-Remember the Eighties?
Since the story has now fallen from the peak of Mt. Hot Topic into the teeming, steamy Valley of Yesterday's News (a.k.a. Footnotia), perhaps now my reaction, both to the story and its top-like trajectory, may be a bit cooler, somewhat more rational. The elections are over, Rumsfeld turns to walk away and one can likely find New Year's Eve decorations displayed in right-thinking retail outlets.
By now, we're all supposed to have grasped the facts, formed an opinion and stopped thinking. "Foley scandal" now makes us wax knowing, righteous and nostalgic, like hearing "Mel Gibson" or "decrease our dependence on foreign energy" or "John Mark Karr". Now the pundits, blogsters, political and cultural critics can reflect maturely, knowingly on both the causes, and effects, of the tawdry Foley affair.
At the height of the storm, I was unwise enough to leave my car radio on, and tuned to the local AM talk station. When I returned to the car after some time, having taken care of the most recent round of doctor visits, I heard a promotional ad for the Sean Hannity radio show. Listening can be funny, and/or infuriating, and I do so sometimes, making the conscious choice of switching over to the station. There is, perhaps, an intellectual moment of held breath as my finger punches the button.
The anger I carried away from the doctor visit, for reasons I don't now recall, certainly colored my reception of the words from the car speakers. In as close a paraphrase as I'll be able to manage through the fog of my anger, Hannity was advising his devoted cadre to watch the activities of the Democrats closely in their dealings with persons or issues associated with Mark Foley. Remember, he told them, the Democrat party was the one that kept Gerry Studds in power, despite his own, consummated, homosexual page scandal. Clearly, those people are not to be trusted.
I turned off the radio and rode home in silence, my sources of anger combining to something greater than the sum of parts. Upon arrival home, I trance-walked to a pad and paper, and wrote this, in letters I now struggle to interpret correctly. Um, sic.
Fuck you, Hannity, you palavering, partisan prick. Sometimes you're right, sometimes not, but you never let the chance to be right, or rational, get in the way of shilling for the RNC. Fuck you Hannity, 2600+ times over, and that's not even counting the Iraqi souls.
What deserves more attention, a cloak-room blow job, or the deaths of thousands and thousands as we invoke reason after reason from our lazy susan of excuses for the invasion of a sovereign nation. A soveriegn nation, you know, like Bush described Pakistan when someone asked him why we didn't go after terrosist training camps in that nation. Beware Pakistan, and all current allies, times and policies change, handshakes and diplomacy become the "shock and awe" bombings you once watched us deal on Iraq.
Only a fool or a fanatic can be convinced that Saddam Hussein is not among worst of the world's Bad Men. But to say that the world is better without him in power no longer seems so sure a propostion, and posits an idyllic, imaginary Iraq of gratefully coexisiting tribes, ignoring their ancient hatreds, forgetful of the oil-drenched bonanza for the group in power. Quick, choose between a Saddam-less Iraqi civil war, and the Iraq of 2002. Be honest. No qualification, no caveats--Pick.
I stopped then, the confines of the page putting border and shape to the amorphous anger bubbling from me. Then I put down the pad and let it all go. Slowly, Foley fell from the web-pages and headlines, after the inevitable apologia, evasion and savagery that accompanies such scandals. I almost forgot too, being a highly irregular wathcer of the evening national news broadcasts. But that pad of paper lingered on my bedside chair.
More rationally: Mr. Hannity, Studds was actually stripped of a chairmanship and censured by the House by a vote of 420-3. And to be clear, it was the voters in his district who sent Studds back to DC, six times, not his Democratic legislative peers. These are apples and oranges, you fill in the fruit joke.
I guess the key difference though, in the comparison that Hannity seems to want to make between Studds and Foley is that Studds was, consistently, an avowed and proud gay man. Never did Studds lecture on the floor at Capitol Hill about the need for laws to prevent the use of communications tools for preying on naive, underage children. Foley did. He was, like Foley, guilty of (and unlike Foley, censured for) very poor judgment. But Studds' "victim" later appeared in support of him, and Studds never once described the relationship as anything but consensual.
In the strictest sense, by law, the relationship between Studdds and the page was legal by consent age laws, if improper by ethical standards. By contrast, Foley, a closeted homosexual, sought to make the very activity that lost him his job illegal, in addition to its known location outside Congressional ethics standards. Hypocrite seems too mild a word, and no voter, anywhere, would send Foley anywhere but prison.
To play this game of "Remember the Eighties?", Sean Hannity ignores and side-steps the obvious differences in the Foley and Studds cases, leaving us to wonder why he brings Studds up at all. I guess, to some, talk of any gay member is a natural segue to discussion of any and all other gay people in Congress. Likely, it was just another excuse to prop up his sense of Republican superiority, if a poorly-picked one.
Hannity's thesis, at least as I read it, is that eternal vigilance is required of Republicans in watching the progress of the Foley case, as, clearly, the Democrats can't be trusted to handle it correctly. Strong evidence now exists that make his concern not just wrong, but irrevelant. And as we discuss, somewhat breathlessly, the depths of the depravity to be found in those IM's (Did he really write "cute butt"? How shameless!), see that we are not discussing the blood flowing into the sands of Iraq.
I'd like to play "Remember the Eighties?" too, and here is my topic: The issues and policies that brought us from handshakes to dead civilians, "shock and awe" and willful destruction of an infrastrucure that all Iraqis depend on are of far greater importance than gay congresspeople. Remember this, Sean? I know it wasn't for dating, so can you tell me why those two men were together? It happened in 1983, the very same year as all the Studds hoo-haw. I wouldn't normally go back so far, but, well, you started it. Can we trust a man, a party, that toadied up to a monster?
Good-bye, Mr. Rumsfeld. I know you remember.
By now, we're all supposed to have grasped the facts, formed an opinion and stopped thinking. "Foley scandal" now makes us wax knowing, righteous and nostalgic, like hearing "Mel Gibson" or "decrease our dependence on foreign energy" or "John Mark Karr". Now the pundits, blogsters, political and cultural critics can reflect maturely, knowingly on both the causes, and effects, of the tawdry Foley affair.
At the height of the storm, I was unwise enough to leave my car radio on, and tuned to the local AM talk station. When I returned to the car after some time, having taken care of the most recent round of doctor visits, I heard a promotional ad for the Sean Hannity radio show. Listening can be funny, and/or infuriating, and I do so sometimes, making the conscious choice of switching over to the station. There is, perhaps, an intellectual moment of held breath as my finger punches the button.
The anger I carried away from the doctor visit, for reasons I don't now recall, certainly colored my reception of the words from the car speakers. In as close a paraphrase as I'll be able to manage through the fog of my anger, Hannity was advising his devoted cadre to watch the activities of the Democrats closely in their dealings with persons or issues associated with Mark Foley. Remember, he told them, the Democrat party was the one that kept Gerry Studds in power, despite his own, consummated, homosexual page scandal. Clearly, those people are not to be trusted.
I turned off the radio and rode home in silence, my sources of anger combining to something greater than the sum of parts. Upon arrival home, I trance-walked to a pad and paper, and wrote this, in letters I now struggle to interpret correctly. Um, sic.
Fuck you, Hannity, you palavering, partisan prick. Sometimes you're right, sometimes not, but you never let the chance to be right, or rational, get in the way of shilling for the RNC. Fuck you Hannity, 2600+ times over, and that's not even counting the Iraqi souls.
What deserves more attention, a cloak-room blow job, or the deaths of thousands and thousands as we invoke reason after reason from our lazy susan of excuses for the invasion of a sovereign nation. A soveriegn nation, you know, like Bush described Pakistan when someone asked him why we didn't go after terrosist training camps in that nation. Beware Pakistan, and all current allies, times and policies change, handshakes and diplomacy become the "shock and awe" bombings you once watched us deal on Iraq.
Only a fool or a fanatic can be convinced that Saddam Hussein is not among worst of the world's Bad Men. But to say that the world is better without him in power no longer seems so sure a propostion, and posits an idyllic, imaginary Iraq of gratefully coexisiting tribes, ignoring their ancient hatreds, forgetful of the oil-drenched bonanza for the group in power. Quick, choose between a Saddam-less Iraqi civil war, and the Iraq of 2002. Be honest. No qualification, no caveats--Pick.
I stopped then, the confines of the page putting border and shape to the amorphous anger bubbling from me. Then I put down the pad and let it all go. Slowly, Foley fell from the web-pages and headlines, after the inevitable apologia, evasion and savagery that accompanies such scandals. I almost forgot too, being a highly irregular wathcer of the evening national news broadcasts. But that pad of paper lingered on my bedside chair.
More rationally: Mr. Hannity, Studds was actually stripped of a chairmanship and censured by the House by a vote of 420-3. And to be clear, it was the voters in his district who sent Studds back to DC, six times, not his Democratic legislative peers. These are apples and oranges, you fill in the fruit joke.
I guess the key difference though, in the comparison that Hannity seems to want to make between Studds and Foley is that Studds was, consistently, an avowed and proud gay man. Never did Studds lecture on the floor at Capitol Hill about the need for laws to prevent the use of communications tools for preying on naive, underage children. Foley did. He was, like Foley, guilty of (and unlike Foley, censured for) very poor judgment. But Studds' "victim" later appeared in support of him, and Studds never once described the relationship as anything but consensual.
In the strictest sense, by law, the relationship between Studdds and the page was legal by consent age laws, if improper by ethical standards. By contrast, Foley, a closeted homosexual, sought to make the very activity that lost him his job illegal, in addition to its known location outside Congressional ethics standards. Hypocrite seems too mild a word, and no voter, anywhere, would send Foley anywhere but prison.
To play this game of "Remember the Eighties?", Sean Hannity ignores and side-steps the obvious differences in the Foley and Studds cases, leaving us to wonder why he brings Studds up at all. I guess, to some, talk of any gay member is a natural segue to discussion of any and all other gay people in Congress. Likely, it was just another excuse to prop up his sense of Republican superiority, if a poorly-picked one.
Hannity's thesis, at least as I read it, is that eternal vigilance is required of Republicans in watching the progress of the Foley case, as, clearly, the Democrats can't be trusted to handle it correctly. Strong evidence now exists that make his concern not just wrong, but irrevelant. And as we discuss, somewhat breathlessly, the depths of the depravity to be found in those IM's (Did he really write "cute butt"? How shameless!), see that we are not discussing the blood flowing into the sands of Iraq.
I'd like to play "Remember the Eighties?" too, and here is my topic: The issues and policies that brought us from handshakes to dead civilians, "shock and awe" and willful destruction of an infrastrucure that all Iraqis depend on are of far greater importance than gay congresspeople. Remember this, Sean? I know it wasn't for dating, so can you tell me why those two men were together? It happened in 1983, the very same year as all the Studds hoo-haw. I wouldn't normally go back so far, but, well, you started it. Can we trust a man, a party, that toadied up to a monster?
Good-bye, Mr. Rumsfeld. I know you remember.
Labels: Donald Rumsfeld, hypocrisy, James Foley, Sean Hannity
posted by Tom Morton at 10/23/2006 01:33:00 AM
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