BAD Reads
The Foley Follies Aren't Funny--Or That Uncomfortable Thing Called "Taking Responsibility For Ones Actions"
Dear Republicans,
I guess you think that I and my fellow Democrats are jumping up and down in glee at the Mark Foley Follies.
We're not.
Sure, we'd like to see you booted out of the Congress. Sure we'd like to see the Christian conservatives out of office and back home in their churches instead of sticking their narrow minded noses into our homes and schools.
Sure we'd like to see Georgie B's hands tied for the next few years until we can send him back to Tex-ass.
But not this way.
What Foley did was repellent. And his handlers behavior when he was unmasked is equally despicable.
First there was the effort to make those same Christian conservatives happy by Foley's coming out of the closet. Blame it on his being gay--after all,--ALL gay men are pedophiles, at least according to that idiot NPR let on the air this week. And I'm sure lots of his fellow travellers were glad to hear their own bigotry validated.
Next, blame it on alcohol and his own childhood experiences. Ans perhaps those were factors in what he did, but does that really matter? No matter what his excuse, he committed the crimes!
Foley and his staff behaved badly. And the leadership in the House only compounded things.
As a number of pundits have pointed out this week, the Republicans just never seemed to have learned the lesson Richard Nixon learned the hard way.
"It's not the act that kills you. It's the coverup."
And after what they did to Bill Clinton over Monica (who was, of course, NOT a minor!), you'd think they'd remember that nothing attracts attention like a sex scandal!
Rather than admitting they covered Foley's activities up, rather than admitting they made incredibly bad judgement calls, rather than taking responsibility AND ACTING upon that responsibility, Denny Hastert and Co have blamed everyone they could think of for the whole situation.
Truth is, Hastert and his pals and the folks at the White House were a heck of a lot more interested in protecting Foley's seat in Congress and their own powers than they were in the welfare of some teenagers they weren't even related to. Heck, probably some of their parents were godless Democrats anyway!
Some time back I wrote a piece about Harry Truman, George Bush, and accountability , and the fact that George Bush refuses to take responsibility for his actions and looks to blame others for his mistakes.
Bad enough that we have such a president. Now we have a whole passle of his henchmen who clearly use his behavior as a role model.
Weren't Republicans supposed to be the party of "values"? Of "morality"? Weren't they all going to church every Sunday and decrying all of us godless Democrats, who didn't do such things, who were destroying the moral fabric of the nation?
And yes, I know tons of Democrats are as devout as Republicans. But from their propaganda, you wouldn't think so!
Apparently not.
The Mark Foley scandal doesn't gladden me. It sickens me, at all its levels.
My only hope is that the voters will manage to remember this a month from now and send these bastards packing.
And that any new Congressmen that come to Washington, be they Democrats, Republicans or some third party--will stop talking about morals and responsibility and start actually practicing them............
