I got to do a little news roundup on Foley. First, a mild personal statement, somewhat in line with your comment:
I'm sick and tired of seeing the right say how liberals are now on some sort of witch hunt for homosexuals, or now the liberals are angry at Foley for being a homosexual. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The only people I see trying very hard to separate Foley's behavior, from that of all the really wonderful gay men out there in committed relationships, are liberals. Liberals, after all, are the people who SUPPORT gay family values- and who support giving gay people the right to marry and have committed marriages under the aegis of the state, just like everyone else. Republicans are the ones who are so afraid of gays that having them "touch" the marriage sacrament will immediately cause the destruction of marriage (and later the US), but apparently allowing a man to ask pages for pictures of their penises and asking them to suck him off when their in town, does no harm at all. How much more insulting to gays could republicans be? I can't figure out why a single gay man would ever be a republican- and I'm sure they don't have many, but it's amazing they have any. Go figure.
Foley's actions are pretty sleazy, but I will confess to a little empathy for him. Not for hitting on the pages of course, but for the extreme self-loathing that must go with being a closeted gay Republican. He certainly must be held accountable for his actions, but maybe, just maybe, if Foley had had the option of being out and open, he could have had a normal gay relationship with somebody his own name and not have gotten into all the surreptitious sleaze. Or maybe not, "normal gay relationship" being pretty oxymoronic in todays Republican party, near as I can tell.
The NYT had a big story yesterday on the gay Republican thing, which may be hard for you and I to figure, but sort of makes sense from a libertarian point of view.
Foley Case Upsets Balance of Gay Republicans nytimes.com
One of the inevitable facts, said Mr. Bennett, the former Dornan aide, is that “there are just going to be some days when it’s hard to be a gay Republican.”
When asked why he remains in the party, Mr. Bennett gave an answer common to gay Republicans: he said that he remained fundamentally in sync with the small government principles of the party and its approach to national security, and that he was committed to changing what he considers its antigay attitudes.
“I’m fighting hard, every day,” said Mr. Bennett, who was among a small group of gay Republicans who met with George W. Bush during his 2000 presidential campaign.
Like Mr. Bennett, other gay staff members wind up working for politicians they consider infamous for their inflammatory remarks and hostility to their cause.
Robert Traynham, the top communications aide to Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania, endured the fallout from an interview with The Associated Press in 2003 in which Mr. Santorum seemed to equate homosexuality with bestiality, bigamy and incest, among other things. Mr. Traynham had been openly gay for years, but that was not widely known in his professional life — until a gay rights advocate revealed his sexual orientation last year. Mr. Traynham confirmed the report, and Mr. Santorum issued a statement in support of his aide.
In contrast to what many view as the right’s increasingly antigay rhetoric, members of both parties say there has been a growing tolerance for gay men and lesbians within the Republican ranks.
George Will's most recent has a similar take and goes into more detail on the libertarian / religious division among Republicans, which he identifies as Western and Southern:
What Goeth Before the Fall washingtonpost.com
Their story, of late, has been that theirs is the lonely burden of defending all that is wholesome. But the problem with claiming to have cornered the market on virtue is that people will get snippy when they spot vice in your ranks. This is one awkward aspect of what is supposed to have been the happy fusion between, but which involves unresolved tensions between, two flavors of conservatism -- Western and Southern.
The former is largely libertarian, holding that pruning big government will allow civil society -- and virtues nourished by it and by the responsibilities of freedom -- to flourish. The Southern, essentially religious, strand of conservatism is explained by Ryan Sager in his new book, "The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party":
"Whereas conservative Christian parents once thought it was inappropriate for public schools to teach their kids about sex, now they want the schools to preach abstinence to children. Whereas conservative Christians used to be unhappy with evolution being taught in public schools, now they want Intelligent Design taught instead (or at least in addition). Whereas conservative Christians used to want the federal government to leave them alone, now they demand that more and more federal funds be directed to local churches and religious groups through Bush's faith-based initiatives program."
To a Republican Party increasingly defined by the ascendancy of the religious right, the Foley episode is doubly deadly. His behavior was disgusting, and some Republican reactions seem more calculating than indignant.
Ok, Will is perhaps more reasonable than your garden variety conservative, though I couldn't take him seriously as a journalist since back in '80, I think, when he helped coach Reagan for the presidential debates and then went on TV saying what a good job Reagan did, without a hint at his own private role there. Will also picks up on the official "story line", as it were:
Having so quickly exhausted the Oprah approach, the Foley story moved on to who knew what, and when. That drove Speaker Dennis Hastert to the un-Oprah broadcasting couch on which Republicans recline when getting in touch with their feelings. To Rush Limbaugh's 20 million receptive listeners, Hastert, referring to Republicans as "we," said:
"We have a story to tell, and the Democrats have -- in my view have -- put this thing forward to try to block us from telling the story. They're trying to put us on defense."
It is difficult to read that as other than an accusation: He seems to be not just confessing a coverup but also complaining that the coverup was undone by bad manners. Were it not for Democrats' unsportsmanlike conduct in putting "this thing" forward, it would not be known and would not be disrupting Republicans' storytelling.
A day after he went on Limbaugh, Hastert started out a news conference paying lip service to the conventional definition of "personal responsibility":
I'm sorry -- you know, when you talk about the page issue and what's happened in the Congress, I'm deeply sorry that this has happened.
And the bottom line is that we're taking responsibility, because ultimately, as someone has said in Washington before: The buck stops here. nytimes.com
But by the end of that apparantly short news conference, Denny was back on the "story line":
Well, ultimately, any time that a person has to, as a leader, be on the hot seat and he is a detriment to the party, you know, there ought to be a change. I became speaker in a situation like that.
I don't think that's the case. I said I haven't done anything wrong, obviously. And we need to come back.
What we need to do is start talking about the issues.
We have a great economy. It's because of Republican tax cuts and Republican handling of the economy, of holding the line on spending.
We have addressed the war on terror. We've done that continually over the last five years, and today we have a pretty safe America.
And, you know, a lot of people wanted us to address the issue about the border, and we did exactly that. And, you know, last Friday, we culminated in appropriations that did fix the border.
So, you know, we have a good story to tell.
Our friends on the other side of the aisle really don't have a story to tell. And maybe they're resolving to another way to -- to -- another political tactic.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Denny, for getting back to the one true W definition of "personal responsibility". There's a nice little roundup on Hastert, Limbaugh, random other shouting head types, and the "personal responsibility" thing at mediamatters.org . A more current roundup on the "story line" can be found at LindyBill's Church of W, where Bill is nothing if not good at keeping up to date on stuff like this. My favorite bit there is from the ever-reliable WSJ editorial page, which goes back to where we started, the problem of gay Republicans. With a truly perverse twist on the "personal responsiblity" thing : Message 22890957
The initial e-mails may not have piqued media interest, but even Speaker Hastert has told reporters that Mr. Foley's request for a teenager's picture "would raise a red flag" with him. But he defended the decision by Mr. Trandahl and his other staffers to handle the Foley issue without telling him: "I see no reason to bump it up to me at that time." He insisted he would not second-guess how his staff handled the situation.
That shows Speaker Hastert just doesn't get it. If something was a "red flag," he should have been told about it. Now Washington is filled with speculation that Mr. Trandahl and other staffers might have been trying to cover up for Mr. Foley. On "Fox News Sunday," Rep. Jack Kingston, vice chairman of the Republican Conference, raised the idea that "there was a staffer or two who decided to maybe protect Mark Foley for reasons unknown."
The Washington Post has reported that Mr. Trandahl is on the board of the gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign and is "personally close to the now-disgraced former lawmaker, who announced through his lawyer this week that he is gay." In November 2005, days after his involvement in the Foley matter, Mr. Trandahl left his job as House clerk to head up the National Fish and Wildlife Federation. The Post noted that "House aides say the circumstances of Trandahl's exit were oddly quiet," marked with little of the congratulatory sendoff other departing House clerks have received.
Right. I guess gay Repubiclan staffers are part of the Soros / MSM / "Clinton War Room" conspiracy on this one. W's form of "Personal responsibility" asserts it once more. Other bits of the "story line" can be gleaned from Message 22890890
Message 22889914
Message 22889042
Message 22888336
Message 22887588 .
And then there's this from my favorite SI reliable source:
Message 22885139
In contrast, I will conclude with a transcript from NPR last week where Brian Ross gives a pretty straightforward explanation of how the story came about. npr.org . I'm going to post that one in full, since there aren't always transcripts available there and I don't know if this one will remain public, plus it's not that long.
Foley Story Wasn't Reported, Until It Was
by David Folkenflik
All Things Considered, October 6, 2006 · Months ago, several major media outlets learned about troubling e-mails Rep. Mark Foley had sent to former pages -- but they didn't feel they had enough information to go public with the story. Brian Ross of ABC News got the same information back in August -- but he found a way to crack the scandal open.
Reporters and editors at Florida's St. Petersburg Times, The Miami Herald and the Fox News Channel all say they obtained e-mails that seemed to be between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page -- but that they didn't have enough to go public with the story.
The reporters sought more information.
"We verified the accuracy of the email we had," says Neil Brown, executive editor of the St Petersburg Times. "We also spoke with congressman Foley and spoke with the boy's parents. Congressman Foley told us we had misinterpreted it -- and in fact maybe a page had misinterpreted it."
And there it largely stood for nearly a year.
In August, however, ABC News got the e-mails, too. Once ABC's Brian Ross was done with anniversary specials on Hurricane Katrina and 9-11, his investigative unit turned its attention to Foley.
Ross had covered the page sex scandal that snared two congressmen back in 1983 --- and he read the e-mails a little differently.
"These are emails that were unusual for a 52-year-old man to be sending to a high school junior," he says, referring to the personal nature of the exchanges -- and requests for a photo.
But ABC wasn't able to confirm the e-mails with the former pages -- so Ross took them to Foley's aides.
Foley's press secretary verified the e-mails. But he said the notes were harmless, Ross says, that "this is just a case of the congressman -- you don't know Mark -- he's just overly friendly -- nothing wrong with these things at all."
The message they got, Ross says, was that "others have looked at these -- and there's no story here."
A little-known Web site posted some of the apparent exchanges, but Ross has said he didn't know about that. So Ross and his bosses were confronting the same choice as editors elsewhere: whether to run the story or not.
The answer in this case was still no -- not exactly. Viewers didn't see it on ABC's flagship evening newscast.
But Ross still found a way to crack open the story last Thursday.
The ensuing posting on ABCNews.com opened the floodgates. Within hours, people who said they were former pages sent Ross explicit instant messages that seemed to show Foley asking them about sex.
As Ross recounts it, ABC News producer Maddy Sauer called Foley's office back last Friday. She read off some of what they had accumulated.
"His former chief of staff called back 20 minutes later and said, 'the congressman is going to resign,'" Ross says, "and we want to make a deal with you."
The former aide, Kirk Fordham, confirmed the messages were real, but said Foley would exclusively talk to Ross only if Ross agreed not to post the instant messages. That wasn't even a close call for Ross. The messages went online, and the story roared forth.
The story has dominated the political scene ever since, showing how an old-fashioned media outlet can use its newfangled toys on the Internet to change the rules on how the news is broken.
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