The Foley Affair

Finally, somebody talks some sense on this whole Foley scandal. This comes from fellow blogger Chris Hall:

Mark Foley: Predator or Sleaze?

In particular, this statement echoes the one point about this whole thing that has bothered me the most:

I now see my fellow progressives gleefully exploiting the same puritan fears that the Republicans have grown fat and happy on.

Frankly, progressives should know better.

Hall also points out something that had escaped my attention, namely that, in Washington D.C., the age of consent is 16, so if Foley had actually had sex with his page, rather than just sending him lewd e-mails, there wouldn't be any problem. Oh, the irony.

My own view is that Foley would have been guilty of some pretty flagrant sexual harassment...except that most of the stuff people are complaining about happened after the pages were done, uh, paging. Furthermore, it's my opinion that the determination of sexual harassment should only be made by the person being harassed (or not), and the one page who seems to have had the most involvement in this doesn't seem to have minded it at all. Which means it really wasn't sexual harassment at all.

So what does that leave us with? An unforgiveable level of hypocrisy, for sure, but is that a crime? I must admit, though, that I am as amused as anyone that Foley is getting nailed by his own ridiculous law, that he himself worked to enact. And I am not complaining that the GOP is suffering because they tried to cover this up--we need those bastards out of office. But can we please not inflate this into an "Oh my god WE MUST SAVE THE POOR CHILDRIN FROM THE EVIL PEDOPHILES!!!" issue, since that's not what it really is? Red herrings are supposed to be the province of neo-conservatives, not progressives.