After several days of Foleymania, the blogosphere has spoken: It is resolved that absolutely virtually everyone agrees that middle-aged congressmen should not be exchanging sexually explicit IMs with teenagers of either gender, especially if they’re under 18 (but even if they’re not), especially if it also constitutes workplace harassment.
Now, the fun part — that of figuring out how much this is going to hurt the Republicans and whether there’s any conceivable way of blaming it on the Democrats or ABC instead — is only just getting started, and a small sub-fight — that of deciding which side of the blogosphere is proving itself to be the most hypocritical/opportunistic/crazy — is also bubbling away nicely. As with every other news story of the last five years, the Foley scandal exemplifies the culture of corruption imposed upon Washington by a power-mad Bush administration, while simultaneously revealing the tragic consequences of the heathen licentiousness promoted by Democrats across this great land. Also, there has to be something here that can be blamed on Glenn Reynolds:
There are other sites, large and small, that have linked to Wild Bill as well — that’s also wrong. We won’t be providing links to any of these posts.concludes the above-linked Think Progress post, primly. Not wanting to link to “Wild Bill” — the blogger who printed the former page’s name along with a bunch of pictures — is understandable, but not linking to a guy you’re claiming did link to it is problematic when he actually didn’t. (James Joyner analyzes this error here.) The trouble with this supposedly-principled omission of links is that people using Think Progress as a clearinghouse don’t necessarily check these things.
The link is the currency of the blogosphere, and any post that omits links is always the more suspect for it. “Read the whole thing” may be one of the most banal things a blogger can say to their audience, but that doesn’t make it bad advice.
Speaking of bad advice, attempts to quibble over the age question don’t seem likely either to make the story go away any faster or to make Foley suddenly appear sympathetic. Also, it’s hard to see the percentage in fretting over the fact that Democrats are getting as much electoral mileage as they can out of the erstwhile Maf54’s astonishing lack of discretion or propriety. Why shouldn’t they? Politics is full of lemons, but on those rare occasions when you’re handed a glass of lemonade, the thing is to enjoy drinking it.
Some kind of medal, though, must be reserved for the peerless Ben Shapiro, who follows up a predictable non sequitur claim that “studies show that homosexuals are disproportionately prone to pedophilia” with this gem:
On what moral basis do Democrats condemn Foley? They have no basis for moral outrage, since they have championed the destruction of traditional morality for decades.With this kind of adept spin management, we can expect to still be hearing about Mark Foley well into the 2008 primary season*.
- In fairness, the scrum begins November 8, 2006.
Interesting investigatory work on the blogs. I do think it matters how old the page or ex-page was, but that won’t make the story go away. Also, while I have read Shapiro and usually agree with him, I haven’t read him lately. I doubt there are more gay than straight pedophiles. I do believe adult sex with boys outrages the general populace less than adult sex with girls, so we shrug off gay pediphilia more easily than straight pedophilia, for whatever that’s worth.
However, as an ex-Dem (32 years’ worth), I absolutely agree with Shapiro on the Dems’ lack of moral standing. If there is one thing they have made their mission in life, it is the destruction of civilized morality. I say this as a non-religious, ex-lifelong feminist and lefty. Your mileage may differ.