The unfolding scandal involving disgraced Florida Republican Mark Foley's resignation reveals much of the seamy side of Beltway life, and of the dreadful impact of P.C. Begin with columnist John Tierney's equating the member-page relationship as one of feudal lord and vassal. Not quite true, as the member-page relation is far more one-sided. Medieval vassals had rights, too. In return for faithful service from his vassal, a lord had to care for his charge, something it does not appear is done by the 535 members of Congress. Wall Street journal political reporter John Fund notes that Speaker Hastert's staff decided not to alert him; Fund believes that the army of staffers on Capitol Hill have taken much control away from their purported elected masters.
A complicating factor is that Republicans now find themselves hoist not by their own petard, but by the P.C. petard planted by liberals over the last two decades: accusing a gay person of improper conduct risks being called anti-gay, and if the charges prove false, could be politically lethal to the accuser. Thus the editor of the liberal Miami Herald, on why he sat on the story for months, courtesy of James Taranto's Best of the Web (Taranto posts a link to the original AP story):
"Our decision at the time was . . . that because the language was not sexually explicit and was subject to interpretation, from innocuous to 'sick,' as the page characterized it, to be cautious," said Tom Fiedler, executive editor of the Herald. "Given the potentially devastating impact that a false suggestion of pedophilia could have on anyone, not to mention a congressman known to be gay, and lacking any corroborating information, we chose not to do a story."
Incredibly, Taranto also links to a Los Angeles Times story that quotes former pages as saying that they were warned as far back as 1995 about Foley's interest in boys. A decade with nothing of consequence done. Five Congressional elections and three Presidential elections with nothing done. In the corporate workplace, anyone in a superior position who makes any kind of suggestive statement, let alone initiaites an actual sexual advance to a subordinate is a dead-duck for a sexual harassment lawsuit if the subordinate later tattles. Many companies bar even consensual adult relationships between folks working together. Tierney's call for abolition of the page system is right on target (even if his medieval history is not).
To be fair, caution given such a serious allegation is warranted, but the reluctance of the paper to investigate speaks volumes to the power of P.C. The Democrats have no such excuse. Having stood by Barney Frank when (1989) he was caught harboring a male prostitute in his DC residence, claiming not to know that the partner was running a sex ring from Frank's basement, and having forgiven Frank's fixing parking tickets for him, what right do they have to be taken seriously now? Worse was sickeningly unrepentant Gerry Studds, who turned his back on the House when in 1983 it censured him for buggering a boy page less than half his age; both Frank and Studds were repeatedly re-elected by their all-too forgiving constituents.
Further recall that Democratic conventions feature a delegation from NAMBLA, the National Man-Boy Love Association; here is more on San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi and NAMBLA). David Brooks notes that as Foley is excoriated by liberals, recently they celebrated a 1996 long-running Eve Ensler play in which a female secretary seduces a 13-year-old girl; the revised version of her play, The Vagina Monologues (a title that speaks for itself, as does this 1999 New York Times review), makes the girl 16. Which party tried to give NYC schoolkids texts like Gloria Goes to Gay Pride and Heather Has Two Mommies? In 1993 Manhattan Institute scholar Kay Hymowitz wrote on how NYC educrats (nearly all hard-core Democrats) then tried to feed 9-year-olds info on spermicdal creams, and ten-year-olds info on oral and anal sex.
Worse still is Bill Clinton's pardoning of convicted 1990s sex offender and financial fraudster Mel Reynolds, a black Democratic Congressman from Illinois; blogger Michelle Malkin resurrects from the Beltway Memory Hole the sordid details, which are truly stupefying; Democrats ignored Clinton's appalling abuse of the pardon power. It must be noted that member-page heterosexual relations are also properly punishable, as Republican Dan Crane discovered in 1983; his consitutents were not forgiving.)
You get the picture: Republicans will now pay a political price for something many Democratic voters do not care about, and for hewing to P.C. rules laid down by liberals. New York Post columnist John Podhoretz may well be right in calling the leak of Foley's incriminating e-mail a Democratic political "dirty tricks" operation. Ever witty Mark Steyn also sees a media and Democratic "honey trap" here, and fears that America's reaction to a sex scandal is making it The Great Laughingstock. Yet as columnist Amity Shlaes writes in the New York Sun, Republicans should be embarrassed at their Party's appalling performance. NRO's Myrna Blyth sees the scandal sounding the death of the "security mom" voter which, if true, will prove lethal for Republicans.
Caught between the proverbial rock and hard place (the risk of wrongly outing a gay person versus the risk of wrongly sheltering a Republican member of an unpopular Congress), the Republican ship hit both rocks and may well sink as a result. Life really is, as JFK famously quipped, unfair.
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