Mark Foley may have cost the Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Says Lawrence Nuccio, a 78-year-old from Glen Cove, New York, “You have elected officials who are running the country and you assume are doing the right thing, but they’re not.” I guess Iraq didn’t do it for him. A problem is that Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the House of Representatives, failed to take action on the matter despite “a number of other Congressmen and their aides [having] said they informed the Speaker’s office of their concerns months before” the scandal broke, and now refuses to resign.
The perversion here is wrapped up inside of more perversion. First, we have people, perverts by their own publicly stated standards, engaging in the very conduct they condemn, and telling the rest of us what we should believe about sexuality, just like the Roman Catholic Church. Second, you have people in the higher echelons of the hierarchy covering up these misdeeds instead of taking the very action that they claim anyone should take, just like the Roman Catholic Church, and hence an Associated Press poll saying the affair has convinced many Americans that Democrats can better tackle corruption. Third, as a radio talk show host previously commented, and now some Republicans are complaining (particularly as it threatens their re-election hopes), this affair diverts attention from other issues, like the ones Republicans would prefer to talk about, and like an increasingly hopeless situation in Iraq, and the CIA’s secret prisons, where detainees are sexually and otherwise abused, and the repeal of civil liberties.
But what I really can’t wrap my head around is the apparent concept that it is okay to kill so many people as we have in Iraq, but not okay to bugger them. Just like with television, violence is okay, but sex is not, even if we are talking about sexual hypocrisy and even if we are talking about sex with minors.