Foley Blew, Hastert Knew!
The title is a take on a refrain from the movie Turk 182. Pretty good movie. I'm referring, of course, to the recent Republican scandal in Congress. It seems that Mark Foley, a Congressman from Florida, has been sending explicit emails and Instant Messages to young male pages for a while now. (Of course, there's no suggestion that Foley gave any Congressional hummers, but I needed the rhyme.) Foley was busted recently, but there's evidence that Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House, was notified of the situation a while ago and did nothing to fix the problem. I particularly love this quote from the story:
From Representative Rodney Alexander, R-La: "Speaker Hastert is a good man," he said. "And I think he would personally break the neck of anybody he thought was trying to sexually abuse a young man or woman."
If that kind of rage-induced violence isn't the mark of a good man, what is? Wouldn't Jesus do the same?
Now while I'm no fan of most Republicans in Congress (I'm not a big fan of very many Democrats there, either, actually), I'm tickled pink at the "three-for" this scandal has offered:
1. A morally upright Republican, who has taken the lead in protecting youth from exploitation and internet predation, has been exposed as a hugely hypocritical pervert.
2. Hastert, a big Republican gas bag, is feeling the heat from his apparent cronyism designed to either a. help a friend avoid (much deserved) public disgrace and/or b. preserve the Republican majority in Congress and the party's false claim to a monopoly on morals and Christian values.
3. Foley, already forced to resign, has taken "full responsibility" for his actions. Which means identifying himself as an alcoholic the very next day, claiming to have been molested by a clergyman when he was a teen, and saying he was drunk at the time he wrote the perverse missives. But he's not making excuses!
Take 'em down! All false political idols.
I'm going to be away for the rest of the week, so I'm dumping unrelated stuff into this post. Like this funny video I received in a spam email - Martin Scorcese's Sesame Streets.
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. We had celebrated beforehand, so last night we just drank wine and watched TV. Saw the new "Heroes", and while I'm still intrigued, it's getting bizarrely violent with an unseen villain's methods of killing his prey. Jury's still out.
"Studio 60", on the other hand, I'm really liking. I don't know if I have the stamina to watch it religiously, what with all the rapid-fire dialogue and oblique references to the past that apparently is very important to the present, but I enjoy the characters and there are some really good lines.
And of course tonight, season premiere of "Lost". Let's hope it's good. The Alternate Reality Game the Lost people did over the summer was fun, but ended with a schmaltzy whimper. Having been so focused on the origins of part of the show's mythology in that game, it may take me a while to care about the "here and now", so to speak, on the island.
That's about all I got. Talk to y'all later.
From Representative Rodney Alexander, R-La: "Speaker Hastert is a good man," he said. "And I think he would personally break the neck of anybody he thought was trying to sexually abuse a young man or woman."
If that kind of rage-induced violence isn't the mark of a good man, what is? Wouldn't Jesus do the same?
Now while I'm no fan of most Republicans in Congress (I'm not a big fan of very many Democrats there, either, actually), I'm tickled pink at the "three-for" this scandal has offered:
1. A morally upright Republican, who has taken the lead in protecting youth from exploitation and internet predation, has been exposed as a hugely hypocritical pervert.
2. Hastert, a big Republican gas bag, is feeling the heat from his apparent cronyism designed to either a. help a friend avoid (much deserved) public disgrace and/or b. preserve the Republican majority in Congress and the party's false claim to a monopoly on morals and Christian values.
3. Foley, already forced to resign, has taken "full responsibility" for his actions. Which means identifying himself as an alcoholic the very next day, claiming to have been molested by a clergyman when he was a teen, and saying he was drunk at the time he wrote the perverse missives. But he's not making excuses!
Take 'em down! All false political idols.
I'm going to be away for the rest of the week, so I'm dumping unrelated stuff into this post. Like this funny video I received in a spam email - Martin Scorcese's Sesame Streets.
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary. We had celebrated beforehand, so last night we just drank wine and watched TV. Saw the new "Heroes", and while I'm still intrigued, it's getting bizarrely violent with an unseen villain's methods of killing his prey. Jury's still out.
"Studio 60", on the other hand, I'm really liking. I don't know if I have the stamina to watch it religiously, what with all the rapid-fire dialogue and oblique references to the past that apparently is very important to the present, but I enjoy the characters and there are some really good lines.
And of course tonight, season premiere of "Lost". Let's hope it's good. The Alternate Reality Game the Lost people did over the summer was fun, but ended with a schmaltzy whimper. Having been so focused on the origins of part of the show's mythology in that game, it may take me a while to care about the "here and now", so to speak, on the island.
That's about all I got. Talk to y'all later.
posted by at 10:11 AM
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