Foley-er Than Thou

I think the thing I loved most (at least at first) about the Mark Foley scandal was how it knocked another sanctimonious holier-than-thou Republican off his perch. All the work he did against same-sex marriage and for "family values," and now we find yet another big mouth who can't walk the walk. The family values my parents taught me did not include hypocrisy and pedophilia. (Though I think the pedophilia charges are a bit overblown -- these weren't toddlers, they were post-pubescent and certainly capable of feeling sexual attraction. That said, they WERE minors and it's still a crime. It's just I think it's less of a crime than if the pages were eight-year olds.)

Of course, Foley deserves to be gone if for no other reason than his incredible stupidity -- surely everyone knows by now that if you put it in e-mail or an instant message, it can probably be recovered and brought into the light of day.

What's working for me now about the scandal is the chance it represents to get some of the blind fools who follow the greater fool on his silly errands -- just so they can hang onto power and use it to enrich themselves. (Not that I think the Democrats are any less self-serving, but at this point I think we just need a change, and since we're probably not going to get a new party, Nancy Pelosi may be the best we can get for a few more years. And if it turns out the Republican leadership knew about the IMs (the e-mails have been relatively innocent), I think a LOT of Republicans could go down next month.