In just a few days, much has been written about Florida Congressman Mark Foley’s resignation over sexually explicit emails sent to underage boys. People have written about how this is bad news for the Republicans in an election season, how this reflects on House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) especially if he had an inkling this was going on, and about how Foley might be prosecuted under the laws he helped enact.

There are two issues that really bug me, though, that aren’t really part of the political football game. First, how does a person in the year 2006 use IM and email to do something that would so obviously ruin their career? Second, why is it that a man who fought so hard against child pornography and was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children end up getting in trouble for actions so disturbingly opposed to his public crusade?

One the first point, I know we have plenty of evidence that members of Congress know very little about technology and the Internet. But Foley is relatively young, just over 50, and has worked on bills dealing with child pornography on the Internet. Did he think the Internet is like a big truck, something you just dump something on? In reality, it’s a series of tubes, leading directly back to your computer.* Real anonymity on the Internet is difficult – especially when the boys you are contacting already know who â€œMaf54â€? really is!

My second issue is the apparent tendency of people in power to abuse their power to pursue starkly hypocritical vices. I’m not talking about the normal, run-of-the-mill campaign promise hypocrisy that most politicians fall into. When Bush landed on that aircraft carrier and beamed to the cameras, depsite having defended the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong in his youth, it was a load of hooey, but an understandable, market-tested load of hooey. Misdeeds in office are not, of course, limited to Republicansâ€”we all remember Clintonâ€”but man, there is quite a list of Republicans.

Foley’s emails, though, crossed a line into a larger, more robust hypocrisy, televangelist-caught-with-hookers territory. The rarefied air of â€œdrug addicts should be put in prison, except meâ€? with an unsettling twist of harming others as well as himself.

Why is it that those who claim the most moral superiority so often end up on the news for not doing as they say? Was Foley’s crusade against child pornography a calculated, elaborate cover design to let him get away with what he wanted to do? Did he start out with good intentions, only to be tempted by power and a feeling of invincibility? Is it the Michael Jackson disorder â€“ being surrounded for so long by people who tell you that you are great no matter what you do that you lose touch with reality?

I don’t know. Sometimes it is comforting to see how the mighty have fallen. It can be nice to think, as you are lambasted by some some holier-than-thou gassbag, that it’s just a matter of time before they find him with his thumb in some transvestite’s rear end. But how easily some make the long leap between normal hypocrisy and big, exploitative, risky hypocrisy is unsettling to me.

*Wow, did I really just take advantage of possible child solicitation to further ridicule Senator Ted Stevens? Yes… yes I did.

Written by Jason

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