Sexual Politics

Heard enough about cyberpredator/congressputz Mark Foley? Maybe not. While it's certainly fascinating to pore over the endless minutiæ of Foley's lurid IM exhortations to his pubescent protégé, and extrapolate easy numberless jokes about his creepy predilection, there's still more.

There's more than the usual frantic, projected concoctions from the usual fucktards (links via TBogg), though those are always amusing for their abject demonstrations of cheap hypocrisy and aggressive stupidity. It's to be expected that these idiots would reflexively turn to their dhimmicrats card, because that's all they've got left. Some are even trying to bring up Gerry Studds, which is not entirely unfair if you're just focusing on the sexual aspect of all this.

But I think that's the wrong area to focus on, though it's obviously the easiest. Consider how the House Republican leadership has scrambled frantically to get its story straight as to what who knew when about all this, and how long the matter sat between Dennis Hastert's gravy-soaked ham-hock asscheeks. One thing from this Moran assclown (among countless other similar assclowns of the same ilk), who is desperately trying to finger complicit Democrats in what appears to be an exclusively Republican scandal, really made me laugh, because we can always recognize these tendentious little hacks for exactly what they are:

Now I realize how eager many of you are to connect all these dots and start accusing people of all sorts of conpsiracies to keep this thing quiet. And I will happily join you in hanging by their toes the entire Republican leadership if it turns out that they knew more than what is reported here and failed to do anything.

Yeah, sure you will. So of course the first thing this moron does when that becomes more and more the exact case is he trots out paper-thin assertions about Democratic timing and complicity. Gee, how principled you are, chump. I for one am shocked at the lack of follow-through on his part there. And for the record, I hope someone did time it deliberately. I hope they go scorched-earth on these punk motherfuckers. I want them to do to these gutless authoritarians exactly what Karl Rove and Dick Cheney have been doing to all of us for the past six years.

In the meantime, Rick Moran's promise to find his principles under a rock somewhere all of a sudden are not worth the cyber-bumwipe they're printed on. And his increasingly hostile defenses just get more and more hilarious, the jabbering nonsense of increasingly ridiculous people.

So let's talk about power, and how it can be opportunistically leveraged and compromised. Let's talk about Craig Spence, about Lawrence King and the quickly-disappeared Franklin Credit Union scandal, about the easy access of potted plant Jeff Gannon™. All those things did in fact occur, because they were allowed to occur, because there is some level of practical utility in it for someone.

Some things are not easily explained here. It becomes increasingly obvious that some or all of the people in the Republican leadership of the House knew about Foley's little problem for well over a year, yet did nothing. Now, why would that be? Think about it -- how hard would it have been a year ago to just put the arm on the guy, usher him into a nice little retirement sinecure, groom a replacement for a secure seat, and should the story ever see light, the blowback (so to speak) is at least substantially mitigated. Instead, in an increasingly hostile political environment, they completely neglected to cover their asses. Either this is incredibly stupid on their part, or Foley's a bigger player than we know. He certainly seems to be a reliable rainmaker for the NRCC. Is he also one of those people who knows where all the usual bodies are buried?

Not sure yet, but as more and more bodies drop and careers are ended, the more apparent it will become that beyond the illicit sexual aspect, there's a real systemic malaise in play here. Everyone's playing their role to the hilt -- Foley's claiming a laundry list of personal problems, Hastert's desperately trying to save what's left of his job (an increasingly futile effort), and the nearest Republicans are all breaking out their best "nobody here but us chickens" excuses. Right. No one knew. Everyone knew, or at least suspected.

This is bigger than a bunch of creepy, icky e-mails. This is a prime example of a confluence of money, power, and sex culminating in endemic corruption. And once everyone's had their fun with the obvious scoutmaster-type jokes, the scandal will lose its mystique, and the lid will fall back into place, and the party will go on, albeit perhaps a bit more discreetly.

Again, the bottom line is that Foley was worth something to somebody, or they would have dumped his ass nine months ago when rumors were starting to reach the House leadership level. I think there is where you find the true measure of corruption of these people, and the system they thrive under.