Outrage as Misdirection: The Real Scandal Isn't Foley

From Smirking Chimp courtesy of AlterNet:

It's a sad commentary on the state of American democracy, on the instincts of the American citizenry, and on the standards and judgment of the American newsmedia that the unsavory advances of a pathetic Forida congressman can have the nation in high dudgeon, while the ramming through of a patently illegal piece of legislation undermining a crucial 13th century civil liberty (habeas corpus), and the Fourth and Eighth Amendments of the constitution, and the secret planning for an illegal and catastrophic attack on Iran, both merit almost no complaint or mention.

Far be it from me to complain if Rep. Mark Foley's sexual obsession with teenage boys ends up sinking Republican hopes for hanging onto the House and Senate. But how sad that it would be if it is this, and the coverup of his crimes by the Republican leadership, that undoes the Bush administration, when its real crimes are of such grandeur and seriousness?

And

At least the Foley saga makes it clear why the farcical impeachment of Bill Clinton for his extramarital escapade moved forward through the House to a Senate trial, while George Bush, whose crimes far exceed those of any president before him, including Richard Nixon, and place the whole American experiment in jeopardy, has not even faced censure, much less a bill of impeachment.

Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should be ashamed of themselves for leaping so boldly to the attack over Foley's crime and the Republican leadership's cover-up, while continuing to assert that there will be no effort to impeach the president for his own crimes even if they manage, with Foley's assistance, to wrest control of the House November 8.

Click here for the rest.

And there you have it. Due to the entertainment and ratings focus of the news media, not to mention the careerist and power-seeking behavior of politicians from both parties, public discourse in the US has degenerated so much that issues are completely irrelevant: political debate today, and for some years now in fact, is only in terms of sex and bullshit. I mean, it's nice to see the Democrats pull up their sleeves and come out swinging, but it is remarkable that they waited for years until they had a sex scandal as good as Bill and Monica to get to work. It's as though this Foley scandal is the only thing they feel safe going balls-to-the-walls about, which leads me to think that the left-wing emotion driving this is actually coming from a Democratic sense of utter impotence on everything else. Of course, that impotence is self-imposed. They could have been, and should have been, applying the same sense of outrage to...well...you name it--the GOP has given us plenty to scream about over the years. But no, it all has to be about sex and trash.

I'm really starting to become sickened by how the left is dealing with this Foley scandal.

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