and 17-year-old
boys. Nothing to see here.
Matt Drudge unbelievably blamed
the Pages themselves on his radio show stating:
"And if anything, these
kids are less innocent - these 16 and 17 year-old beastsand I've
seen what they're doing on YouTube and I've seen what they're
doing all over the internet - oh yeah - you just have to tune
into any part of their pop culture. You're not going to tell
me these are innocent babies. Have you read the transcripts
that ABC posted going into the weekend of these instant messages,
back and forth? The kids are egging the Congressman on! The kids are trying to get this out of him."
"Seventeen-year-old beasts!"
What does that make the 52-year-old ex-Congressman? Remember
the sanctimonious Foley was the head of the Congressional Caucus
on Missing and Exploited Children. He may well be charged under
his own using the Internet for stalking minors for sex law. One
could not make this up!
"On
Offense," Indeed
Rush Limbaugh has gone way
over the top--a feat even for the "Doctor of Democracy"
gas bag himself. Rush treated all to the spectacle of GOP House
Speaker Dennis Hastert first denying he had knowledge of Foley's
emails; then, apparently after regaining his memory, claiming
they were merely "over-friendly" missives; then claiming
that someone (surely, not the Democrats?) had the emails and
sat on them for three years (Uh, Denny, why then did they not
release them for the 2004 election?); then claiming "We
took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign."
(Uh, again, you asked him to resign and he did? Guess it had
nothing to do with ABC showing Foley the emails; which was the
true causal event.)
Hastert finished off his self-serving
Limbaugh appearance by telling Rush that the entire Foley affair
was "a political issue" and that "we are going
on offense."
Then Rush went ballistic. Limbaugh
actually has blamed Foley depredations on, who else, the "libs"
and the "Drive-by Media." He went so far to claim that
the 'libs" are the ones now equating gayness with pedophilia;
"But throughout this whole
episode, it just struck me that the libs and the media have equated
being gay -- I mean, this has all happened because Foley was
gay and that means he's a pedophile."
Wow. This comes from a guy
who has never failed to claim that ALL gays are potential pedophiles,
unworthy of even the most basic of rights.
But it is the right-wing website
www.TownHall.com that
takes the prize for disingenuous partisanship. Town Hall columnist
Ben Shapiro states:
"Were Mark Foley a liberal
Democrat from San Francisco, liberals would be hard-pressed to
spot a problem with his behavior."
Huh? Guess it's a Town Hall
talking point. In August, before Hurricane Foley hit, Town Hall
columnist Kevin McCullough actually wrote:
"The truth is liberals
seek sexual utopia where no rules apply. Restraint has in fact
become a dirty word to them. Self control - a throughly (sic)
foreign concept.
Waging the revolution for all
that is true, just, and good involves every single one of us
who know better to actively demonstrate this by preventing such
an agenda from becoming reality.
For liberals to denounce pedophiles,
ultimately they would have to denounce, lesbianism, homsexuality,
(sic) and their particular favorite - adultery. And that's just
no going to happen.
At the end of the day there
are such a thing (sic) as moral values, and liberals despise
them - because as they see it - those moral values limit their
sexual freedoms. And if this is "America" - isn't it
all about the freedom to get your groove on?
Liberals love pedophiles."
And, conservatives apparently,
excuse them.
MICHAEL DONNELLY has no problem with anyone's adult
sexual preferences. He condemns anyone of any sexual persuasion
soliciting children and abhors sanctimonious bastards of any
political persuasion who decry consenting adult sex and then
shield pedophiles. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com
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