Sexually-Explicit Emails Came From Another Page

Perhaps you knew this; I just caught it on Fox News.

The emails that the leadership knew about were from one page, the 16 year old. The St. Petersberg Times knew about these, and even spoke to the page in question, but chose not to run with it. The kid's parents apparently wanted it kept quiet.

The more sexually-explicit IM's -- the ones in which a teen seems receptive to Foley's overtures (not that that makes it right, etc.) -- were only recently disclosed, and were written to an entirely different teenaged boy.

So: The Republican Leadership does not seem to have known anything about the truly sexual IM's -- the ones in which it appears cybersex occurs -- and in fact does not even seem to have known about the boy with whom these IM's were exchanged.

Anna Marie Cox makes the case that, having known of the original emails, "creepy" is enough to launch an investigation. However, it has to be noted that Foley was apparently read the riot act. Further, there wasn't this additional evidence at the time -- the damning IM's were released only in the past several days.

She says it wouldn't have been too hard to find out about this other boy, had the GOP leadership wanted to know, and that Foley's behavior was "well-known." Well, if it was well-known, as Anna Marie Cox claims, why wasn't the media better tuned in? Where was their investigation? Surely they could have gotten a list of male Congressional pages and make some phone calls as well.

Cox seems to be talking out of both sides of her mouth -- she implicitly concedes there wasn't enough here for the media, including her employer Time Magazine, to investigate more fully, and yet the GOP should have realized the full dimension of the Foley Problem and released the hounds.

More likely, I think, is that the media and the GOP both saw the same evidence-- creepy, but not damningly pederast emails, a teen and his parents all unwilling to speak more about it or make an issue of it, and chose to (incorrectly) assume relative innocence and leave it lay.

Again, though, someone knew about this second boy, obviously. Those someones seem to have been Democratic operatives. They seemed to have enough evidence to realize the police should be called in.

Why didn't they call the police?

posted by Ace at 01:28 PM

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