Say Anything Blog

So, on the heels of Mark Foley’s latest attempt at justifying his sleazy behavior, I have a message for him.

Stop it. Just...stop it. You got caught. You knew it was wrong. You knew your little act was, at best, unacceptable and nasty. At the worst, it was all that and illegal, too. You used your position of power as a bully pulpit to sexually pursue young men and whether or not you actually had physical contact with any of them is way beside the point. If it was just voyuerism and wishful thinking it was still way outside the bounds of propriety and decency and quite possibly outside the boundaries of the law.

And now he’s trying to cloak himself in the armor of victimhood. Obviously, fading into obscurity and hoping for the best isn't something he's given serious thought to. Instead, he keeps putting the spotlight on himself when he should be going quietly into the night and hoping no one decides to prosecute him.

The very first thing he did was put himself into an alcohol rehab program. Nice. It was the booze, right? His pursuit of those young men was the result of, what? Binge drinking? I don’t know about everyone else out there but when someone tries to sell me a bill of goods like that I feel downright insulted.

And now he’s taken step number two in the justification game. He says, through his lawyer, that he was molested when he was a kid. By a member of the clergy, no less.

It’s a very convenient accusation, don’t you think?

I’m not saying it didn’t happen. It well could have. But isn’t it a tad funny that a man in his fifties is just now getting around to realizing that he has been psychologically damaged at some point by a predatory member of the clergy? 

This sudden supposed epiphany is ridiculously transparent and should be cringingly embarrassing to Foley. A sense of timing is evidently not a strong suit of Foley’s. Nor is a sense of decency.

Playing the victim game just doesn’t cut it. He can’t justify what he did. I don’t care if he does have a drinking problem. I don’t care if he had his leg humped by his priest. Hustling up boys on the net is wrong, and he knew it from the beginning.

So, Mr. Foley..... you can’t justify your actions. It was wrong. You got caught. You have no high ground to retreat to. You’re not the victim here, so stop trying to convince us you are.

We don’t believe it.