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.