As I’m writing this post, I have Matt Yglesias and Dan Drezner in a smaller screen vblogging.
I can’t decide if I like vblogging. On the one hand, I can multi-task. I can write a post, while listening to a blog. I also can watch some favorite bloggers imbibe beverages and check out their books on the shelves. Love to snoop. On the other hand, it’s a little long. One of the benefits of blogs is that I can blow through 20 blogs, 20 different opinions in a half an hour. My attention span isn’t long enough to manage a whole vblog.
Yglesias and Drezner start off talking about how the Foley thing. Yglesias is surprisingly soft on Foley. He thinks the outrage is mostly because Foley is gay. If he was leering at 16 year old girls, nobody would care. Dan thinks flirting with 16 year olds is gross, regardless of the gender, but it’s a gray area. It’s not quite pedophilia.
A big part of the outrage about Foley has to be attributed to the never ending exposes of Internet pervs by Dateline. Dateline has done an excellent job of showing that online flirtations aren’t innocent. The guys who are having sexual chats online are pretty likely to carry through with things, if given the opportunity.
Let me go out a limb here and say that middle aged Senators shouldn’t be sleeping with or flirting with 16 year old pages regardless of their gender. I don’t think this is a gray area.
Apt. 11d 
People with authority should not be trying to screw much younger people over whom they have authority. Rep. Foley, Wayne Hays, Bill Clinton. There’s a legal boundary where it becomes statutory rape (probably not crossed in the Foley case, since age of consent is 16 in the District, certainly not crossed with Lewinsky or Elizabeth Ray), and you can argue that 23-year-old Monica is a different case from a 17-year-old page. But in general, I don’t approve of sex where one partner is vastly more powerful than the other.
Nelson Rockefeller, 70-odd and Megan Marshak, 27? Still icky, and she worked for him and he bought her a house, and he was cheating on his wife (with whom he had cheated on his first wife, what goes around comes around) but somehow the age difference isn’t as big a thing there, for me, as it is thinking about Clinton-Lewinsky or about Rep Foley and he-who-shall-not-be-named.
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“The guys who are having sexual chats online are pretty likely to carry through with things, if given the opportunity.”
Do we know that? Where are we getting that assumption? The news media does have exposes, yes, but these exposes do not necessarily show that anyone’s pretty likely to do anything. It shows that some people did; but overall proclivity?
I’m having a hard time with the whole Mark Foley thing because, in the end, they were only conversations. Was he icky? Yes. Was it headed in the wrong direction? Yes. Can conversations make a person feel violated? Yes. But why is this behavior getting more attention than the execution-style murder of schoolgirls in Pennsylvania and Colorado?
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I think in general, the liberals are less outraged by this than the conservatives. Which makes total sense, given that the homophobes and the ones less tolerant of sexually deviant behavior tend to be conservatives.
The liberals are mostly amused at the Republican party seemingly imploding, and they should be, after having suffered so many decades of the Democrats doing that election after election.
Me, I agree with dave s in that the issue isn’t so much age as power. Then again, I like to flirt with undergrads, so I’m probably not the most objective person to ask.
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Jen,
This was classic grooming behavior. Child sexual abuse 101. Look at how he was using his power and position to nudge the kid along. When this 50ish man asked the 16-year-old whether he was horny, the boy said, after trying to avoid answering the question, “A little.” Do you really think he was a little horny at messages he described to others as “sick, sick, sick”? Of course he wasn’t. But he couldn’t exactly say: well Congressman, the whole idea makes me sick. Why? Age and power.
This was classic grooming behavior, trying to normalize teh abnormal. And if he had nudged him far enough, he would have been giving a massage next. (He talked about that in otehr messages that have been released.) He apparently also asked for actual sex from one page. And who knows how many more things we’ll learn in the coming weeks.
Anyway, if this kind of grooming happens to your child by someone 30+ years their senior, I suspect you’ll find a kind of clarity that is missing in your comment.
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I had not heard about Foley’s asking a page for sex. My point is not actually about whether this behavior is wrong — as Laura notes, we all know that members of congress should not be flirting with 16-year-olds. Not much of a debate on that. My point is actually more about media coverage and this country’s response.
The math appears to work like this: the news media knows that salacious coverage of internet predators sells newspapers. So they spend all their time reporting on it. No one really knows how many online chats are turning into real-life abuse. Because we don’t know, we assume they all will. We as a country spend a bunch of resource and cash and energy stalking anyone sending e-mails to teens.
In the meantime, armed maniacs storm schools in Colorado and Pennsylvania. Other than some spectacular coverage on the day of the event, and perhaps some charming shots of Amish kids attending funerals, we stop talking about it. We as a country spend just about zero working trying to understand why our society is so obsessed with violence, why these killers’ demons got the best of them. (Note that I’m just talking about responding to big-media events … everyday horribleness towards children doesn’t even make us blink any more.) This, I have a problem with.
I can’t decide whether people really care about keeping kids safe or not. The media? Clearly not. For the media this is all about racy coverage, gay men, people in power abusing that power. I do think the reason the media is at least partially tapping into the average person’s genuine desire to protect their children. In that light, it’s my personal theory that people are so focused on Foley because it’s easier — he is still living, and there are powerful people around him who can be punished. We don’t know who to punish for the other crazy shit that’s happened in this country in the last two weeks. (Or the last two years.)
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Thanks for the clarification. And fyi: I just reviewed an excellent article that I am sure will get published that surveyed kids who blog about the kinds of interactions they have had on the Internet and what, if anything, has transpired as a result. The findings will not make for headlines; they are complex. Less of the worst stuff than one might think but a really disturbing amount of harassment.
As for whether we — society — really wants to protect kids. In two words: we don’t. There was a book published years ago out of the Minnesoa Children’s Threate “scandal” called Hating the Sin, Loving the Sinner. Not the best title, but the right idea. I like to say we abhor child sexual abuse in the abstract and tolerate it in reality. Turs out that’s a hell of a lot easier than abhoring it in reality!
Boo to politicains and the press for how they generally approach the issue.
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I second the “boo.”
RC, what’s the difference between grooming and flirting. Isn’t the point of flirting that you somewhat hope to get the other person into bed?
Don’t you think that part of the outrage is coming from the fact the victims were boys? It’s not because people are homophobic, though they probably are. It’s because we’re less used to seeing boys on the other end of a leer than girls. To many 16 year old girls, this kind of talk is old hat. They’ve already had dozens of inappropriate things said to them by teachers and other adults. (Boo!)
It’s also interesting how technology fits into this whole thing. Sure, it’s easier for preditors to reach victims with the Internet. The anonmity also brings in more creeps into the game. But it also provides a record of creepy talk. My parents would have flipped out if they had seen a transcript of what my driving instructor had said to me, while teaching me how to parallel park.
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I think the reason this is newsworthy is that it could tilt the balance of power in Congress. Maybe because I live inside the Beltway, I’m convinced everything is about government. But the act, the investigation, and a possible cover-up make for great political theatre. After everything that’s happened, it could be a closet-case’s sexual flirtations with a 16 year old that turns things around. That’s a gigantic story.
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Well, Michael, remember that Wilbur Mills went down over the ‘Argentine Firecracker’, and there was a Great Deal Of Fuss over Bill Clinton getting, well, a Lewinsky from Miss Lewinsky, you can still get a chuckle out of saying that Gary Hart’s favorite dish is Rice Peel-Off, and Wayne Hays – well, who remembers Wayne Hays anyhow? And by the way, who remembers Speaker Livingston?
So it’s not unusual that sex misbehavior brings someone into the spotlight. It does seem to me that usually it only brings down a politician who is otherwise weak, or for whom it spotlights grave hypocrisy. Barney Frank and Gerry Studds survived – and their scandals were homosexual, and took place a number of years ago when the climate was more hostile. Clinton survived, though he remains the butt of jokes in a way that Carter never was.
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The reason the media is interested is the Fall from Grace writ larger than anyone could imagine given that Foley crusaded–and I meant that in the worst sense of the word–on “missing and exploited children.”
And the difference between flirting and grooming is all about age. Pedophiles groom kid, who should *never* have sexual contact with an adult, into doing so. Flirting is what happens between equals, or relative equals. Flirting someone into bed is, shall I say, something done on a level playing field.
Male victims tend to be believed more and blamed less than female victims. No question ab0out it. But I think that these IM messages would be seen as pretty damn offensive rom a Congressman to a 16 or 17-year-old girl.
I trust that Tony Snow’s outrageous minimization the ther day will live on in infamy: he called them “naughty emails.”
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It’s not just Snow who’s downplaying the Foley thing. Matt and Dan called it a gray area, because the pages were 16 and 17, and weren’t children. Like I said, this isn’t a gray area for me.
RC – Why don’t you write an op-ed on this?
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It’s not just Snow who’s downplaying the Foley thing. Matt and Dan called it a gray area, because the pages were 16 and 17, and weren’t children. Like I said, this isn’t a gray area for me.
RC – Why don’t you write an op-ed on this?
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Jen:
One difference is that what Foley did I strongly suspect is a far more typical and widespread thing, in various permutations. What happened in the school shootings, horrific as it was, is relatively abnormal and atypical by contrast. It doesn’t speak to a generalized “obsession with violence”: the two men in this case are highly aberrational figures who incidentally influenced each other through the abstraction of the mass media.
Foley is at the heart of political power, but he also speaks to several things about power: its hypocrisy, its arrogance, its insulation from consequences. I think we’re right to see that as more fascinating and important in a continuing way than two tragic but aberrational incidents. There isn’t even the kind of patterning in the last two shootings that there was in Columbine-type incidents, where there is actually some kind of policy response that can prove useful in preventing further incidents. (Which *has* proved useful, in fact.)
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I’m not at all convinced things would be much different if they had been girls. I think the public finds this kind of behavior shameful and disgusting no matter what. My guess, though, is that it would have been less likely to come to light if it had been girls, because many if not most girls that age have had to deal with this kind of thing and have better support networks for handling it. It is as inexusable with girls as with boys (“gray area?” — I’ve got a different test from RCinProv (whose test is perfectly good): imagine that you find out that your future spouse does this. What do you think?), and would be seen as such, just less likely to be known about.
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I’m not sure that Foley received more attention that the Amish girls last week. I’m pretty sure that the Amish girls got first billing on the news on Wednesday and Thursday. The Foley thing has been unfolding with new revelations and political backlash every day. Just today, some ex-pages said that Foley keeps the pages in the wings until they turn 21 and then he starts relationships. What to do with Hastert was an issue in the today’s New Jersey senate debate. The Foley incident definitely is going to stay in the news cycle for a while.
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On grooming vs. flirting, my take would be that flirting is mostly about signaling and playing with asymmetrical information, kinda like poker. Basically signaling possible interest and trying to gauge whether the other is interested and/or what their intent is without giving away too much of your own intent.
Grooming, I think, implies a manipulation of sort into getting somebody to do something they don’t really want to do. Power again. I guess this is the same difference between flirting and seduction, if you will.
Not always that easy to tell the difference, especially from the outside.
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Must apologize to everyone; over the weekend I had a chance to catch up on media other than NPR and found that there had been quite a bit of coverage on the school shootings. And clearly the stuff coming out on Foley is just getting more serious by the day.
I continue to struggle with how my own experiences color my opinions. I have two daughters and a niece in the age range of the Pennsylvania shooting. Finding it hard not to relate to that one.
I also clearly remember dealing with unwanted attention from adult men when I was 12 or even younger, and I’ve had to counsel several nieces on how to deal with it as well. As Laura has mentioned, for many generations we’ve been teaching our girls how to deal with these sorts of situations. I think I have a tendency … hmm, not to downplay it when it happens to a boy, but rather to be a bit surprised that everyone *else* is so surprised.
Sad but true, it seems I should have been giving my “just tell him you don’t like him” speech to my nephews as well. (I guess it’s not too late!)
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yeh.well l am british and the old saying goes hard dick got no con.the boy or the man are just being playfull you seem to think boys do not know what their penis are for or is it just that the girl out there think they are missing out on it.or is it the bible bashes that are out for a good time.lets face it .going to war in the middle east and kids getting their arms and legs blown off is of lesser value too you folks because you have always express a god given right to wage war or supply arms to get orther to do your dirty work.you say that you are the land of the free.but you just love policing each orther.you are condition to inform on one orther and in the end become like the GDR EAST GERMAN STATE befor the wall came down .let face it all about point scoring media v politics.nick
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