October Surprise Time

An article in Harpers Magazine, Republicans Want to Turn Over a New Page - The Foley scandal is no “October Surprise”, Posted on Tuesday, October 10, 2006, by Ken Silverstein, is a strange and very interesting bit of spinning.

First point – Harpers had the “innocuous” or “creepy” e-mails as early as May 2006, and chose not to run a story based on them because they didn’t prove anything. As Democrats have since noted, courtesy of 20/20 hindsight, it was obvious given that Foley was gay that any communications he had with male pages should have been closely monitored and scrutinized. As Democratic Strategist Bob Beckel noted, “…having a gay man around boys was like letting notorious bank robber “Slick” Willie Sutton hang around banks.”

That’s right, homophobes of the world, a Democratic Strategist has found Mark Foley guilty of “E-mailing while Gay.”

But back to my first point, we find from Mr. Silverstein that the e-mail requesting a former page’s photo was not explained convincingly to him when he asked Foley about it several months ago. But Mr. Silverstein also discloses that the e-mails were already known to many newspapers, magazines, and Democrats, and none of them, including Harpers, thought there was sufficient cause to run a story about the e-mails, former page, and Foley. Mr. Silverstein and others however noted that Foley’s e-mails were “creepy,” a new category of offense apparently reserved for Gay Republicans.


"My story, a real page turner!" Gerry Studds
"Poor Foley. I got to play with my page, he only got to play with himself."
(Note: This is a made-up quote which, in keeping with CBS journalistic standards, although fake proves a greater truth.)
(Gerry Studds, May 12,1937 - October 14, 2006. RIP
"He was somebody's brother
He was somebody's son")

Democrats clearly have also convicted Foley of being “Creepy while Gay,” an offense they never applied to Gerry Studds or Barney Frank.

Another interesting point. When Republicans bring up Gerry Studds having sex with a male page who was both a minor, reluctant, and a government employee at the time, the Democrats whine about Republicans exhuming a twenty-three-year old Democratic transgression. However, since much of the current Democratic leadership were comfortable working with Studds for fourteen years after he defied House censure, the question remains: Are only the actions of Gay Republicans suspicious?

A final point brought up by Mr. Silverstein: The Foley Follies couldn’t be an October surprise because so many Democrats knew of it long ago and did nothing. Again, this is a curious position taken by an apparently very incurious journalist who already has demonstrated that no one thought the e-mails they had seen proved anything except Foley was “overly friendly.”

So now Democrats have convicted him of “Overly Friendly while Gay.”

I am surprised Mr. Silverstein didn’t notice that nothing seemed significant to anyone until the almost-October debut of the salacious Instant Messages, which had been tucked away somewhere for about three years. Someone knew of them, someone had them, someone very recently released them.

Might I be so bold as to play journalist and ask: Who knew of the graphic three-year old Instant Messages, and when did they know of them?



Is it as clear to you as it is to me, that if any Democrat knew of the existence of these Instant Messages for one, two, or three years, and did nothing about them, that that Democrat was far more concerned about mounting a political ambush on Republicans than he/she/it was concerned about a Republican mounting a page?