So, how different would the Foley story be if the pages in question were 17-year-old girls instead of 17-year-old boys? In addition to wondering how different the story would be playing in the public, I've wondered how different my own reactions would be. I've been trying the inversion on the latest exchange made public by ABC news:
Maf54: I want to see you
Girl: Like I said not til feb...then we will go to dinner
Maf54: and then what happens
Girl: we eat...we drink...who knows...hang out...late into the night
Maf54: and
Girl: I dunno
Maf54: dunno what
Girl: hmmm I have the feeling that you are fishing here...im not sure what I would be comfortable with...we'll see
Update: As alerted to me by Kim, a fuller Foley transcript is available at Slate here. It's so completely creeptastic I couldn't bear to read it after page four.
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7 comments:
I'd still say he's a perv. He's been getting away with it for years. It's sexual harrassment, and that's before you take into consideration that these are 15-17 year-olds. Thank god some kid had the balls to stand up and tell someone.
I'm not suggesting the conclusion would be that he's "not a perv" anymore. It's whether/how-much the reaction would be different. I keep reading references to the Edwin Edwards quote that the only way he could lose some election would be if he were caught in bed with "a dead girl or a live boy." (I suppose I could have done the preceding dialogue with "Dead Girl" instead of "Girl" for comparison, although I don't know if AIM allows you to chat with the dead. GoogleTalk doesn't.)
ABC news published the tamest bits.
Try the gender-inversion thought experiment on the full text of the IM exchange, posted at slate.com.
I do think that if the victims were female instead of male, the story would be focused on how the page[s] were willing participants and if not quite adult, then close enough: i.e., the victim-as-temptress defense. Because they were male, Foley has to rely on blaming the bottle instead of blaming the victim.
is the foley thing a "liberal hit job"?
i doubt that the foley thing is a liberal hit job. i suspect it is just a scandal for the same reason that people watch that Dateline: To Catch a Predator.
That's like the only thing Dateline ever talks about anymore. It's like how Maury Povich became The Paternity Test Show.
I haven't been following the Foley thing closely enough, but is he blaming being into young boys on the alcoholism? Because that would be a real boon to campus anti-drinking efforts. The PSA would say: Too much alcohol sends you to Congress, and then turns you into a perv.
-Corrie
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