Shakes here...
Nicholas gets it right when he says the suggestion that Foley's bad behavior should lead to the end of the House page program is backwards. Yes, Congressional leadership should take responsibility for this debacle, and for preventing the same from happening again in the future -- and there's plenty of blame to go around. Hastert, Boehner, Reynolds, Shimkus all should have known better, done more, and owned up to both instead of engaging in the typical misdirection and obfuscation. Everyone's pointing fingers at everyone else, Fordham is being shaped into a scapegoat, and, typically, gays are being conflated with pedophiles by the usual suspects, who also fault liberals and their darn lack of moral values for trying to normalize "deviance."
Interestingly, the person who's ultimately to blame -- Mark Foley -- hasn't been the center of much discussion. Part of this is because no one is even attempting to defend him; it's taken as read that he did something wrong and should deservedly be castigated for it. Another part of it is that he whisked himself <em>tout de suite</em> to rehab as the news exploded and has thusly been cloistered away from the epicenter of the shitstorm he created, while the GOP House leadership is left to dance in the spotlight.
It hasn't, however, stopped Foley from issuing, via his lawyer, a litany of excuses nonetheless. On Tuesday, his lawyer revealed that Foley is not just an alcoholic, but also a victim of sexual abuse when he was a teenager, and that he's "a gay man." The reason he hadn't disclosed this information previously? "Shame."
