What Our Fascintation With Foley Says About Us

Dean Barnett has some wonderful thoughts on mark Foley, whom Barnett calls a "tragic figure" and a "disgusting figure." Some of hte best language Barnett uses is this:

WHAT STRIKES ME ABOUT THE Foley scandal is the great human tragedy that it is. At least one life was ruined (Foley’s), and God only knows what kind of effect Foley’s predatory actions had on the youths who were the targets of his “affection.”


I used to be in politics. I ran for office in 1992. One thing struck me about the politicians that I met. An inordinate amount of them seemed to be weird. Weird as in creepy. Disturbingly odd.


Over the years, I think I’ve developed an explanation for this. All of us have an appetite for sin. Part of the human drama and every life’s challenge is to manage those appetites, to control them and vanquish them. It’s something that most of us get much better at with age, which is why our truly hideous deeds are usually confined to our youths.


Politicians are often figures with outsized supplies of vanity and pride. It’s not surprising considering how they give into these sins that they have appetites for other sins that are greater than the normal man’s, and that they also grant those appetites more license than the normal man does.

Normal men and women generally do not crave the limelight like politicians and celebrities. Normal men and women control their appetities far better than those who choose to live a life in the public eye.

While Barnett is particularly right about the appetites of people like Foley, Barnett fails to capture the breathless excitement and craving of details of a disgusting episode that most people crave. While most men and women can control their appetites for the kind of behavior Foley engaged in, what does it say about our appetites that we crave more and more information about the emails and instant messages, their content and other such matters. While we can't imagine doing such things ourselves, or rather we don't admit that we can imagine such activities, we certainly seek to know an awful lot about it when other people engage in such behavior.

While we all have pride and vanity that occaisionally needs to be stroked and stoked, politicians and celebrities (the distinguishing line is getting pretty thin) crave attention, it is a highly addictive drug that makes them think they are invincible, above the fray and above the law. That is the tragedy of Mark Foley. The Foley's victims will also, no doubt, suffer through a greater, almost unimaginable, tragedy of instrusion, first by Foley then by the press.

The rubbernecking of this episode by us, the public, remains a far greater tragedy.