Has Dennis Hastert called the Pope yet?
Because this all seems pretty familiar. By "this" I mean the Mark Foley fiasco. By "familiar" I mean the 70 or so students at my old high school that a very friendly priest turned out to have molested over a period of a quarter of a century or so. I liked the guy myself, and probably still would, but he died in prison last year. And do you think the local Catholic leadership knew he had a "problem?" Yes, of course. They thought they'd "cured him. Three times, I think.
I recall chatting with a DC-area carpenter a few years ago, and hearing him say that he'd heard gossip from people whose houses he'd worked on claiming that the Hill was full of people with an itch for illicit sex, that something about power seemed to bring that out. Well, yes, of course. When I was in high school, I worked on a campaign for Jerry Springer (yes, that Jerry Springer), who became mayor and then resigned in disgrace when he was linked with a call girl ring. When I mentioned this to the carpenter, he said something like "well he wasn't screwing little boys." Pedophiles in Congress? So gossip had it. Did the leadership know? Don't be absurd. I'm sure everyone knew. (Everyone always knows, only usually it isn't true.)
So I'm keeping my eye out for the Catholic connection. I haven't seen it yet in the news, but then I haven't been reading it carefully. And it's the sort of thing that will turn up in a second- or third-day analysis story, the kind of story the Times calls a "Q-head," I think. You know, the kind with the headline "The Powerful and Young Sex," the kind that begins with something about Socrates. Perhaps an article of this nature will mention that the Congressional chieftains are referred to by staffers and others on the Hill as "Cardinals." It's a cute detail, like, you know, Socrates.
This will be a kind of interesting test of the capacities of the political press system. The party leaders will certainly not try to draw comparisons; ordinary people, especially Catholics of my generation, certainly will. Let's see whose thinking the press reflects.
Because this all seems pretty familiar. By "this" I mean the Mark Foley fiasco. By "familiar" I mean the 70 or so students at my old high school that a very friendly priest turned out to have molested over a period of a quarter of a century or so. I liked the guy myself, and probably still would, but he died in prison last year. And do you think the local Catholic leadership knew he had a "problem?" Yes, of course. They thought they'd "cured him. Three times, I think.
I recall chatting with a DC-area carpenter a few years ago, and hearing him say that he'd heard gossip from people whose houses he'd worked on claiming that the Hill was full of people with an itch for illicit sex, that something about power seemed to bring that out. Well, yes, of course. When I was in high school, I worked on a campaign for Jerry Springer (yes, that Jerry Springer), who became mayor and then resigned in disgrace when he was linked with a call girl ring. When I mentioned this to the carpenter, he said something like "well he wasn't screwing little boys." Pedophiles in Congress? So gossip had it. Did the leadership know? Don't be absurd. I'm sure everyone knew. (Everyone always knows, only usually it isn't true.)
So I'm keeping my eye out for the Catholic connection. I haven't seen it yet in the news, but then I haven't been reading it carefully. And it's the sort of thing that will turn up in a second- or third-day analysis story, the kind of story the Times calls a "Q-head," I think. You know, the kind with the headline "The Powerful and Young Sex," the kind that begins with something about Socrates. Perhaps an article of this nature will mention that the Congressional chieftains are referred to by staffers and others on the Hill as "Cardinals." It's a cute detail, like, you know, Socrates.
This will be a kind of interesting test of the capacities of the political press system. The party leaders will certainly not try to draw comparisons; ordinary people, especially Catholics of my generation, certainly will. Let's see whose thinking the press reflects.
posted by jnerone at 7:32 PM
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