And so another member of the “Do as I say not as I do” Family Values party goes the route of Humpty Dumpty.
With a show of hands, is anyone surprised?
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Meet “The Honorable” Mark Foley, or at least that’s how our official government pages still describe him. Evidently they either didn’t get the memo regarding his recent activities or someone is nightmarishly confused as to the definition of “honorable” but I digress.
It was never a secret to anyone north of the Mason-Dixie that Foley was and is gay, but like most who respect the right to privacy or who imagine a government more concerned with real issues than whose sleeping with who or say, which oil my French fries are cooked in in NYC are wont to do, we up these parts ignored it.
However, the details of this story arrive straight from the “You can’t make this stuff up” file and some things in life simply can not be ignored forever, especially when such things involve predatory behavior towards children on the part of high ranking, powerful Congressmen.
A brief review:
Former Congressman Mark Foley was elected in 1994 by the good people of Florida, the state that was first in the nation to ban gay adoption. He had served as a representative for more than a decade before his resignation Friday afternoon and while employed by we the people, and as kindly pointed out by America’s #1 cable news anchor, Foley did “some good work.” For example, as Chairman, yes I said Chairman, of the Congressional Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, Foley worked diligently to pass laws protecting our youth, the most recent being a piece of legislation introduced in July which proposed to increase protection of children from “exploitation by adults over the internet.”
A good thing? Indeed.
The unfortunate irony is while Foley developed these laws, he also apparently broke them while being, as he describes, “overly-friendly” towards his young male pages. That very sentence gives me the creeps. Need a moment to cringe? Go ahead. Take two.
Of course when compared to having heard the respected Brian Ross of ABC News reading the phrase, “Do I make you horny?” in a re-enactment of the alleged instant messages between Foley and a page boy, the previous sentence falls a few notches on the creep-o-meter. But again, I digress.
Although Foley left office, something tells me this story is only going to get worse as more sordid details than any of us ever thought possible or care to know, inevitably emerge over the next few weeks as former pages are hunted down in the streets by the blood thirsty media. As such, a simple disappearing act will not help Foley. No. What he needs right now is a serious, liberal excuse-making intervention session with some of the better known Democratic criminal apologists in our government. In review, it would appear Foley already has a pretty good grasp on how it works. After all, he is on record as describing internet predators as being “…sick people. They need mental health counseling…”
That’s right, Mark! They’re sick. And wait–you’re sick! Or sick times 13 according to at least one boy. But you’re getting it now.
As has been the case for far too long, if you’re sick, you potentially get a pass when what is needed in most cases, and certainly this one, is a prison cell preferably in a mountainous or underground area with an unpopulated, childless 50 mile minimum parameter.
But the American people tend to be a compassionate crowd when one cries “Help!” and who living a lie such as yours wouldn’t need help? More to the point, who wouldn’t “need help” after spending years as a prominent member of a party of self-righteous, dictatorial, moralists whose fingers are curiously fixed in only one pointed direction? I imagine “Don’t ask, don’t tell” takes on a unique meaning all its own when one finds himself on the same team with the likes of Rick Santorum, a man who believes homosexuality “undermine(s) the basic tenets of our society and the family.” I spare you Santorum’s parallels with homosexuality and beasitality.
Going back a few years, Foley described “… the innuendo about (your) private life (as being) “revolting and unforgivable.” Of course what is truly revolting and unforgivable in this case is not Foley’s homosexuality but the fact that he preyed on those he promised to protect and that homosexuals will, once again, be collectively labeled as predators and forced to futilely differentiate between homosexuality and pedophilia. In some peoples’ minds, the Foley-scapades will reinforce Santorum’s misguided beliefs and serve as a reference for all looking to demonize homosexuals.
Send Foley and the rest of the Family Values crowd a thank you from P-Town.
