Monday, October 02, 2006
Mark Foley, Catalyst for Irresponsibility
After Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Randy Cunningham, we have another one. In a sense, this is good; anything that extricates Congress from the grip of evangelical warmongers is a good thing (and Foley will remain on the ballot, so maybe the district is suddenly competitive).
However, there's a lot of bad things about this story, in its particulars, in its coverage, and the way that Democrats will almost certainly milk it. Specifically, this really shouldn't be about the sex. Because there wasn't any. Foley is a hypocrite, an embarrassment, a creep and an asshole, but we don't know for sure if he has actually fucked any teenage boys. So while in terms of getting the average dingbat voter to pay attention to the monstrous, secretive Ineptocracy that passes for the American federal government, the more sensational, the better, moral panics emanating from the left do nothing good.
It's already starting. On DailyKos, there are numerous references to how this damages "families." Great, another GOP talking point unconsciously repeated by the supposed scourge of GOP talking points. What the fuck do families have to do with it? A couple of rich-bitch Republican teenagers get gross emails from their boss and suddenly the nucleus of civilization is imperiled. Now the Democrats can rush in and triangulate themselves into the forefront of 'protecting families from child molesters,' which along with being 'hard on terror' (or pro-blank check for Bush, or pro-electrocuted genitals in our colonial prison outpost that we stole from Cuba, or whatever they want to be called), we may now smile with self-satisfaction that we've outgunned the GOP...to their right.
First, 'child molesters' are generally bogeymen devised by conservatives and propagated by a compliant media eager to peddle salacious untruths, all to truncate social services and heap responsibilities on the nuclear family that it was never meant to handle. That way we don't get creeping socialism in the form of subsidized child care, and maybe a few women will tire of the glass ceiling AND a double career and get back home where they belong.
Second, 'the family' already gets pretty much everything. Especially when you mean middle-class white families (as opposed to dysfunctional families, from the working class to the frightening specter of single black mothers). American society is utterly oriented around catering to the family, be it television scheduling or the geography of the country itself or tourist-friendly enterprise zones where red-light districts and culture used to be. So quit whining on behalf of the haves.
This has also produced some fantastically ridiculous journalism. Such as this from the NY Times's blog "The Caucus":
While congressmen caught in a sex scandal is nothing new, the way the story broke shows the power of Web technology to influence politics. Few people may have even been aware that instant messages can be saved and copied, but they have turned out to be a powerful weapon. Before the Internet, a story like Foley’s might have kicked around for months, with conflicting accounts, and possibly never surfaced. Once the existence of the e-mails became known, Foley was swept away within hours.
Gosh, wow! Computers exist! The news cycle has been condensed! Meta-chatter is all we do!
Really, this scandal should highlight the corruption that has come with radical expansions of power in a one-party state, which the Republicans have cultivated with lightning speed. The Speaker of the House knew that this was going on, as did nine other Republican congressmen, but they elected to keep it from Foley's Democratic committee co-members and from everyone else, because Ronald Reagan's eleventh commandment about never criticizing thy fellow Republican is paramount, even if it requires yet another cover-up in an election year when you're already smarting from scandals and this time it might lead to the cover-uppee committing rape. Who do you trust, values voters?
And even then, I just don't see why intergenerational sex is the world's biggest catastrophe. Granted it's not the norm and I don't specifically endorse it either, but really, what's the big? The fact that it's same-sex attraction certainly fuels some of the outrage, and I'd like to think that liberals might at least recognize that and not fuel it further. What's really outrageous about Foley's conduct is the abuse of power, the coercion and the terror-about-my-future-in-this-business it must have inspired in the teenage page. And this connects perfectly with the overall Republican attitude vis-a-vis everything: cloak governance in inordinate secrecy, push the panic button on terrorism and sex offenders and prayer in school, undermine the rule of law and the separation of church and state, rewrite the tax code to redistribute all resources upward, intimidate the media, and then do whatever the fuck pleases you because you've made it, baby.
If Foley broke any laws in 'transmitting harmful material to a minor' under Florida law, can someone with more patience than myself please consult the books to see if that moral transgression was a violation of a law written by a paranoid, antisex Christian Florida Republican? Because if so, this requires a bit more perspective. This scandal is occurring as thousands of children are starving or being massacred in the Sudan, as the US government continues a superlatively self-defeating war in Iraq that has killed who-knows how many people, and the like. Protecting the children is way too warped if it starts here.
Furthermore, the extraordinary lengths lawmakers go to to 'protect' children (but certainly not from poverty or bombs) probably contributes to an overall culture that will never get over its prurient fascination with the spectacle of the sexualized child. The more discourse there is on this subject, the more citizens get roped into this tantalizing cycles as they play out and the more dark, lascivious desires become energized. JonBenet Ramsey captures the public's attention because she was seriously hot, fifty million men kind of wanted to fuck her, and the repulsion/attraction her image inspired created a cottage industry. Mark Foley's pet pages--with whom he might have been simply exchanging naughty emails and getting off on them--threatens nothing of that scale, except a regurgiation of the same right-wing hysteria, only this time from a left eager to maximize its electoral gains by exploiting the alarmism inculcated in us by the right itself. Hurray for the terrorism circus that is the media.
However, there's a lot of bad things about this story, in its particulars, in its coverage, and the way that Democrats will almost certainly milk it. Specifically, this really shouldn't be about the sex. Because there wasn't any. Foley is a hypocrite, an embarrassment, a creep and an asshole, but we don't know for sure if he has actually fucked any teenage boys. So while in terms of getting the average dingbat voter to pay attention to the monstrous, secretive Ineptocracy that passes for the American federal government, the more sensational, the better, moral panics emanating from the left do nothing good.
It's already starting. On DailyKos, there are numerous references to how this damages "families." Great, another GOP talking point unconsciously repeated by the supposed scourge of GOP talking points. What the fuck do families have to do with it? A couple of rich-bitch Republican teenagers get gross emails from their boss and suddenly the nucleus of civilization is imperiled. Now the Democrats can rush in and triangulate themselves into the forefront of 'protecting families from child molesters,' which along with being 'hard on terror' (or pro-blank check for Bush, or pro-electrocuted genitals in our colonial prison outpost that we stole from Cuba, or whatever they want to be called), we may now smile with self-satisfaction that we've outgunned the GOP...to their right.
First, 'child molesters' are generally bogeymen devised by conservatives and propagated by a compliant media eager to peddle salacious untruths, all to truncate social services and heap responsibilities on the nuclear family that it was never meant to handle. That way we don't get creeping socialism in the form of subsidized child care, and maybe a few women will tire of the glass ceiling AND a double career and get back home where they belong.
Second, 'the family' already gets pretty much everything. Especially when you mean middle-class white families (as opposed to dysfunctional families, from the working class to the frightening specter of single black mothers). American society is utterly oriented around catering to the family, be it television scheduling or the geography of the country itself or tourist-friendly enterprise zones where red-light districts and culture used to be. So quit whining on behalf of the haves.
This has also produced some fantastically ridiculous journalism. Such as this from the NY Times's blog "The Caucus":
While congressmen caught in a sex scandal is nothing new, the way the story broke shows the power of Web technology to influence politics. Few people may have even been aware that instant messages can be saved and copied, but they have turned out to be a powerful weapon. Before the Internet, a story like Foley’s might have kicked around for months, with conflicting accounts, and possibly never surfaced. Once the existence of the e-mails became known, Foley was swept away within hours.
Gosh, wow! Computers exist! The news cycle has been condensed! Meta-chatter is all we do!
Really, this scandal should highlight the corruption that has come with radical expansions of power in a one-party state, which the Republicans have cultivated with lightning speed. The Speaker of the House knew that this was going on, as did nine other Republican congressmen, but they elected to keep it from Foley's Democratic committee co-members and from everyone else, because Ronald Reagan's eleventh commandment about never criticizing thy fellow Republican is paramount, even if it requires yet another cover-up in an election year when you're already smarting from scandals and this time it might lead to the cover-uppee committing rape. Who do you trust, values voters?
And even then, I just don't see why intergenerational sex is the world's biggest catastrophe. Granted it's not the norm and I don't specifically endorse it either, but really, what's the big? The fact that it's same-sex attraction certainly fuels some of the outrage, and I'd like to think that liberals might at least recognize that and not fuel it further. What's really outrageous about Foley's conduct is the abuse of power, the coercion and the terror-about-my-future-in-this-business it must have inspired in the teenage page. And this connects perfectly with the overall Republican attitude vis-a-vis everything: cloak governance in inordinate secrecy, push the panic button on terrorism and sex offenders and prayer in school, undermine the rule of law and the separation of church and state, rewrite the tax code to redistribute all resources upward, intimidate the media, and then do whatever the fuck pleases you because you've made it, baby.
If Foley broke any laws in 'transmitting harmful material to a minor' under Florida law, can someone with more patience than myself please consult the books to see if that moral transgression was a violation of a law written by a paranoid, antisex Christian Florida Republican? Because if so, this requires a bit more perspective. This scandal is occurring as thousands of children are starving or being massacred in the Sudan, as the US government continues a superlatively self-defeating war in Iraq that has killed who-knows how many people, and the like. Protecting the children is way too warped if it starts here.
Furthermore, the extraordinary lengths lawmakers go to to 'protect' children (but certainly not from poverty or bombs) probably contributes to an overall culture that will never get over its prurient fascination with the spectacle of the sexualized child. The more discourse there is on this subject, the more citizens get roped into this tantalizing cycles as they play out and the more dark, lascivious desires become energized. JonBenet Ramsey captures the public's attention because she was seriously hot, fifty million men kind of wanted to fuck her, and the repulsion/attraction her image inspired created a cottage industry. Mark Foley's pet pages--with whom he might have been simply exchanging naughty emails and getting off on them--threatens nothing of that scale, except a regurgiation of the same right-wing hysteria, only this time from a left eager to maximize its electoral gains by exploiting the alarmism inculcated in us by the right itself. Hurray for the terrorism circus that is the media.
