Folley Vision

I was going to avoid the whole Mark Folley thing. I mean, what was there for me to say? He had already huanged himself (remember: meat is "hung." Men are "Hanged.") But one thing ahs come out of all this that I find interesting. It has really separated the chaff from the grain among the conservative press. A number of the talking heads, their allies among the "expert comentators," and of course in Congress and the white house are actually trying to defend Mark Folley for sending sexually explicit emails to teenage boys. I mean, I've read these emails. They are fellonious. He is going to jail. And some of these family values yahoos are actually defending him. Not good christian forgiveness sort of defending either but typical political defenses: things like "we don't know the whole story," and of course accusing the democrats of manufacturing the controversy.

The talking heads though have been divided into two categories on this, and it's interesting. On the one side are the true assholes like Bill O'Reily and Matt Drudge, who are squarely in Folley's corner and defending him against these partisan attacks. On the other side are men with some integrity (about whom I have railed elsewhere on this blog) like Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough, who have strongly condemned not only Folley but also the House Leadership which (much like the Catholic dicese of Boston) rallied around the accused trying to hush up the scandal, not so much to protect the pedophile as to protect their own hold on power.

Scarborough, a friend of Folleys, a former Florida Congressman who, along with Folley was elected to Congress in the Gingrich revolution, has gone much farther. He acknowledges (we all have to) that the timing of this announcemnet is obviously political, and he scorns the democrats for politicizing the scandal, his greatest scorn is heaped upon his own party for covering this up (read his blog for today). On his show last night he said they are drunk with power, doing the same thing the democrats were doing when they had power, before Scarborough and Folley entered congress.

That's integrity. The rest of the equivocating republicans are digging a grave for themselves, and Scarborough knows it.