Your Page, M’Lord - New York Times:
Suppose Nike’s founder, Phil Knight, asked taxpayers to subsidize a program for 16-year-olds to leave their homes to become “squires” running errands at Nike headquarters. Or suppose, before his death, Sam Walton had asked Congress to build a dormitory in Arkansas to house teenage “serfs” spending a semester away from their schools to work on a Wal-Mart loading dock.
These executives would become national jokes. They’d be denounced for trying to revive 19th-century child-labor practices and 12th-century feudalism. There would be no public money appropriated for Knight’s Squires or Sam’s Serfs.
Yet Congress sees nothing strange about dragging teenagers from their families and schools to become pages, one step below a squire in the feudal food chain. They’re not being forced to wear Prince Valiant haircuts, but they have to do scut work that’s probably even less useful than what they could learn at Nike or Wal-Mart.
Congressional pages spend much of their time hand-delivering documents, a job that’s done electronically in most 21st-century institutions. When educators talk about preparing youth for jobs in the Information Age, they’re not talking about training messengers.
The justification for the page program is that it gives teenagers an insider’s glimpse of how Congress works. But why disillusion them at such a tender age? If they stayed in school, they could maintain their innocence by reading the old step-by-step textbook version of how a bill becomes law. By going to Capitol Hill, they see how the process has changed [...]
What lesson has the page learned? That Congress is the closest thing in modern America to a medieval court: an enclave governed by arcane ancient rules of seniority, a gathering of nobles who spend their days accepting praise and dispensing favors to supplicants.
[...]
Spend enough time as a page, and you can easily believe it’s not what you know, it’s who you know — and whom you flatter. Granted, toadying can be a useful skill in most lines of work. But it’s not a lesson teenagers need to study for a whole semester, especially when it’s being taught in text messages from a lord on Capitol Hill.
It should be noted that this is hardly the worst incident, either in terms of activity or in terms of cover-up. Gerry Studds (what a name!) (D-MA) was caught having sex with a male 17 year old page back in '83, and basically thumbed his nose at the whole ethics process. Not only did the Dems in charge not kick him out, but his own constituency reelected him another
six times! He only left in '96, perhaps as a result of the Gingrinch republican takever of '94, with their huge "values" campaign. It could be argued that Studds, having been outed as gay and as a teenager-predator, would be the target for a quick political boost, in reaction to the failure of the Gingrinch congress and "contract with america" to pass anything remotely supporting their campaign agenda.
So it just goes to show: being a complete prick is not a partisan thing.
However, why is the current situation different and the hypocrisy so much more important? Yes any Dems who publically bash Foley are being hypocritical because they didn't treat one of their own with such force when he got caught. Mind you, it as been noted that few to no Democratic congressmen have made any statement against Foley directly, and all of the talk about the situation has been on the Republican side while the Dems are saying they never knew anything about it. But in the bigger picture, the Dems weren't riding on an election campaign and political image of "conservative moral values" which includes discrimination against gays and "protecting children from predators". Foley is the ultimate example of Republican "do what I say, not what I do" politics, the epitome of what's wrong and most disgusting with the current congress.
Well, aside from Specter complaining about the violation of civil rights in the final version of the McCain bill, then voting for it anyways like the complete partisan wussie he always reveals himself to be as long as abortion isn't on the table. THAT is disgustingly hypocritical partisan politics at its worst. Arlen, get a fucking spine.
As for Fox News part 1 (
listing Foley on screen as D-FL rather than R-FL) - all the "oops it was an accident" ain't getting him out of THAT one. It's been well known Foley was a Republican for almost a week now (and of course, VERY well known to anybody who actually covers Washington or Florida news).
As for Fox News part 2 ("
did Dems ignore Foley to preserve seat") - that's a tricky one, as it depends on what they meant by "preserve". The screenshot is not enough to determine what the actual on-screen debate was. It is certainly in the interests of the Dem party to expose Foley before the election, because if Foley leaves AFTER, then likely Jeb Bush gets to push a Republican in there temporarilly until a special election is held, depending on the FL constitution. But if they actually screwed up and
vocally called Foley a Democrat, they're in for some SERIOUSLY libel and slander lawsuit hell on wheels.
The Dems position is that the republican congressional leadership kept the Foley thing a secret even from them, and didn't present it to the House ethics committee (a powerless group anyways since Delay gutted it of anybody who actually gave a shit).
But really, the question remains what were the actually talking about while this deceptive graphic was on the screen.
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