En Vino Veritas

I'm sure by now most of you have heard about the lurid sex scandal permeating the halls of Capitol Hill involving recently outed former US Representative Mark Foley. If not, here's a brief recap: Foley gave booze to, and sent sexually suggestive emails and instant messages to, several House pages (all of whom were underage at the time) a couple years ago. These emails and messages have come to light over the past week or so. Foley resigned. Foley announced he is an alcoholic. Foley announced he is gay. Foley announced he was sexually molested 40 years ago by a priest. (For a slightly more detailed timeline, click here).

No big deal right? So a US Rep wanted to shag a couple minor males. Part of the job, right? That's not the part of the story that pissed me off. Sure, it's illegal and in no way appropriate, but some people have problems.

What really pissed me off was the fact that several days after he resigned, he claimed that he is an alcoholic and that he sent the emails and messages when he was drunk (then he backtracked and said that the ones he sent on Capitol Hill were sent sober). I'm going to go out on a limb here and call shenanigans. Pardon me for not believing a fucking word, but that's bullshit. "Please forgive my actions, for it was not Mark Foley who initiated contact with these boys and sent them lewd and lascivious emails and instant messages. It was not Mark Foley who asked them to send pictures of themselves to me. It was the booze that made me a pederast, but not my insatiable urge to sodomize underage boys. Oh, and my lawyer told me to tell you that I'm not a pedophile." According to one article, I'm apparently not the only one who thinks this alcoholism thing is a sham.

I absolutely love it when public figures and celebrities royally fuck up and then try to blame their actions on substance abuse. Two other shining examples that come to mind are Rush Limbaugh and Mel Gibson (this isn't meant to be a knock on conservatives -- these are just the best examples I could think of). Notice the similarites.

A couple years ago, some crack-smoking ESPN exec decided that it would be a good idea to put Rush Limbaugh on Sunday NFL Countdown. As you probably recall, Limbaugh made some racially infused remarks about Donovan McNabb (after which it looked like Tom Jackson was going to murder Limbaugh -- now that would have been justified). Rush's excuse? "Oh, I don't hate black people. It's just that I'm addicted to pain killers. These horrible drugs -- the use of which I have vigorously derided in the past -- have made it so that I say obnoxious things that I don't really mean, which are not to be confused with the obnoxious things that I really do mean."

And who can forget the Mel Gibson fiasco from several months ago. Mel gets pulled over while driving with enough booze in his system to kill Mark Foley. Rather than try to downplay how drunk he is, Mel claims to own Malibu. Then for good measure, he blurts out, "Fucking Jews . . . the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," to a Jewish cop no less. The reason, however, was not anti-Semitism. No, no, how could it be? It was because Mel's an alcoholic.

Call me crazy, but when I'm drunk -- which is approximately 12-16 hours out of every day -- my belief structure and sexual orientation don't change. Sure, I might sing some karaoke horribly, but I have no desire to insert that mic into my anus and find 16-year-old boys who want to do the same. Nor do I suddenly develop an intense hatred for other races or nationalities. Everyone knows I hate 2 sets of people: Germans and Danes. That number sure as shit doesn't decrease or increase in relation to the substances running through my bloodstream.

As if Foley's little saga couldn't get any better, now he's claiming that he was molested by a priest when he was a teenager. That's a pretty horrible accusation, and conveniently, Foley won't name the church or the priest. I'm not the most religious person in the world, but the Catholic Church takes a lot of shit about the whole priest sexual abuse thing. Much of that is deserved, but, again, pardon me if I call shenanigans on this one too.

According to Foley's attorney, "Mark does not blame the trauma he sustained as a young adolescent for his totally inappropriate [emails and instant messages]. . . . He continues to offer no excuse whatsoever for his conduct." No excuse, huh? Of course not. All of these revelations just happen to magically coincide with Foley's resignation from the House amid complete scandal. "Now, I'm not saying what I did was excusable, but you have to understand that I'm a gay alcoholic who was sexually abused 40 years ago by an unnamed priest. Under those circumstances, I offer no excuse as to why I repeatedly got drunk and made sexual advances on underage boys. Did I mention that I have a problem with alcohol and that a priest molested me and that I love having sex with men? Good, because that has nothing to do with my actions."