Foley's Follies and Privacy's Price

The Mark Foley bombshell splatters mud on our Party of Values, a Red State Conundrum tipping an election, and pushing the Log Cabin Republicans ever deeper into the woods.

Much deeper.

The patina of the Purity Party may never quite recover, strangely damaged in a way Anita
Hill could never have guessed, but Linda Tripp must surely relish.

The Catholic Church would be happy to trade places with the House of Hastert, though- the Diocese of Iowa declared Chapter 11 last week, weighted down by myriad cases of sexual abuse, and inexcusable coverup. Donations have dropped by 30% as parishioners make the same calculation as the Value Voters in the Red State- contradiction, coverup, hypocrisy.

In another internecine twist, the Diocese of Malta has now opened an investigation into Mark Foley's own Catholic Sex Abuser.

Faith-based voters may finally have hit the tipping point and lost their zeal to keep Hastert & Co. in power.

Approval of Congress stands at a historic low of 16 % !!!

(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061019/ts_alt_afp/usvotepolitics;_ylt=Avd54FsLkRSgqKs0ijnW3OM8KbIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--)

The Foley Scandal, with a public figure making secret gay solicitations to an innocent young page, offers us so much more than a delicious counter-weight to the Clinton-Lewinsky Waterloo. It reflects back our cultural balance of privacy versus transparency for public officials, and draws out the sharp conflict in our Americans values... our wallets buy up every photo from the No-Privacy Celebrity Stalkerazzi, poring over the disheleveled starlet for the faintest trace of a Slipped Nip.

Yet, our own American Ministry of Virtue and Vice- the "See No Evil" House Ethics Committee- values their desperate plan to maintain control of a restive Congress over the plaintive cries of a creeped outyoung page.

It is those places where Pop Culture Icons collides with Dirty-Tricks Political Campaign that the Mark Foley Scandal leaves an indelible mark for history- a place to judge our principles and integrity.

Was this the time to keep privacy private, to be a strict Libertarian "Live and Let Live" or throw
wide the barn doors and expose the dirty doings in the Pigpen of Congress?

Before you answer, remember that the Age of Consent for Washington DC is 16, and our Founding Fathers fled pernicious prosecution for their own beliefs.

Homosexuals may be the "bete noir" of this time, but in 1776 it was surely the religious zealots and their Values Mandates that chilled the veins of a burgeoning democracy.

We can reflect our time in theirs by considering these interesting turnabouts.

Long before the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to privacy, the implicit promise of freedom of diversity breathed life into our young democracy. As the Status of Liberty would say, our tired, our poor, our unwashed masses settled these shores in search of freedom to worship their way, free from regulation and persecution found in their native lands.

HBO"s Deadwood painted this starkly uproarious portrait- whores and cursing, spittle and drunks, yet beating beneath this swirling den of iniquity lay an emerging strong, uniquely American community values of Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Jefferson"s exhortation to Liberty made us great, and gave us our own time's Libertarian Party, the odd and disturbing bedfellow to Evangeicals and NASCAR Dads in todays Republican Coalition of the Willing.

If Mark Foley had walked the streets of Deadwood, he might still be in office today- no law was
clearly broken, though the page"s own father may well have called Foley out and shot him with dueling pistols at dawn.

The only real casualty today is a Republican Partys self-serving belief that it is our country"s own Moral Majority. The Libertarians must be secretly pleased to see their cohorts squirm at the contradictions.

Still, we must pity the poor modern-day Libertarian- fruitlessly flailing to make sense of his privacy values, yet breaking bread at fundraisers with the Morality Police, and working to re-elect the raving hypocrisy of appointing Mark Foley, knee-deep in documented inappropriate contacts accusations - to the Chairmanship of the House Committee to Protect Children.

Today, privacy is more important than ever, as Google and keystroke-loggers make it so easy for government, corporations, and even our neighbors to gather information about us. All of us suffer from scandal fatigue, yet we snap up the latest train wreck auditions on
American Idol, and Mel Gibson anti-semitic diatribe sells a rainforest worth of glossy rags.

Privacy rights may afford protection from unwarranted governmental interference, but privacy also gives shelter to those who abuse their liberty by harming others.

Sex scandals are a distasteful fact of life, and have always been a part of our democracy, dating back even beyond Grover Clevelands "bastard baby" and the election smearing revelation of his adultery it proved. Dirty tricks and "gotcha" politics are a political fact of American Life, and always have been.

As with all Political Scandals these days, it"s not the crime, but the cover-up that taints the House of Hastert. The naked ambition to Win at All Costs out-weighed the desire to Uphold Our Values, and Protect the Children.