Sure, I fondled a 13 year old--but it wasn't abuse

I know the Foley scandal is old news, but I came across this article and just had to pass it on. After Foley resigned, he claimed (through his lawyer) that his priest sexually abused him between the ages of 13-15. The priest has since admitted that this indeed did take place. However, the priest apparently doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. Here are some highlights from his confession:

 

"He seemed to like it, you know? So it was sort of more like a spontaneous thing."

 

Mercieca, however, rejected the idea that he sexually abused Foley, saying, "See abuse, it's a bad word, you know, because abuse, you abuse someone against his will. But it involved just spontaneousness, you know?"

 

"I would say that if I offended him, I am sorry, but to remember the good time we had together, you know?" he said. "And how really we enjoyed each other's company. And to let bygones be bygones. Don't keep dwelling on this thing, you know?"

 

Matthew Doig, the guy who interviewed the priest, went into further detail:

 

"They went skinny-dipping together, the father talked about naked back massages, that type of thing," Doig said. "But again, nothing beyond that [even though the priest admitted to “fondling,” but not “rape or penetration or anything like that you know”]. But he said at some point there was an incident between the two of them that he blamed on tranquilizers and alcohol that probably led to the moment that Mark Foley is talking about."

 

So a priest partakes in tranquilizers and alcohol with a prepubescent minor leading to naked and sexual encounters, yet he doesn’t see any problem in it because the boy “seemed to like it.”

 

I am positively dumbstruck.

 

-W.

A dirge for Santorum

Now that his time is over, I think it only appropriate to offer a eulogy for a great man. Admittedly, my tongue has never been blessed with the touching wit of poetry. Therefore, I will quote Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi on the end of a great man—and, some might say, an era.

 

“A fiercely devout Catholic with an altar-boy face, Santorum has been an icon of America’s political divisiveness for the past dozen years—a pioneer of the religious, crusading politics that helped wipe out the ideological middle and divide the country into two seething, paranoid camps fueled by implacable hatreds.

 

“By religious, I don’t mean the injection of biblical themes into his campaigns, though that was also a feature of his style. No, the hallmark of Santorum politics was to say something utterly outrageous and insulting about his opponents, incur a national outcry and then refuse to take even a half a step back, digging in with his convictions in the manner of a man of faith. He blamed pedophilia in the Boston Archdiocese on Massachusetts liberalism. He compared Democrats engaged in a filibuster to Nazis. He likened homosexuality to ‘man on dog’ sex. He described the charity group CARE as being ‘pro-prostitution’ and ‘anti-American.’ And in his re-election campaign this fall, he accused his opponent, state treasurer Bob Casey, of making state-pension investments that support ‘terrorism and genocide.’ Thus, to the Santorum point of view, opponents were at various times whores, dog-fuckers, terrorists, Nazis, mass killers, boy-touchers and traitors. Even McCarthy never got that creative.”

 

Goodbye, sweet Santorum. Your name means so many things to so many people. To the religious right, a crusader of the highest order. To the new(ly deceased) GOP, a standard-bearer of things to come. To the press, a constant source of delight. To Dan Savage… well, this is a family blog. To me, a solitary tear.

 

-W.

 

 

More reasons - new and old - to be sad when you hear Mr Bush's name

Kitten deserves credit for discovering both of these articles. Apparently she has not yet figured out how to post. Therefore I will do the honors, as these are not to be missed.

Here is the abstract for the article “So How Come We Haven’t Stopped It?”

“Early in his first term, President Bush received a National Security Council memo outlining the world's inaction regarding the genocide in Rwanda. In what may have been a burst of indignation and bravado, the president wrote in the margin of the memo, ‘Not on my watch.’”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/17/AR2006111701480.html?referrer=emailarticle

I include this not particularly to condemn Mr Bush’s lack of action, although I do find it deplorable. Rather, I find it a pathetic (literally) and almost nauseating testament to the president’s id-oriented thought processes. It reminds me of something I read in TIME a few years back. In March of 2002, supposedly long before we were planning on invading Iraq, Mr Bush walked through a room wherein Dr Rice and three senators were meeting. He overheard Ms Rice mention Mr Hussein, and stopped just long enough to say, “Fuck Saddam. We’re taking him out.” Mr Bush then walked out of the room. Ms Rice turned to the senators—who were dumbstruck—and showed herself a born diplomat. She laughed.

Incidents like these are why I think the far left is all wrong about Mr Bush. He is not the antichrist. He is not even a bad guy. I genuinely think that he sees things like reports on Rwanda or Darfur and thinks—in that moment—“Not on my watch!” and wants to do something about it. Yet this makes him much, much more dangerous. Even an evil person has a certain level of confidence, resolve, rationality, tact, strategy, precision, intelligence, conviction, follow-through—you know, all the things you need to be particularly good at being good OR bad. I am much more startled and terrified of an individual who possesses a throbbing desire to do good while lacking the knowledge, experience, and attention span to achieve his august goals.

Enough of that. The second is of a more mundane, really-should-piss-you-off nature. I’m sure everyone has heard of Mr Bush’s Spectacular Lame Duck Congress Extravaganza! Truckloads of Legislation to be Passed in Just a Few Short Weeks! Come One, Come All, to Watch the Decider Shovel Crow Down the Democrats’ Throats Just Once More Before They Pillory Him!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/16/AR2006111601929.html?referrer=emailarticle

Stuff like this makes me shiver with queasiness. Can I sue an administration for turning me into a bulimic? Or would they simply tell me to stop reading the news?

-W.

We are all but stardust - really

Now this is really… well, I don’t know what. Just something that makes you say, “Holy crap!”

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6146292.stm

 

(Also excellent: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/life/beginnings/comet.shtml)

 

I can’t wait to hear about Kansas banning the BBC for reporting such godless nonsense. Fundamentalists think evolution is bad? Imagine their faces when they hear that humans aren’t even from Earth!

 

-W.

 

A serious question for anyone who is listening

The subject says it all. So here goes:

 

Is there anyone out there who thinks that the “War on Terror” can be won via military means? If so, please comment.

 

-W.

 

How much is security worth - literally?

It is stunning how many people think there are no options for improving the situation in the Middle East, whether the specific issue is Iraq or Israel. My father provided me with the most stark statement on this: “Just give every person in the region one M-16 [assault rifle, for those who didn’t grow up in a military family] and one clip with 18 rounds, and let them figure out their problems that way.” Indeed.

 

But one might ask: If the stability in that region is directly related to the security of the US, and if we supposedly are willing to spend lots of time, money, blood, etc. trying to secure ourselves, then what is the threshold? How much are we willing to spend?

 

Now for some not-at-all serious hypothetical fun:

 

“The Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated that the total, eventual costs of the Iraq war, ‘including the budgetary, social and macroeconomic costs, are likely to exceed $2 trillion’ - that's $2,000,000,000,000. That would be $2,000 a head for each of the world's poorest billion people, who live (and die) on less than $1 a day” (“If we miss this last chance, then our soldiers will have died in vain,” The Guardian, October 26, 2006).

 

Here’s the rub: imagine we spend that much and things don’t improve. Imagine we spend that much and (according to recent State Department assessments, which call Iraq the “cause celebre” of fanatics) things get worse for them and more dangerous for us.

 

Then imagine if we had someone crazy enough to suggest that we spent that much in the first place to improve the standard of living of the people in the region. Imagine some psycho suggesting that if the average schmuck’s life doesn’t suck beyond belief, such that he has no job, prospects, security, or hope, such that he is willing to strap a bomb to his chest at age 25—imagine somebody saying that if this weren’t the case, the fanatic-types would lose their support base. Imagine, just for a second, if we pumped 2 trillion dollars into the Palestinian territories. With the addendum that the Israelis aren’t allowed to come in and take it. You couldn’t fit that much money in those areas. The streets would be paved with gold. Everybody would be wearing Italian clothes and driving BMWs. People wouldn’t even know how to be terrorists because they would be too trying to find stuff to buy (because there are no shops there).

 

Crazy, I know. I’d never suggest this. No one would. But it is interesting to note that those countries who pump their international diplomacy full of benevolence don’t tend to get blown up.

 

Well, it would have been nice to find a psychotic-yet-charismatic prophet who could have convinced us 3 or 10 or 50 years ago that if we would front these kinds of resources we would preclude all sorts of retarded poop. Especially if he told us that we were going to pay this much anyway, in order to encourage all sorts of retarded poop.

 

Unfortunately, it’s hard sometimes to figure out who the really crazy people are, while it’s all too easy to avoid avoiding retarded poop.

 

-W.