The Politics of Disgust
I’ve been trying to weigh in here on what has been going on with the recent revelations concerning Rep Foley (R-FL). The extensive coverage of this appalling incident, and the complete spin being applied to this travesty, only draw focus on the bias of many of the major news organizations.
Over here at a blog called the Daily Kos, they are reporting on an incident where the Fox News Channel completely inaccurately portrayed the Democratic party as trying to ignore Foley E-Mails to preserve their house seat. Last I looked, Rep. Foley was a Republican member of congress, which would have meant even more reason why democrats would have wanted to expose vs ignore any scandal. Especially if they could then draw inference towards the Republican congressional leadership somehow being complicent in these crimes. And this is not even the first such mistake on the Fox News Channel. Earlier in this saga, it appears that on Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox News also had a proof-reading problem in their studio when they displayed this image here:
Enough about Fox News however. This horrible situation has been made even worse as reports keep flooding in from from various news sources that the Republican congressional leadership actually knew about this, or had it reported to them YEARS before this scandal broke. That’s right, YEARS! Over at SFGate, they’ve posted up an Associated Press article regarding this issue. Here are some choice qoutes:
Among the Republican explanations during the night:
_The congressional sponsor of the page, Rep. Rodney Alexander, R-La., said he was asked by the youth’s parents not to pursue the matter, so he dropped it.
_Alexander said that before deciding to end his involvement, he passed on what he knew to the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, Rep. Thomas Reynolds, R-N.Y. Reynolds’ spokesman, Carl Forti, said the campaign chairman also took no action in deference to the parents’ wishes.
_Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the Page Board that oversees the congressional work-study program for high schoolers, said he did investigate but Foley falsely assured him he was only mentoring the boy. Pages are high school students who attend classes under congressional supervision and work as messengers.
_The spokesman for Speaker Dennis Hastert, Ron Bonjean, said the top House Republican had not known about the allegations. Shimkus said he learned about them in late 2005.
I don’t know about you, but this is just pure scary. I’m going to leave off for now, while I simmer on this for a bit. I’m almost too disgusted to continue on.
