Narrative Control, We Have A Problem

Whew. What a week.

You've heard about House Representative Foley, who resigned over his witty sex-text messages with some teenage boys called "congressional pages." In an all-out effort win the 2006 Franz Kafka Irony Award, the Grand Old Perverts put Foley in charge of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Competition for the award is especially keen, so what would normally be a memorable lesson in governmental Good-Touch/Bad-Touch may be forgotten in a month. Every elected representative within shouting distance of a camcorder is busy heaping scorn and outrage on Foley while expressing shocked surprise. They're neglecting to mention they (on the Pug side of the aisle, at least) sat on the knowledge of Foley's pedophiliac impulses for a long time, and on the specific complaints of a page-boy from Louisiana since early 2005, when most members of the House Caucus on Admiring Children saw the text messages in question.

The Dims are not well-organized enough to maintain narrative control for long, and as Napoleon once said, "When it comes to politics, absurdity is no handicap." The Page Boy Special is probably just one more groan out of a foul-tempered, very resilient camel. (Does the name Jeff Gannon ring a bell? Look folks, a gay male prostitute posed as a journalist in the White House Press Corps with the aid of the Bush Administration and even I've almost forgotten about it. See what I mean?) Let's wipe the camel spit off our faces and look ahead at what's probably in store.

If you could pick up the crushing, worn-out millstone that is our Congress and roll it over all at once, the crawly critters you'd see scuttling away from the light of day would not belong solely to the genus "Pug." Not hardly. The Dims are in for a sensational counter-attack when we get closer to the election. This time, I'll expect not just text messages, but a talking victim going public against a Dim in the Senate, probably with some pictures thrown in. Question: what's worse in the public imagination? Male-male, male-female, female-male, or female-female pedophilia?