Mark My Words

John Stewart noted, with amusement, that he had thought, with habeus corpus effectively eliminated for non-citizens, and any citizen could, for any reason, be considered an "enemy combatant", there would be no other competing news story.

Alas, there was.

Congressman Mark Foley had sent emails and IMs to a sixteen year old male page. The aftermath has been somewhat predictable. Some have declared this disgusting. Some find the thought that other Congressmen had covered this up for possibly years disgusting. Those who are somewhat more sympathetic to Foley compare the reaction to the reaction of Democrats to Clinton, who, by all accounts, had an affair, even as Hillary did not seem to react with disgust, perhaps due to the convenience of being a married politician.

Some have noted that Republicans have not distanced themselves, and have, indeed, sought to find the people who leaked the information to the public, and punish them instead.

Here are several thoughts I was going to blog about (and thus, am blogging about). First, having read the transcripts of the IM discussion, I'm a little surprised about the page getting this involved. Foley treats this conversation as if he's straight (he asks if the teen had given a hand job to a girl). And the teen does seem turned on by this situation. I find it a bit peculiar how the teen got involved.

Here's where things get a little problematic. You see, we envision teens as somehow pristine and innocent, but any kid who wants to be a page must have some political aspirations, and therefore, can't be that innocent about the world. This make me wonder whether such conversations took place with other people (say, his classmates--I can't imagine that he's only IMing the Congressman). Now, perhaps the page thinks that by being nice to Foley, he can get some political advantage, but that's an odd way to reason, though perhaps not out of the question.

But I did want to talk about something else, which was this comparison of Foley to Clinton. On the one hand, Clinton appears to have engaged in sexual intercourse with Monica Lewinsky. By all accounts, Lewinsky would not have been his first dailliance. Even so, the women he was involved with were consenting adults, and basically, the whole Lewinsky incident was really about perjury, not about infidelity, which isn't, as far as I know, against the law. Clinton didn't want to admit his sexual proclivities and lied about it, then got pressed on that lie.

At this point, there isn't evidence that Foley actually had sex with pages. Indeed, his relationships appear to be at a distance through the use of, yes, modern technology. What Foley has done with what thousands (millions?) of others have done, though presumably with age-comparable people. Such frank IMs, I'm sure, occur daily with teens amongst each other, although we're more prepared, as a society to accept this (somewhat).

This show the immediacy of modern communication. Foley, aged 52 (I think), was using IM, something many of his colleagues probably rarely engage in (though not unheard of, and of course, growing more and more common).

Foley show some naivete, too. His screen-name appears to be his initials with some number at the end, making it easier to track. And I'm sure the email was similarly trackable. It seems he did try to avoid using work computers, working from home. Whether he really did that remains to be seen.

But the comparison intrigues me. Is the use of words, in this case, comparable to the actual act? The pen (or computer) is mightier than the sword?

Another question that comes to mind. About twenty years ago, there was a scandal with pages. Again, several Congressman, perhaps flush with power, found young pages presumably irresistable. So why did the page system stay in place, especially high school students? It was said that Republicans allegedly warned pages about Foley. Did some of the pages simply not know (it was alleged that Democratic pages weren't told, presumably for fear of leaking this information)? And why were there teenaged pages to begin with?

To summarize, here's what I find interesting. First, the increasing prevalence of electronic communication, especially for less than wholesome activities. Second, if Foley did not actually engage in physical acts, then how does one compare sexually charged text to the actual sexual act? My sense is that, even lacking any contact, the relationship is clearly far from healthy, but it's the kind of relationship that can go on through IM.

I'm vaguely reminded of You, Me, and Everyone We Know where a predatory IMer is talking to a 6 year old kid. To be fair, the person sending these instant messages has no clue how old the other person is, and indeed, the film suggests that she is talking to someone age comparable, though strange (it's even notable that the kid is not that good at spelling, so uses cut and paste to copy text as needed). When the two meet, the older person is rather surprised (the six-year old just sees the older person as someone he's been talking to, not a sexual predator) that the conversation has been with such a young kid.

I also wonder how Foley reconciled the thought of going against sexual predators, when he himself was involved in activities that had to be considered in the same ballpark. Did he think such things would afford him more opportunities? Or was he concerned about how it looked for a single middle-aged Republican would appear?

And how was Foley dealing with his sexuality? We he dating anyone? Was he deeply closeted, and therefore found this a way of dealing with his desires. (There has been suggestions there may be others like Foley).

People may be shocked at the situation, but in shock, there is often a lack of asking why, and listening to a serious answer. Already, Foley has pointed that he was molested as a teen. Certainly, listening to Loveline suggests that such events can be emotionally damaging. Foley claims he's not using it as an excuse, though, in a way, he is. And perhaps he can indeed blame it on a past experience. It doesn't excuse his actions, but does provide insight into why it happened.

We say we're a nation that tries to protect its youth, yet, there's pressure for many teens to have sex before college and in college. My brother once told me that the wife of his colleague simply could not imagine anyone being a virgin past, say, 19. To be fair, the kid was 16. But to be fair, many people have lost their virginity by then too. I find that for a nation that tries to protect its children, it doesn't seem to do a great job at it, and so this naive view of teen innocence may be inappropriate, even in a case as strange and inappropiate as this.