Friday, October 06, 2006

No relation

Chris Cannon (I repeat: NO relation), Republican Representative from Utah, has offered what must be the most disgusting commentary to come out of the Foley scandal:
Rep. Chris Cannon today attempted to clarify public comments he made last night seeming to blame teen-age congressional pages in the unfolding scandal with disgraced ex-Rep. Mark Foley.

"These kids are actually precocious kids," Cannon, R-Utah, told KSL Radio's Nightside. "It looks like uh, maybe this one email is a prank where you had a bunch of kids sitting [around] egging this guy on."
(Note: The "prank" rumor was a hoax spread by Matt Drudge.) I feel far greater revulsion toward Cannon than toward Foley. However inexcusable his actions, Mark Foley was, in the final analysis, a man caught up in the fever of his compulsions. But Cannon's blame-the-kids message was spoken in cold blood.

Why are the folks in Utah so damned weird? The landscape looks like something God designed on acid. Maybe the inhabitants get a contact high.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That IS bad. Truly, there are a LOT of projections to be studied with the pro-Foley or pro-R responses to this crime. Quite telling, all. Breathtaking as in jumping off a cliff without a bungee cord breathtaking.

Miss P.

Anonymous said...

Not like I'm surprised that they're pushing a "blame the victims" defense, it is what rapists usually do, after all, but...what? Ew. And HOW DO THEY EVEN THINK THAT MAKES SENSE?? DO THEY THINK PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BUY THAT? You'd think they'd at least bother to consider what the public response has been to this before throwing out any more spin. Oh, wait, the defense doesn't have to make sense and they don't have to take public opinion into account; they're Republicans.

And about Utah and why it's so weird--well, isolation does strange things to people and the environments they build for themselves. Utah is alllll about the isolation. In my humble experience, the state is practically hermetically sealed socially. And visitors get the message they aren't welcome right off the bat. Closed community. The natives don't know (and don't really care) much about how people in the rest of the world function. It's kind of like Alaska that way. Only the folks I've met both in and from Alaska are [i]normal[/i].

Anonymous said...

The isolation theory seems to have merit at first. Then I thought about Vancouver Island, one of the most gorgeous -- and underpopulated -- places on earth. Pretty isolated. And it is filled with the nicest, most tolerant and easy-going folks you could ever hope to meet.

sunny said...

Hmmm, Vancouver Island. Are they taking refugees?