Mark Foley's plummet from power is comforting in a way — it's nice to know there are some standards left.
He can't hold a press conference, say ``This is my truth! I am a Pervy-American,'' and end up on Oprah promoting his book ``I M So Sorry.'' No slack gets cut for the old goats who fiddle with the underage help. Rep. Foley acted crazily; he put the ``loco'' in ``in loco parentis,'' and now his lawmaking career is over.
He has followed the usual script — the apologetic farewell followed promptly by a visit to a treatment facility, thereby insinuating that Demon Rum was behind the indiscretions. But alcohol doesn't make you do things you don't want to do; it gives you permission to do things you keep yourself from doing. It's not like Mel Gibson showed up at a synagogue nine sheets to the wind asking if he could convert.
Resignation ends the story, right? Hah! This is Washington, where people can make political hay about anything. (Except hay-subsidy earmarks; there's a gentlemen's agreement to leave those alone.)
Some predict the Foley mess will kill the GOP's chances to hold the House; if so, that suggests that the voters, as many suspect, are just making it up as they go along. They'd vote GOP because gas prices came down — as if Speaker Dennis Hastert personally brought in a gusher — but they'd vote Dem because the other side had an ooky perv in its ranks.
Of course it's different if the House leadership knew the sordid details and did nothing, but that's unlikely. It's one thing to say ``Boys will be boys,'' but it's another when there's an actual boy involved.
Does this say anything about conservative ideas in general? Yes! All Rethuglicans are seething, twisted sickos who use morality to shroud their chancrous nature! Right. Sure. You see that brand of logic on the right as well, and it's natural; partisans can't resist the delicious temptation to link private behavior to the legitimacy of the ideas put forth by the miscreant.
But it's not that simple. You might say that taxes are theft, but if a liberal politician swiped money from an orphans' fund, it doesn't prove that liberalism is predicated on theft, nor invalidate established constitutional opinions about the income tax.
Likewise, when someone who has bleated long and loud about the need for high moral standards gets caught engaging in keyboard-assisted frottage, it does not mean that there are no high moral standards. It means that in addition to his other failings, he's a hypocrite.
There are worse sins.
None so juicy, though. Nothing relieves our own throbbing consciences like the exposure of hypocrisy in high places, but this doesn't reflect well on us. Indignation over hypocrisy is an adolescent emotion. It supposes no one should honor a higher ideal in words unless one follows it in every deed; it holds out hypocrisy as a sin greater than the actual transgression.
Many on the left, for example, grind their teeth at the mention of ``family values'' because they think it really means Promise Keepers in feed-store caps beating their pregnant wives with Bibles, or happy, shiny people who always keep a sack of rocks handy in case it becomes legal to stone gays. ``Family values'' is a rather indistinct concept, and even the people who use the phrase don't quite know what it means, but let one Republican be caught in a motel getting paddled by a bored call girl dressed up like a U.N. peacekeeper, and the cawing begins: So much for family values!
Just because some people fail to live up to particular ideas doesn't mean those ideas aren't important. Getting caught doing something you said was wrong doesn't mean it's really right.
We're all fallible mortals down here, but that doesn't mean no one can offer opinions about how we best might live. There are higher ideals that transcend the clay-footed stumblings of the people who speak in their name. A qualified hurrah for hypocrisy, then.
None of this applies to Rep. Foley, incidentally. Creep.
