Matt Drudge Defends Sexual Predators
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Law, Partisan Hacks
“The kids are egging him on…”
That is just one brief pearl of wisdom from Matt Drudge’s recent radio broadcast about the Mark Foley scandal. Needless to say, he defends Foley and goe so far as to generally call 16 and 17 year olds “beasts.”
Please listen to them all:
First clip.
Second clip.
Third clip.
People, this is a guy who’s a key mechanism of the right-wing spin machine.
And when I say sexual predators (in the plural), I mean to. Drudge is saying that if you pass a certain threshold, regardless of state law, you’re fair game.
How dare he. What a piece of partisan scum…to spin this as not a big deal and to paint the kids as the predators…jeezus.
What a time we live in…
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October 3rd, 2006 at 11:28 am
A few important personal opinions on all this
- To be fair, I read some of those IMs, the kids were either totally into it or having one hell of a laugh egging him on.
- While Foley probably deserves everything that the law would throw at any sexual predators we probabably ARE being too harsh on these people. It really is a form of sociopathic disorder, it’s a very low hurdle to clear, too bad our christian-bred conscience doesn’t seem capable of doing it. The better approach is (and I have been saying this for years) to acknowledge this as a problem and offer help and counseling for people who have these compulsions. Those who turn down this extended hand can then be branded as malignant and a danger to society, but we’ve got to at least try to address it as a medical issue first.
- Finally, this is really not nearly as large news as people are making it out to be. I mean everybody already knows that capital hill is full of crooks and jackasses. This is just one particularly gossip-wrothy instance. The real news is the torture bill, the NIE report, the incompetnence on all levels of government, the news that we have pretty much lost Afghanistan and half of Iraq, the fact that Rumsfeld has been branded incompetent by nearly the entire military, and so on. Just as a theory, consider the timing of this Foley nonesense and it’s distracting power. And consider that Foley’s sexual perversions have been known to the republican leadership for at least a year. Whether this is intentional or not its just distracting us from things whch are reall far more important.
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:33 am
I think what I just listened to, along with what I just read, is nothing but apologism at its worst/finest.
Consider then if the kid was having a laugh at the entire thing, why would Foley just KEEP playing into it? Seriously, that should throw WTF flags up left and right.
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:58 am
According to my wife the psychologist, no amount of counseling works with sexual predators.
Your theory of the time is tin foil hat material.
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:59 am
make that:
Your theory of the timing is tin foil hat material.
October 3rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Rush is also pushing a “The Democrats set him up by encouraging the kid.” meme.
The two things that make this particularly newsworthy are that it’s not state laws that Foley broke by his actions, but a federal law that he helped get passed setting a legal age of 18 before an adult can have that kind of interaction with a young person and the coverup by Republican Party officials.
October 3rd, 2006 at 1:35 pm
George -
First off, I agree with the later part of your post. There is soooo much more out there that deserves our attention and political anger it seems silly for the pot to really boil over this situation. But there you have it.
Second - any adult professional knows this is over the line. If I did this where I work (a public high school) I would be fired. If the administration covered for me, they would be fired. It is unethical and inexcusable under any circumstances for grown adults to use their position and authority to ply adolescents for sexual gratification (and the latest IM’s indicate alcohol was involved as well). For that to happen is bad enough. For our elected national leaders to knowingly cover it up is unthinkable and reprehensible. For Rush and Sean and company to “spin” it demonstrates the unGodly depths our media and politics have decended to.
Our “generation” (in particular this administration) is quickly becoming the poster child for abusive, neglectful, corrupt governance. It is a shame on our leaders and a shame on us, the electorate, who put them in power. We all need to do some serious thinking about the present state of our national culture.
October 3rd, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Let me propose a defense on several points.
Point 1: What exactly do you mean no amount of counseling works? Certainly you don’t mean to imply that everybody with these impulses follows through on them? There are lots of people that manage to control themselves by acknowledging the reason why their particular fetish is illicit and keeping it to the realm of fantasy. If you don’t believe go to any website which has erotic fiction and look at the profiles for some of the authors. You’ll find that occasionally the people with pedophilia and other such fetishes will make the most elegant arguments against them exactly because those are the arguments they use to persuade yourself.
Point 2: I’m radical, I’m real radical, I think that we are at the point where we should be spray-painting slogans on walls and holding rallies. I AM indeed suspicious that the GOP chose to drop some ballast now in order to distract people. But whether you agree with that or not (and the majority of people surely do not), you can’t argue that that is NOT the effect that all this stuff is having. They’ve lost one seat in senate, but how many people are reading Mark Foley’s IMs instead of checking whether their congressman voted for the Torture bill or not?
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:44 pm
So somehow the Republican apologists are trying to say there’s some Democratic analogue of Linda Tripp out there trying to get these 16 year old boys to wait, then report the conversations just before the election…
Well, at least it didn’t cost the taxpayers $40 million like it did to find a skanky blue dress.
October 4th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Foley deserves jail & no mercy. What a creep & a hypocrite! Drudge and Rush made me sick, trying to “blame the kids.” I could not believe my ears!!! How low!!!
But, I do wonder if Foley could be a “sacrifice” to distract from the serious problems affecting the country, laid at the administration’s feet. Including WSJ’s article about the way both sides of the aisle rolled over and backed down about requiring background checks of dock workers… These people could care less about Homeland “security” obviously! And, how about the Justice Dept report about the way jailed terrorists’ letters to their buddies are not being read by anybody, because of a lack of TRANSLATORS?? Yet, we are legalizing torture? Can we start with reading their mail?
Read the report & the WSJ article & you will be seething like I am.