In their attempt to blame the Foley sex scandal on the left, one of the key fallacious tales the rightwing is spinning is that a liberal gay blogger held Foley’s inappropriate emails for two years, waiting to release them just prior to the midterm elections. Today we learned that their prime suspect was Americablog’s John Aravosis:
Well, the latest rumor in far-right-land is that I personally am responsible for the downfall of the entire GOP House leadership (funny, I thought that was Markos’ job). I understand my good buddy Sean Hannity just mentioned me on his show regarding the rumor. And since I’ve gotten a few emails from you guys asking about this, I figured it was worth setting the record straight.
Unfortunately, and I know this will shock you, since I would never question Hannity’s accuracy, but it’s not true. Don’t get me wrong, nothing would make me happier, especially since it does make a hell of a fundraising appeal “donate to the guy who handed the congress to the Democrats.”
…As I hear it, I supposedly had the Foley emails and/or salacious “instant messages” for 2 years now, or something like that, but I decided to sit on them until just before the election, then, as the rumor goes, I secretly set up a separate blogger blog on which I published the emails just last week, apparently to push the story into the mainstream media right before the election (because I didn’t have another blog on which I could publish them?).
A second rumor has Reynolds’ now-former chief of staff, and former Foley chief of staff, Kirk Fordham giving me access to Foley’s AOL account – apparently because I blackmailed him, not sure with what – so that I could personally get a copy of Foley’s instant message traffic. First off, it’s not clear why in God’s name Foley’s former chief of staff, and still good friend, would want to screw Foley. And second, I’m pretty sure you can’t get copies of your IM discussions via your AOL account – but hey, no one ever said that Hannity and his minions were good with facts.
Anyway, as you know, I published the Foley emails on my blog last Thursday after ABC News story broke. I had received the emails in July, as I already explained on this blog last Thursday, but I didn’t think it was appropriate to publish allegations of pedophilia/child sex predation, even against a member of the other political party, until I had all the facts (and not being Speaker Hastert, it’s not like I had access to the House GOP leadership, to Foley or the pages to quiz them about the emails). Shortly after I received the emails, I found out that CREW had also received copies of the emails and had immediately passed them to the FBI. I figured that took care of the situation (silly me to trust George Bush’s FBI, they didn’t investigate) and I let the issue go until I saw ABC had published the story last week and that Foley had confirmed to ABC that the emails were real.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to be personally responsible for bringing down the entire House GOP leadership and handing both houses of Congress to the Democrats. Nothing would make me happier, and it would be a hell of a boost for the blog and my career. So had I set up that stopsexpredators Web site, I’d be taking credit for it right now – and in any case, if I were going to publish the Foley emails, they’d be on my own blog alongside Jeff Gannon’s photos. But it wasn’t me, and I don’t know who it was.
