i break my promise not to write about politics

"The Representative's Office" by Norman Rockwell

Let me begin by saying there is nothing more dangerous to us as a nation then when we choose to overlook serious political problems for the more appealing realm of salacious gossip and innuendo. We are playing with fire when we move issues like the war, torture and immigration to the backburner so that we may devote the lion’s share of our attention to the much less important but much more gratifying subject of our politicians’ personal failings. That said, ha-dee ha HA! …and again, HA! The chickens have come home to roost, and the GOP has shown its’ true colors. Which is not to say that the entirety of the Republican leadership shares former Representative Mark Foley’s tastes; I assume a good number of them have no interest in watching a nude, underage boy masturbate on all fours, little desire to see his quote “cute butt bouncing in the air”. In fact, I doubt that more than a handful of Republicans even knew that there was such a thing as a “cast fetish”- let alone the pleasures of discussing this topic with a pimply adolescent.
No, it’s not that I think there’s considerable over-lap between the memberships of NAMBLA and the GOP… far from it. It’s that for ages now the Republican leadership has held itself up as the true and only guardians of our nation’s integrity and morality, while they knowingly covered up for Mark Foley. After years of dragging us through the muck and mire of semen soaked interns and disappearing cigars, the GOP has shown, in no uncertain terms, that all its’ self-aggrandizing in the name of integrity and leadership was nothing more than a cheap power grab rooted in no ideology beyond personal advancement. These same men who crippled the second half of the Clinton administration -thus distracting that president and the nation from focusing on the more pressing matter of the growing threat of terrorism- have known for months* of their compatriot’s hobby of grilling high school boys about their onanistic practices, but chose to cover it up for fear of losing a vital seat in the House. Even now, the self-appointed Grand Wizard of American purity, Jerry Falwell, has come out in defense of House Speaker Dennis Hastert. It’s a cynical move on Falwell’s part, reflecting a set of priorities that place personal power over any such worn and irrelevant values as integrity and honesty.
It is absurd to claim that the warped sexuality reflected in Foley’s writing is sexuality shared by his fellow Republicans. However, it is equally absurd to think that the Democratic Party, fighting for its’ very life, won’t exploit this mess, blurring the line between those accountable and those with the misfortune of being in a party soiled by scandal. And nor should they; the current leadership of the Republican party owes a considerable amount of their success to an eight year campaign of exposing every tiny bit of filth they could uncover about Bill Clinton, from pot smoking to Paula Jones. You can’t set the tone for American politics and then complain about its’ ugliness once it turns on you. During the 1990s we watched the political climate in this country become more and more polarized, while having less and less to do with substantive issues. The rationale behind the smear tactics of the Republican Party was that character does matter, that leadership is meaningless without moral integrity. Okay, so be it. But what does it say about the character and moral integrity of Representative Tom Reynolds, who chose to hold his press conference addressing the scandal in a room filled with small children (presumably to thwart journalists from asking direct questions about his pal Foley’s “totally stiff wood”)? Or what great leadership skills does Speaker of the House Hastert display by choosing the Rush Limbaugh show as the only venue to address the accusation that he knew about the e-mails since April* (or 2004, according to congressional aide Kirk Fordham)? This sort of cowardly avoidance of the facts does not instill the confidence in my nation’s leaders that the far-right promised when they took over six years ago.
And so, the search for blame begins. Just like their fellow traveler Condoleezza Rice, who’s currently under scrutiny for dismissing the CIA’s warning about an imminent attack on America two months and a day before America was attacked, the Republican leadership is engaged in a dangerous two-tiered response of lie, and then blame. Aware that their claims of ignorance will soon be betrayed by paper trails and loose-lipped aides, Hastert and co. are laying the groundwork for a plausible defense of a vast, left-wing conspiracy trapping them in its’ web of deceit. They are (like the White House) burning the public effigy of Mark Foley, raging against their fallen comrade for foolishly leading them into this mess by choosing such an easily reproduced medium to engage in his activities. At the same time, Representative Ray LaHood, has taken it in a different, and interesting direction. LaHood, who coincidentally hails from the same dying beast that is the Illinois Republican Party as Dennis Hastert, has called for the immediate elimination of the Page Program. This same man refused to criticize his old buddies Hastert or Representative John Shimkus, who chairs the Page Program in question, despite the fact that their involvement in the cover-up boarders on pimping. While Mr. LaHood can sleep well tonight with the delusion that he has our children’s best interest at heart, I can’t help finding the discussion of ending this program as the first in a series of moves that can only lead to the page’s availability being the true culprit. If we turn this into an issue of denying our Congress access to young people, aren’t we implicitly accepting the conclusion that adults who engage in inappropriate sexual activities with children are driven to do so by the over-whelming appeal of children as sex objects? Countless millions of adults are given unrestricted access to children daily without succumbing to this urge, which suggests to me that the undeveloped bodies of children do not hold universal appeal. It’s dangerous if we begin assuming every adult who spends five minutes with a child will suddenly become possessed with the compulsion to use that child as a sexual plaything. It’s a lousy cheap fix Mr. LaHood offers, placing the survival of his corrupt political party over the lives of teachers, pediatricians, social workers and parents for years to come.
And what of Mr. Foley, who finds him-self so abruptly abandoned by his party? Don’t worry about poor Mark, he’s already laying the groundwork for what could be a quite lucrative second career on the talk show circuit. Using attorney David Roth as his mouthpiece, Foley has simultaneously denied that anything beyond the Internet exchanges happened between him and the lad (it’s always a good policy to only admit the facts already commonly known- no need to concede one iota beyond what’s already proven). But while admitting that yes, he did ask a teenage boy if, quote: “is your little guy limp...or growing”, there’s not one, not two, but three mitigating factors that should reduce the blame. First: he’s gay. Well, okay, I guess that’s kind of a given, judging from the nature of his cyber-sex, but it also has the benefit of portraying him as a lonely, tortured man, forced by the bigotry of society to exist in a neither world of shame and sexual degradation. This argument would almost move me, if it weren’t for the fact that the bigotry and marginalization he’s suffered as a homosexual weren’t the ideological cornerstone of the political party in which he served his entire career. Perhaps in a more accepting, less prejudiced society he wouldn’t have to seek out human contact in less threatening bodies of children, but his tireless commitment to the Homophobia Express wing of the GOP robs Foley of any right to play that card.
The second mitigating factor Foley offers to reduce his accountability is that old devil in a bottle, alcohol. His post-resignation missives have been sent from within an undisclosed rehab as proof that he is in the grips of alcoholism and that he’s committed to defeating it. The sacred myths of Alcoholics Anonymous are so tightly woven into the fabric of our society that the sufferer of the ‘disease’ needs only to acknowledge the illness for people to understand his meaning. Running throughout the theology of AA is the notion of alcohol taking possession of the drinker; that he or she is no longer in control, and that any actions taken are ultimately the fault of the demon drink. Even when making the rounds to make amends, as one of their steps require, the implied emphases is on helping the former drinker heal through atonement, not on cleaning up the mess he or she has made of their victims’ lives. After all, the drinker is a victim, and in a way, the greater victim, because they had to sit by helplessly while the booze destroyed loved ones. This cult of rationalized self-pity is an ideal safe haven for those with no genuine interest in facing what they’ve done. Quite a few of Mark Foley’s former associates have come forward to contest his claims of being a drunk; that none of them recall ever knowing him to show signs of having a problem. While these statements could be merely further proof of the Republican Party distancing itself from a tainted member, I wonder if maybe there’s some truth to these statements. Until we seriously question the validity of the image we’ve accepted of the compulsive, helpless drunkard held captive by his ‘disease’, alcoholism will continue to provide a convenient excuse for those hoping to avoid responsibility.
The third reason Mark Foley offers to explain his behavior is the most grotesque…and most obvious. I’m not going to contest whether or not Mr. Foley was molested as a child; for all I know he may very well have been. But what does that prove? Nothing, as far as I’m concerned. One of the ugliest, most vile lies we’ve come to accept is that molestation is an unbreakable cycle, that from victim grows victimizer. Thanks to the vulgarity of talk-show psychology, we look at the abused child and all we see is the soil that the seed of the next generation’s molester will sprout from, a mathematically flawed theory echoed endlessly by bad movies and the self-help industry. There’s no genuine consideration of how this message reads to those who have had to live through this trauma, how it transforms them from victim to dormant monster. I fully admit I have no idea why people (men, let’s be honest) feel the need to focus their sexual energies toward children. Aside from any obvious issue of morality, I just can’t imagine what the appeal is in sexual partnerships where the other person not only doesn’t enjoy it but will spend the rest of his or her life trying to scrub you from their mind. But, what I do know is that amongst the countless victims of this horror I’ve encountered throughout my life, not one of them ever expressed the faintest interest in switching roles. As I said before, I can’t possibly tell if Mark Foley is telling the truth when he says he was molested as a child. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment and say he was; then what a shameful, wretched creature he is to exploit that fact now, in this situation, just to get his ass out of the fire. Through out his (now over) political career, he had countless opportunities to use the public forum to address this social ill, but instead, chose to remain silent. In an alternate universe, Mark Foley could have been a brave and noble leader, exposing both his past trauma and his sexual orientation, redefining how we perceive such controversial issues. Instead, he kept his mouth shut, choosing to only open it when he was bellying up to the trough with all the other little piggies.
So the political chapter of Mark Foley’s career ends, and the penitent survivor chapter begins. In a year or so, once the vividness of his e-mails fade from our memories, he’ll return, confessional memoir in hand. He’ll do the talk-show circuit, and while he’ll never again hold elected office, he’ll carve himself a nice, little niche in pop culture landscape. So too will the Republican Party survive, contrary to all expectations. Certainly some seats will be lost next month, and a Democrat controlled Congress will mean the final two years of the Bush administration will be spent shredding documents and dodging subpoenas, but in the end, they’ll still be the dominate political party. It’s common amongst both the left and right in this country to see in the continued success of the Republicans a latent fascism amongst the American people, but I disagree with this sentiment. Poll after poll confirms that the vast majority of Americans disagree with every major plank of the Republican platform, from prayer in school, to torturing prisoners. What Americans love in the Republican Party has nothing to do with its’ Hobbesian ideology, and everything to do with what it says about us. In a world where our leaders are so naked in their will to power, so blunt in their singular objective of winning, that they will lie, cheat and steal to secure that victory, we are free to pursue whatever selfish, self-serving goals we choose, with whatever means are available. For those of us on the outside of the political mainstream, it was galling when George Bush defined himself as the candidate of character during the 2000 election. He was telling the truth, we just failed to understand his meaning of the word. Indeed, the lying and stealing that has been the hallmark of his six years in office has so profoundly lowered the bar of moral conduct that none of us need feel the least qualm or guilt when recollecting our own petty crimes. This is a president who cheated his way into office, lied us into a war, used the War Powers act to consolidate power and crush his opponents, and liberally redirected the blame for his failures onto an ever-increasing mound of sacrificed scapegoats and straw men.
We protect ourselves from blame, from accountability. We all do shitty little things in the dark, and when exposed, quickly shift the blame away from ourselves and on to others. The moral example the GOP leadership offers us is not how to stop being liars and finger pointers, but how to be successful liars and finger pointers.

*During the time between writing this and editing it, Foley's former chief of staff, Kirk Fordham, has come out with the statement that he warned the House Leadership back in January of 2004.

tell a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe anyone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously"... "in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility"-mein kampf, written by adolf hitler (cut and pasted from Wikipedia)