Buck’s post yesterday summed it up: Foley’s Not the Story. If you want a sign of the true decadence of American culture, it is this: A sex scandal of any dimension or flavor will get the media up in arms in a matter of hours, whereas the senseless wasting of blood and treasure in Iraq — a killing every hour and a cost of $2 billion a week — that goes on for years is treated like a dull abstraction that partisans bicker over endlessly.
As the 16-year-old page wrote about Rep. Mark Foley’s request for his photo, that is sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman has the same thought:
It’s fitting that former Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s sex scandal will do in the 40 days before the election what years of reporting on Bush administration incompetence and corruption couldn’t — end one-party rule in America…
Republican rule wasn’t based on moral authority earned by good judgment and civic discipline. Judging by the legislation that comes out of D.C., there’s always more talk of virtue than evidence of its practice.
Still, it was a winning strategy while it lasted. For years, Republican candidates won elections by promising to keep taxes low, their pants on and their zippers locked in the “up” position.
Demonizing “liberal Democrats” also became part of the appalling Kabuki dance of self-righteousness that dominates American politics in the Bush era. For tactical reasons, even so-called Democratic “moderates” joined in the bashing of their party’s most loyal constituents.
Still, it was only a matter of time before the mandate of heaven would be brutally withdrawn from triumphalist Republicans. No party can expect to govern forever on a steady diet of triviality and cynicism…
As amusing as the Foley affair is as political schadenfreude, it’s still a lowbrow sex scandal. At best it merely highlights the ineptitude of the Republican leadership as it tries to cover up its complacency and arrogance — things we already know about.
Meanwhile, the GOP leadership is guilty of far worse sins than coddling a potential child predator.
In a properly functioning republic, the media and our political institutions would have dealt with Mr. Foley swiftly and with a minimum of hysteria. He’s not as big a deal as the 24 American soldiers killed in an immoral war in Iraq since Saturday…
We’d be a far healthier democracy if [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert was under fire for allowing Iraq to sink into a gurgling pool of its own blood…
What’s the biggest danger to the values and long-term interests of the United States — a do-nothing Congress that dithers during a half-a-trillion dollar war that has already claimed thousands of American and Iraqi lives or an obscure Florida congressman with masturbatory fantasies about teenaged boys?
This week, despite earlier denials, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that she was briefed on July 10, 2001, by former CIA Director George Tenet about al-Qaida’s determination to kill thousands of Americans.
How do we account for Ms. Rice’s selective memory? Isn’t there something just a little bit scandalous about it? Where’s the scrutiny?
Excuse me for reserving moral outrage over something truly worth risking a stroke over.
