By Mark David Blum, Esq.
How could I possibly resist jumping into this fray? Republicans and sex and the Internet and masturbation and children and Congressmen and cover up …. Oh baby, this is every mouthpiece’s wet dream. My instincts tell me this story is going to occupy the faux media for weeks to come; or at least until November 3rd.
In the now famous words of Senator Ted Stevens, “the internet is a series of tubes”. We can add to that quote that the Internet is a series of tubes through which Congress can engage in cyber sex with our children. Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley was caught with one hand in the tube and the other you-know-where. As a result, he immediately resigned his public position.
Stupid is as stupid does; Foley should have known better. As a member of Congress and a Representative of the United States and Her values, it was very inappropriate for Foley to be hot chatting a young employee. Calling a halt to a floor vote on defense appropriations for an online quickie is a violation of his public responsibilities. It is also fodder for comics for years to come. (Maybe if more legislators would masturbate before they voted, our war making and world wide abuses would diminish with the testosterone levels).
What has been attracting my attention to this otherwise meaningless event is the spin being put on the incident. America and the media are all outraged. Hearing of Congressmen fantasizing about sexual engagements with 16 year old boys pushes all of our so-called moral buttons. (Let us be clear; there is not a single allegation of contact between Foley and any minors. All allegations involve cybersex). Every hotheaded pundit and wannabe politico is grandstanding upon the backs of children making the case of how appalling and disgusting is this entire incident. In the same breath, these loudmouths cannot resist the temptation of passing the buck and finding a way to blame it upon the political ideologies and behaviors of the opponent.
Let us be clear as to where I stand. I do not consider cybersex to be anything more than an active engagement of the fantasies of the mind of the reader. From my perspective, online chatting is a way for each of us to reach out and experience those dark fantasies we experience on occasion without the risk of actually doing harm to another human being or ourselves. Via the internet, a user can explore their own fantasies without violating any of society’s norms and values. My detailed discussion of the subject is at this link.
Foley’s folly was that he was a member of the United States House of Representatives. As a national policymaker and standard bearer, Foley’s relationship with House Pages was that of role model AND employer. In either of those roles, Foley should have kept his lurid desires out of the House and in the privacy of his own home. That is his real sin.
Yet, this is indeed the Decade of Republican Faux America. When Republicans go bad, Republicans always find a way to make it the fault of Democrats. Nowhere in the Republican dictionary or vocabulary is language for assuming responsibility for one’s own mistakes and crimes. Ronald Reagan’s mantra, “Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Another Republican” has now metamorphasized into a Cut-And-Run strategy. When a brother Republican does ill, Party pundits cut down the Democrats implying the wrongdoing was the Democrats’ fault, and then Republicans run away and pretend to take the high moral ground.
In response to Foley’s behavior, President Bush was allegedly “disgusted", "disappointed", and "dismayed". His disgust and disappointment are understandable. Being ‘dismayed’ lacks credibility since there is no dispute that the Republican Leadership has known of the allegations of Foley’s antics for more than a year now. Though he has the legal cover of ‘plausible deniability’, I will not accept the President did not know; unless he chose not to know. As Leader of his Party, serious wrongdoing of another party leader would have to be brought to the President’s attention.
What is frying my eggs in this entire ‘to-do’ is the way the cover-up and spin control of the Republicans is not only absolving Foley of responsibility, but is now pushing the fault onto innocents. Foley resigned from Congress two days ago. Yesterday and for no good reason, Foley’s lawyer held a news conference. The lawyer said his client has a drinking problem and is checking into Rehab. (Rehab; the last refuge of a scoundrel). Foley was also claimed to be Gay and that Foley had been sexually abused by a Priest as a child. Why hold this press conference as none of these issues are political; they are legal. From what I am hearing, IF there should be found to have been criminal activity, Foley intends to defend himself by blaming alcohol, sexual confusion, and molestation by a priest as being the factors which made cybering with children an uncontrollable urge.
Such claims give pedophile priests and alcoholics a bad name. There is no drug on earth that can control your behavior and make you do something you do not consciously choose to do. No amount of prior sexual abuse can overcome your own will and self control and compel inappropriate behavior. With whatever issues it does have, even Catholicism is not that controlling. We all have baggage, scars, mistakes, horrors, and pain that we drag with us through life. They are the lessons we learn and determine our socialization and subsequent reaction responses. But aberrant behavior is a choice and Foley can cut and run to the nearest rehab, but one day he is going to have to admit that he made the choices he did; not the drug.
The Right Wing Spin machine is the most entertaining part of this entire story. Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert admits knowing of ‘some’ of the contacts for as long as a year ago; though he denies knowing of anything lurid. The Speaker defends his lack of action saying his office was swamped with Katrina and Iraq and other issues of the day such that Foley’s matter got lost in the shuffle. Apparently, the Speaker is real good at protecting Americans from terrorists but will not protect a single child from a pedophile because it just was not important enough.
Despite several leaders in the Republican Party knowing of Foley’s habitual cybering, no action was taken. Foley was allowed to remain in his position as Co-Chair of the Children and Internet Safety Committee. His extremist right wing agenda hurt a lot of innocent people. Today, we know why he wanted that position. Foley was struggling with his own issues. Even Patrick Buchanan said that he did not see anything wrong with sending "flirtatious emails to someone 1,000 miles away".
Some Republicans and their spin meisters are arguing they took no action because they did not want to be seen as “Gay Bashing”. From this argument we see that Republicans are more interesting in protecting the seat of a Gay Republican than advancing a Family Values Agenda. Fear of being called Gay Bashers would have dissipated instantly upon release of the content of the messages. This is just a great lie and attempt to pass responsibility onto others. Considering how hard Republicans have worked over the years to bash gays, inhibit their freedoms, and treat them as pariahs, now suddenly they argue their primary concern was they would be perceived by Gays?
Rush Limbaugh’s take on this situation is hilarious. Reminding listeners of how Democrats responded to former President Clinton, Limbaugh (the convicted drug addict) argued that after years of hearing how “it was just sex” and that “sex is ok”, Rush lost his footing and fell all the way down the slippery slope landing on the conclusion that Liberal free thinking about love and sexuality caused Foley to behave as he did. More importantly, Limbaugh questioned whether Liberals have the right to be offended at Foley because of the alleged ‘its just sex’ attitude. (At least President Clinton had the presence of mind to dribble on the dress of someone over the age of 21).
More Republican attacks and lies are that Democrat Leaders also knew of Foley and took no action. If memory serves, for the past 12 years, Republicans have controlled and been in all leadership roles in the House of Representatives. Management and policies are set by Republicans. Assuming this story has any truth to it, clearly the ‘bosses’ decided who got outted and who did not.
From the perspective of the real hate mongers on the Right, they also allege George Soros and his websites knew of the Foley text messages and cybering years ago. Republicans use this too as a foundation to question why the Foley chats are leaking to the media now. Republicans are using their own follies to blame Democrats for leaking the Foley story in time for the election. Clearly both sides are politicizing this issue but had the Republicans been honorable and released this information a long time ago, they could not be whining today. It was their responsibility to clean their own House and since they chose not to and opted for another Nixonesque cover up, let their Family Values platform crumble.
I am also appalled that two Florida (read: Republican funded) newspapers and Fox News had the story a long time ago and opted to not run it. None of these news services even bothered to assign a reporter to look into the story. From where I sit, that sin of omission reeks of tampering with the First Amendment; whether by management or by editors.
This entire fiasco is not a Democrat or Republican issue. Foley is his own man and will now answer for his own actions. The scandal we are witnessing is a scandal of Congress itself. Their blind arrogance, perception of unlimited power, single party control, no oversight, and unlimited amounts of money raining down in all directions has corrupted their culture. They believe themselves above the law and above inquiry. Republicans control and dominate Congress, as they do now every other aspect of society and we see in Congress what we see going on outside in the real world; that same attitude. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions. Blame is always placed anywhere else. Americans live in fear of boogie men and anything to do with sex is horrific.
It is time to clean the House. Whether Hastert stays or goes is irrelevant. On November 2, 2006, on our National Term Limits Day (aka Election Day), we have to stop looking at our local candidate and think in terms of what his or her one vote will do with the rest of the votes. It is time to end the disaster called the Republican Contract with America. Better named, the policy would be the Contract ON America. We as citizens have been hit hard at all levels by Republican policies. With Foley, we get to gather up all these years of abuses and crimes by Republican leaders and put them into a single event which best represents all their sins.
Let the Republicans decide their own leaders and how they will handle themselves in light of the cover up. It is their own problem. For us Americans, we are smarter than they think and we know right from wrong, and I have no doubt that on Election Day, we will all do the right thing and pull the lever to empty the cesspool under the Dome in Washington D.C.
