Won’t Someone Please Think of the Children??

A Tragic-Comic Opera in Three Parts

Act One, Washington DC

By now I sincerely hope you have heard about the little scandal swirling around Florida Congressman Mark Foley. In short, he sent explicit text messages to at least one underage Congressional page. Worse yet, House leadership knew about it, and did nothing. They didn’t even remove him as the chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children’s Caucus. The latest developments include an FBI investigation to see whether he may have broken a law he helped write, a statement from Tony Snow triviaizing the incident as “simply naughty e-mails” and Mr. Foley checking himself into rehab. Oh of course, let’s blame all his problems on alcohol, rather than his inability to keep his dirty thoughts to himself (or at the very least find an adult with whom one can exchange “naughty e-mails.”)

The fact that the page is male is a red herring; the meat of the issue is that Mr. Foley abused his position of authority with someone who is not an adult (and therefore cannot be counted on to have the judgement of an adult). He tried to set up a meeting with this boy, presumably not for study-hall. And despite the fact that Congressional pages are typically boys and girls of wealth, privilege, and the future ability to be political donors, House Leadership Did Nothing. Nothing. Hastert and the whole party deserve their fair share of the blame for this incident, and the nobody-knows-how-many other incidents that have not yet come to light.

Values my butt! How dare they stand up and say they stand for things like “character” and “family values” and “marriage is between one man and one woman” when they failed to denounce this man months ago.

Update: It turns out this guy was known about a decade ago. I guess family values are only for other people’s families.

Act Two, Livingrooms Everywhere

This morning, I saw a video clip of Mike Wallace interviewing Bob Woodward. Mr. Wallace actually had to quote a General as having recommended we get the “F” out of Iraq. Now, I think we both know what the General really said, don’t we? Isn’t it a wee bit disingenuous to think we are doing anybody a favor by censoring his actual words? The whole point of TV ratings and V chips and such is to give parents the tools to control what their kids watch on TV without government interference. That being the case, let’s bring one relic of the good old days back — news announcers who would tell you that “the next segment contains graphic images/adult language/whatever” — and let viewers judge things for themselves.

Oh, and the nice folks over at Penny Arcade point out that Congress wants to regulate the guys who rate video games. Don’t get me wrong, ESRB ratings are seriously broken. For example, a game where cartoon characters fly around throwing energy blasts at one another is rated T for Teen but a game where junior can race and crash a photo-realistic on-screen replica of dad’s sports car is rated E for Everyone. However, the answer is not in Congressional mandate, but rather in parents demanding greater accuracy in ratings.

Act Three, A High School Near You

The days are getting shorter, that whole change the clocks an hour for no apparent reason thing is coming up soon. And America’s high schools are by and large doing something that endangers all their students.

They are making students show up at class as early as 7:15 or 7:30 AM.

For many kids, this means walking to school in the dark, an activity which puts them at greater risk for being hit by a car or being assaulted on the way to school. Furthermore, they arrive at class sleep deprived and not ready to learn, thus directly impacting their grades. And as if that were not enough, they are dismissed sometimes as early as 1:30 PM, at least 3 hours and maybe even 5 hours before their parents can possibly get home. This puts them at risk for getting into all kinds of trouble, including juvenile delinquency, gang participation, drug/alcohol use, pregnancy, or being sent explicit text messages by a member of Congress.

In closing: married adult kids living at home, Federal regulators tell mortgage companies to let people know the obvious and follow common sense guidelines, but the Christian Science Monitor says it’s too late for that since half a million homeowners face possible foreclosure when their mortgage payment goes up under such loans, a bill limiting the ability of lawyers to get paid when they take First Amendment cases, follow-up on what the Military Commissions Act of 2006 could mean to you, a conservative ex-Senator, ex-preacher explains how “The Christian Right has championed a set of divisive issues that test the fealty of politicians. Often called wedge issues, their purpose is to split the country apart.” And finally, it’s about freaking time our high schools did something to make sure the many non-college bound students have skills to feed their future families.