What It's About

Midterms are coming up, and my Internet connection is still on the fritz, so I haven't been posting as often as I'd like. Hopefully that will change...

The Baltimore City Paper's two political columnists write this week about the Mark Foley sex scandal. While Brian Morton takes aim at the Republicans' attempts at shifting the blame (e.g., Patrick McHenry's baseless charge that Democrats somehow had to be involved), Russ Smith tries his damnedest to downplay the matter, and completely misses the point in the process.

It might be a cliché to say it's not the crime, it's the coverup, but it certainly applies here. Surely it's not "sanctimony," as Smith claims, to to be outraged that the House Republican leadership knew that Foley was a sexual predator and not only did nothing about it, but encouraged him to run for reelection (with some help from Karl Rove, to boot). What substantial difference is there, after all, between Foley's behavior and that of the men who show up on Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series? And what substantial difference is there between the House Republicans' coverup and the Catholic Church's coverup of molesting priests?

It's also a total non sequitur to bring up the scandals of former Rep. Gerry Studds, as Smith does, or Bill Clinton. I'm not going to defend either man's conduct -- though for what it's worth, Studd's relationship with an underage page seems to have been consensual, and the page later appeared with Studds in public to support him, two things that aren't, as yet, the case with Foley. As reprehensible in their behavior as Clinton and Studds were, what they did is in a far different league than Foley's actions. When the one of the objects of Foley's affections is calling even the non-explicit emails "sick sick sick," etc., you know something is wrong. I can't believe Smith, not to mention the Republican Party, is trying to defend this.

(Title of this post a reference to Hendrik Hertzberg's great essay about right-wing hysteria over the Clinton-Lewinsky affair; sadly, it's not online.)