Poor Mark Foley! Nobody is buying his excuses for why he preyed on the pages — which were, as I recall:
1. I’m an alcoholic.
2. I’m gay.
3. A religious leader molested me when I was a child.
4. I thought I was a Democrat (Okay, that’s actually the excuse of such conservative lights as Ann Coulter, who is having such a great time with this scandal that I wouldn’t be surprised if Drudge didn’t reveal tomorrow that Ann set up the whole thing.)
5. I thought that Denny Hastert was actually Michael Moore (his girth confused me), and so, being a good Republican, I ignored him when he told me whatever the heck it was he said about seducing or not seducing the pages. (Okay, I actually thought of that one.)
However, it seems that the people aren’t buying any of these excuses, and are even going to far as to claim that their opinion of the Republican party is even lower now than it was when they learned that the Republican President had conned them into a misguided and mismanaged war.
Fortunately, James Dobson has stepped up to the plate and has provided Foley with some new excuses that may be better received by Values Voters:
Reasons boys are in trouble today:
1. The negative content prevalent in most mass media.2. The favoritism shown to girls in public schools.
3. The sexual revolution and radical feminism.
4. The absence of caring fathers.
5. The weakening of the family, which hurts boys the most.
I think that if Mr. Foley would emerge from rehab and claim that “Everybody Loves Raymond,” radical feminism, the better treatment Susie got from teacher in second grade, the weakening of the family, and the absence of a caring father in the House leadership caused his actions, all would be forgiven.
UPDATE
As Mark S. noted, the Dobson piece starts with an anecdote that you should all read:
“Our son was using our home computer to do some research for a report he’s writing. While doing a search, he accidentally stumbled onto a porn site. He frantically clicked the ‘back’ arrow but couldn’t get out, then panicked. I wish I would have given him permission ahead of time to simply turn off the computer if something like that happened. That was three days ago. He’s still upset.”
Yes, to a kid who grew up in a home where the mere mention of sex was forbidden, stumbling upon the front page of a porn site probably would traumatize him for weeks — not because seeing seminude bodies was inherently disturbing, but because he was afraid of what his parents would do when they found that he accessed such a site. But somehow, this story illustrates Dobson’s thesis that it’s secular society that is hurting today’s boys.