Hitchens: Foley Loaded

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal


Foley Loaded
By CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
October 16, 2006; Page A14

(snip)

I suspect that the hugeness of the current fuss must have something to do with our uneasy and only half-acknowledged awareness that the age of innocence is long over by the time that most of our children have turned 16. And this is why the Foley giveaway was contained in his ostentatious political activity in respect of the protection of minors... Anyone who has studied the fate of leading gay-bashers in American politics will know that the danger-signs are there from the start. Set your watch, and sure enough that fervent campaigner will be arrested kneeling abjectly on the men's-room floor. If the campaigner is an evangelist for purity and abstinence, he is booked to keep an early and certain date in a dreary motel, beseeching a drab hooker with an expired MasterCard.

Another free laugh, therefore, is provided by all the pompous talk about when exactly Mr. Foley's colleagues began to worry that his contents might be under pressure. Never mind the possible earlier emails, or signs of excessive interest in the problems of the pages. They should have known that Mr. Foley was a gay man in the closet, of course. And they should have taken alarm at the very first moment that he began to orate about sex-offenders and children. But the crucial word, here, is "closet." As long as a proper outward show of denial was made, Mr. Foley could as well have been asked to open the House's daily prayer session.

He has of course made himself even more contemptible by emitting easy babble about a hitherto unsuspected battle with "addiction," like a cuttlefish blowing off ink, and by alluding to a possible nasty moment in the woodshed with a man in holy orders. (If he does not come forward and say who that priest was, he is withholding evidence of a crime -- which really is against the law.) But the deafness, as well as the dumbness, of his party leadership is the truly extraordinary thing. It seems that the only offense of which he can possibly be accused, by the speaker of the House, is that of election-season indiscretion. In other words: How inconvenient!


(snip)

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116095960111293451.html (subscription)

[Greeby]

1. You know a lot about being loaded, don't ya Hitchens?

:eyes:

[applegrove]

2. Double that!

:eyes: :eyes:

[MADem]

5. My very first thought...there's a pot bellowing at a kettle!!! NT

[TomClash]

3. How much was Chris paid for this drivel?

He's off the wagon and back on the drink.

[question everything]

6. He did raise interesting points

about the holier politicians are, the worse they are in their personal behavior.

And... that the only reason other members of Congress are upset with him is the timing.

[louis-t]

4. I can't decide which I hate more: listening to him

or reading him. Eeeeeuuuuccch!