Lubbock
10-08-2006, 07:27 AM
Page Scandal Makes America Look Silly
October 8, 2006
<!-- Article By Line --> BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
[SNIP]
Well, there is. Many laws, in fact. And it's not clear any of them were broken. It's a good basic rule of thumb that no matter how bad a scandal is, the political class' response will be worse, largely hysterical and lacking any sense of proportion. But, even by those minimal expectations, this last week has been unbecoming for a serious nation. In London, sex scandals come along every other week. You name it, British parliamentarians do it: three-in-a-bed, auto-erotic asphyxiation, gay teen flagellation, getting your toes sucked while wearing the soccer kit of Chelsea Football Club. But at least at Westminster, sex scandals require actual sex. That the governing party of the world's only superpower could be felled by one creepy pervert's masturbatory e-mails and IMs is an event historians will marvel at. Granted that the Roman Empire in its death throes got hung up on gay sex, the American hyperpower seems set to be the first to collapse over gay non-sex.
[SNIP]
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/87789,CST-EDT-STEYN08.article
Followed up by Ben Stein:
Foley in Perspective
By Ben Stein
Published 10/6/2006 12:09:09 AM
Let's all agree that Rep. Mark Foley did some very bad things by sending sexually suggestive and explicit e-mails to young male pages. Let's all agree that the House GOP leadership should have kept a much closer eye on Rep. Foley, an apparent pedophile or something that looks a lot like a pedophile to me.
May I make a few additional observations?
Hasn't anyone noticed a certain pervasive sexualizing of children in America today and for the past decades? Children in sexual situations in movies, on TV, in music, in advertisements, especially for clothing? Hasn't anyone noticed that sexualizing young girls (and to a lesser extent boys) is largely what modern Hollywood is about? Is it maybe time to ask if this is a good thing? Is it good to teach young people that they are primarily valued for their sexual allure and performance and availability? Maybe some good can come of the Foley scandal if we start to ask ourselves if we really want to teach our young people -- or permit them to teach themselves -- that their sex attributes are the bottom line of what counts about them? If you spend much time watching certain TV channels that appeal to young people, you get to suspect that this a pedophile nation and whether this is inevitable or whether it needs to be examined and challenged.
Second, and incomparably more important, yes, it's interesting and instructive and merits attention that Mark Foley did what he did and that the GOP leadership did not do much about it. I hope my readers and fellow humans will not hate me too much if I say that in a world where 3,000 women and children are raped and/or murdered every day in Congo, a member of the United Nations, in which a genuine genocide is going on in Sudan, a member of the United Nations, in which more than fifty men and women per day are being tortured with electric drills and murdered in Iraq, in which two of the world's most dangerous and insane men, Kim Jong Il and Mohammed Ahmadinejad, are developing nuclear weapons, the e-mail of one deranged middle class white man does not really count to me as much as it might to some other people.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10458
Steyn and Stein. Can't beat the combo.
October 8, 2006
<!-- Article By Line --> BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
[SNIP]
Well, there is. Many laws, in fact. And it's not clear any of them were broken. It's a good basic rule of thumb that no matter how bad a scandal is, the political class' response will be worse, largely hysterical and lacking any sense of proportion. But, even by those minimal expectations, this last week has been unbecoming for a serious nation. In London, sex scandals come along every other week. You name it, British parliamentarians do it: three-in-a-bed, auto-erotic asphyxiation, gay teen flagellation, getting your toes sucked while wearing the soccer kit of Chelsea Football Club. But at least at Westminster, sex scandals require actual sex. That the governing party of the world's only superpower could be felled by one creepy pervert's masturbatory e-mails and IMs is an event historians will marvel at. Granted that the Roman Empire in its death throes got hung up on gay sex, the American hyperpower seems set to be the first to collapse over gay non-sex.
[SNIP]
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/87789,CST-EDT-STEYN08.article
Followed up by Ben Stein:
Foley in Perspective
By Ben Stein
Published 10/6/2006 12:09:09 AM
Let's all agree that Rep. Mark Foley did some very bad things by sending sexually suggestive and explicit e-mails to young male pages. Let's all agree that the House GOP leadership should have kept a much closer eye on Rep. Foley, an apparent pedophile or something that looks a lot like a pedophile to me.
May I make a few additional observations?
Hasn't anyone noticed a certain pervasive sexualizing of children in America today and for the past decades? Children in sexual situations in movies, on TV, in music, in advertisements, especially for clothing? Hasn't anyone noticed that sexualizing young girls (and to a lesser extent boys) is largely what modern Hollywood is about? Is it maybe time to ask if this is a good thing? Is it good to teach young people that they are primarily valued for their sexual allure and performance and availability? Maybe some good can come of the Foley scandal if we start to ask ourselves if we really want to teach our young people -- or permit them to teach themselves -- that their sex attributes are the bottom line of what counts about them? If you spend much time watching certain TV channels that appeal to young people, you get to suspect that this a pedophile nation and whether this is inevitable or whether it needs to be examined and challenged.
Second, and incomparably more important, yes, it's interesting and instructive and merits attention that Mark Foley did what he did and that the GOP leadership did not do much about it. I hope my readers and fellow humans will not hate me too much if I say that in a world where 3,000 women and children are raped and/or murdered every day in Congo, a member of the United Nations, in which a genuine genocide is going on in Sudan, a member of the United Nations, in which more than fifty men and women per day are being tortured with electric drills and murdered in Iraq, in which two of the world's most dangerous and insane men, Kim Jong Il and Mohammed Ahmadinejad, are developing nuclear weapons, the e-mail of one deranged middle class white man does not really count to me as much as it might to some other people.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10458
Steyn and Stein. Can't beat the combo.