The Open Sewer That Wants To Remake America In Its Image…(Continued)
It comes to this: The republican machine is going after the teenagers Mark Foley was sexually exploiting. That’s right. Not the leadership that did nothing. Not the people who tried to cover it all up. They’re going on the offensive against the kids, as though all of this is their fault.
Well I guess we can put a fork in the republican party now…because it’s done. For decades they waged a long bitter battle to gain total control of the federal government. They told us the liberals were wicked, immoral, godless, anti-American, anti-family. They said democrats were corrupt tax and spend big government pigs, lining their pockets with money taken from hard working people. They waged a scorched earth campaign for power. And then they got it. And look at them now.
What most of us with a functional conscience and a sense of basic human decency see as the sexual exploitation of teenage congressional pages, the republicans now see only in terms of political warfare. Their pathological hatred of anyone outside of the tribe has so completely gutted them of any sense of decency and humanity, of anything at all beyond the reflexive need to attack liberals and democrats, that they are utterly incapable of seeing the sexual exploitation of teenagers for what it is. They cannot see, cannot even grasp, Mark Foley’s actions apart from the political war.
And in the blogosphere, all those fine honorable men who once upon a time fancied themselves liberals, but then supposedly 9-11 changed everything, and who keep on yap, yap, yapping that they didn’t leave the democratic party, it left them…all those fine honorable men with all their ostentatious regard for America and virtue and civilized behavior. What do they do when confronted with a man in their own party who regarded the congressional page pool as his own little sexual buffet? What do they do when confronted with evidence that their party leadership covered up that man’s behavior so as not to rouse the ire of the voters?
Well of course…they start attacking the teenagers Foley was hitting on…
Pajamas Media, Instapundit Facilitate Outing Of Foley Victim
An obscure right-wing blogger, Wild Bill, has outed one of Mark Foley’s victims, a former Congressional page. It is a despicable act. Wild Bill however, gets almost no traffic, so the damage done to the victim’s life could have been minimal.
All that ended, however, when some of the most highly-trafficked right-wing bloggers decided to direct their readers to Wild Bill’s site. First, Roger L. Simon, co-founder and CEO of Pajamas Media – a portal and advertising broker for nearly every major right-wing blog – posted a link to Wild Bill on his personal site. (The Pajamas Media portal also linked to Wild Bill.) Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit – probably the most highly-trafficked right-wing blog – followed suit by linking to Simon’s post and the Pajamas Media post.
You may recall this is generally how the right wing smear machine works. First the smear appears in some obscure nutcase’s blog. Then someone like Drudge picks up on it. Then Instapundit links to it. Then it starts appearing in a few right wing tabloids and magazines. Then the more respectable conservative press gets into it. Then it goes mainstream. Instapundit has been facilitating smear campaigns now for years, and it’s given him a high place in the right wing honor roll. Recently the hack novelist Roger L. (I didn’t leave the democratic party, it left me) Simon formed Pajamas Media to share in some of that glory. It now comes to this: Glenn Reynolds and Roger L. Simon are facilitating child sexual predators, if that’s what it takes to keep the republican party in power.
They both know perfectly well that outing this one teenager, will make other teens who have been victimized by congressmen, or anyone else holding a position of authority on Capital Hill think twice before coming forward. It increases the pressure on the entire family to keep the kid’s mouth shut. It Is Supposed To.
The complete shitheads that are the leading lights of the conservative blogosphere.
No ethics, no scruples, no morals, no compassion, no sense. Just really bad people.
Brad DeLong likes to say that the Bush administration is worse then you think, even accounting for the fact that it is worse then you think. But that’s true of all of them…every…single…one of them…in the Bush base. That 35 percent who will support the republican party no matter what. Because there is nothing worse then the prospect of a democratic congress…not even the sexual exploitation of minors. Not even covering up the sexual exploitation of minors. Garrison Keiller was right…they are republicans first, and Americans second. Every time you think you’ve found the bottom of that cesspool you soon realize that…no…there is no bottom.
