aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Dobson on Foley

It pains me to report that people here look to James Dobson both as a doctor and a religious leader. I can’t claim to know the inner workings of my neighbors but my sense is that when confronted by difficult realities like the Foley scandal they find solace in his words and so will choose to believe this:

Commenting on the congressional page scandal
surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) on the October 6 broadcast of Focus on the Family, James Dobson, founder
and chairman of Focus on the Family, declared that
the Foley affair has “turned out to be what some people are now saying
was a—sort of a joke by the boy and some of the other pages” who had
reportedly come forward with sexually explicit instant messages that Foley
allegedly sent. Similarly, in his October 6 column, Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page
editor Daniel Henninger wrote that “a rumor emerged that in fact Mark
Foley had been pranked by the House pages” and then added: “It is
the first plausible thing I've heard in seven days.” Media Matters for America recently noted that in defense of Foley's alleged actions, Internet gossip Matt Drudge and
nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage also attempted to shift the
blame to the former pages who communicated with the former congressman. On his
website, Drudge has elaborated on his suggestion that at least one of the
former pages was complicit.