Tony Snow describes Foley messages as ‘simply naughty emails’

October 2, 2006

I realize that the Mark Foley scandal is a tough one to spin. If I’m a GOP communications aide this morning, I’m urging everyone in the party to condemn Foley’s conduct in the strongest possible terms.

I would not, for example, dismiss Foley’s predatory notes to minors as “simply naughty emails.” And yet, that’s exactly what White House Press Secretary Tony Snow did this morning on CNN.

This morning on CNN, Soledad O’Brien asked Tony Snow why “any communication between a 16-year-old and a congressman” didn’t “raise red flags — major, massive red flags” with Speaker Dennis Hastert and others who have known about the communications for months.

Snow responded, “I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.”

The video is definitely worth watching. Soledad O’Brien was addressing this issue with some real emotion, talking about how she, “as a parent,” would take Foley’s emails very seriously and not just dismiss them as “over-friendly.” But Snow wouldn’t hear of it. Indeed, he was rather condescending about the whole thing, as if clued-in people should be accustomed to a certain degree of depravity on Capitol Hill.

As damage control goes, this hardly seems like a good idea.

As Joe Sudbay put it:

“Simply naughty emails”? That’s all they were says the Bush White House. Just naughty emails between a 52 year old member of Congress and some 16 and 17 year olds children. Just naughty emails when a grown man asks a sixteen year old boy to measure his penis. Just naughty emails when a member of Congress asks a child to describe how he masturbates.

That’s why the GOP House leadership is scrambling. That’s why they had to call in the FBI. That’s why the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating.

Now, I appreciate the fact that there’s a difference between some of Foley’s predatory emails and the more explicit IM messages. Indeed, as a senior Democratic aide told The Note, “The R’s desperately want this to be about whether or not they knew of the sexually explicit e-mails/I.M.’s.” The GOP is hoping that simply pointing to the emails and saying, “This is all we knew about,” will save their skin.

But as that same Dem aide said, it may not.

“Most parents we talked to over the weekend (including my own conservative R mom) feel the issue is that the R’s were given and ignored a huge warning with the first set of e-mails.”

“Had there been an investigation at that time, the sexually explicit emails may have been uncovered. But, Members lost that opportunity when the R’s chose to protect Foley instead of those kids.”

Even if we put the IM messages aside, a 52-year-old congressman sent several emails to a 16-year-old page, asking for a picture, asking what he wanted for his birthday, complementing the physique of another page, etc. That same page had been warned about the 52-year-old congressman’s unhealthy interest in minors. Snow can dismiss this as “simply naughty emails,” but I have a hunch most Americans will feel differently.

“[Snow] was rather condescending about the whole thing, as if clued-in people should be accustomed to a certain degree of depravity on Capitol Hill.” – CB

So electing Republican’ts, the party of “Values Voters”, the party that is now in charge of rules and ethics and pages and so on, does nothing to improve the atmosphere on Capitol Hill?

Thanks for the insight Snow-Job. Forgot about all that 2000 crap about honor and dignity did you?

  • Wow is Snow being condescending there. Being the condescending type myself, I know it when I see it.

    You’re right, O’Brien was really actually being impassioned about this “overly friendly” aspect as any parent would. If I heard that some adult that my child worked for was being “overly friendly” with my child or anyone else’s for that matter, I would be on that like stink on shit. For Snow to just poo-poo it (continuing the metaphor) makes him even more of a scumbag than I thought he was and is just further proof of the moral bankruptcy that was discussed yesterday.

    Also, notice how he subtly (or not so subtly) changed the topic from O’Brien’s “why wasn’t there a rush to figure out what the hell was going on” to “let’s not prosecute before we get all the facts.” This is pure sophistry. Foley should be prosecuted if he broke laws. The issue, as Snow so delicately side-stepped, is these bastards basically allowing Foley’s conduct to continue since 2005 because of the impact it would obviously have on the election.

    I’m waiting for the “the Dems are just playing politics with this issue” to come out – in fact, I’m sure it’s already out there. And then the MSM will start asking “Are the Dems just playing politics?”

    What a country.

  • The real tragedy of all this is, as Digby noted, the GOP’s current policy is always about rationalizing past failure. They are attempting to show they didnt’ screw up in Vietnam or that Nixon’s way was hard-edged realism rather than corruption. Malking and Coulter are even still attempting to win the battles they lost over McCarthyism and the New Deal. So, what might have been a “bad egg” in Nixon becomes the rationalized standard of behavior. Vietnam becomes a lesson in how we shouldn’t let our hands be tied. When the GOP shut down the government, the lesson learned was that they folded too early.

    This will never be over. Think of all the policy failures they will now have to push twice as hard to prove they made no mistakes during the Bush years. The next administration will be Iraq and Guantanamo on steroids.

    The Cult must not only fall, but be repudiated until it becomes an warning, used throughout history, of how not to think. The way Salem is used to remind us of the dangers of mass hysteria, Bush should be a reminder of believing based on belief. Reality must be honored.

  • “I hate to tell you, but it’s not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill. And there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply naughty e-mails.”

    I guess he’s referring to Abramoff, DeLay, Cunningham, Ney, etc.
    I don’t think that dodge has wheels on it. If he wants to make the case that those scandals are worse, fine. But it doesn’t do much to diffuse the scandal he’s discussing, does it?

  • In Tony Snow’s Special World, where kiddy diddling is “naughty emails”, I would suggest then, that Lee Harvey Oswald cured JFK’s migranes and The Holocaust was a package tour that went bad. Even Ari Fleischer wasn’t that far over the top.

  • I don’t want to put a damper on all this gloating over a Repugnant’s downfall, but I don’t think most of you are giving (some) teens credit. I realized I was gay at 9 or 10. I seduced my first man at 16. I was the instigator, not him. Does this excuse his acquiescence? NO! But he was not entirely culpable. I arranged the circumstances, and I carried out the seduction

    My mother never knew, until years later when hubby blabbed my sordid past to her during a road trip to my step-grandfather’s funeral. (That’s another story, where I was outed to my entire extended family by an innocent remark.)

    Yes, I’m glad that Foley has resigned–he’s a disgrace to his party and the the human race–but realize that not quite all of the blame may be his.

    Nabakov wrote “Lolita” for a reason, of course. What applies to heterosexuality also applies to homosexuality. The standards, however, are entirely different, thanks to the “C”hurch.

  • Repug spin gets more deeply insane by the moment, viz:

    Endless war = “a comma”

    Pedophilia = “naughty emails”

    Dumbest President in History = “George W. Bush”

    Indeed, he was rather condescending about the whole thing, as if clued-in people should be accustomed to a certain degree of depravity on Capitol Hill.

    Or maybe we just need to take a damn long, hard look at Tony Snow.

  • This whole thing reminds me of the decade-long troubles the Roman Catholic Church had with some of its predatory priests. Little hints at first, then truly offensive details, finally the grand coverup to protect the perps but especially their bosses who should have — and did — know better. Difference is that this is compacted into a long weekend. One other difference: when those molested by the priests got someone to listen to them, at last, they could turn to the machinery of government to seek some relief from grievance. “Who will guard the guardians?” is more than an idle philosophical question, whether it be Halliburton’s rape of America and Iraq or Mark Foley’s predatory questions about how 16-year-old masturbate.

    One other point that has seldom been made about the effort of Fox to put this on a par with, or even lighter than (“simply naughty emails”) the Lewinsky scandal. Monica Lewinsky was an adult, willing (in fact, some evidence indicates predatory) participant in the affair which cost the nation millions of dollars and many hours of the nation’s time budget to investigate. She was steered toward her victim (I know, older men shouldn’t be spoken of that way, even it it’s true) by Linda Tripp with the conspiratorial help of Lucianne Goldberg. Hardly the same thing as Congressman Foley continuing to hit on an adolescent who resists his creepy advances.

  • Just when I think Mr. Snowballs couldn’t make a bigger arse of himself… However, the spokestwit for the Prezint standing up before America to say this is no biggie and suggesting that far worse (not pretty) things go on is almost as good as the Prezint doing it himself.

    GOP = Gestapo Orgasm Party.

  • By attempting to minimize the pedophilic predations of a GOP congressman, Tony Snow clearly indicts himself as an after-the-fact accessory—and as an impediment of Justice—to what is becoming a list of multiple felonies against minors.

    Members of the House GOP hierarchy, by their words and deeds, have indicted themselves as enablers of these crimes—thus naming themselves as active accessories to these same offenses.

    In both cases, it’s also called “aiding and abetting the commission of a felony.” It is no different driving the getaway car in a bank robbery; it is likewise no different from loaning an automobile to a chronic alcoholic or handing a gun to an ex-con with a history of violence.

    In the name of Justice—justice for the pages accosted by this most heinous of individuals who was given the public trust and violated that trust—and in the name of the United States of America—each and every person discovered to have been involved in the coverup of this foul acts—should resign forthwith from the Congress of these United States.

    And this is not “something to be negotiated” behind a series of closed-door sessions.

    Thus, the choice is—Resign—or be Prosecuted.

    Also—if it were up to me, I’d have Foley in a jail-cell right now, under 24-hour guard, just to make absolutely certain that he doesn’t “take the easy way out” on this one. A dead pedophilic predator cannot identify “those who shielded him from the fell, swift sword of Justice….”

  • Perhaps I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, but I found the language of the first emails (the supposedly JUST over-friendly) to hit the press to be obviously predatory in nature. IMO it was not an email, it was a groom-mail. To me, there is no way to view this story that does not damn the Republican leadership. If they sincerely believed this email was not a “blinking red” indicator of a problem, they are disconnected, incompetent dunces who are not fit to lead the House. If – as I did – they found these emails way-creepy and inappropriate and did not investigate and take serious action (which they have admitted they did not do), they are craven power mongers. The dismissal of Foley’s behavior as “naughty emails” is insulting and flippant in the extreme. Snow should lose his job for it. But, who could expect better from the administration that let the President ignore the devastation of Hurricane Katrina for days? Heckuva job, Tony.

    One final question: if the parents of the page in question did not want the investigation to go further, why did that page supposedly turn the emails over to a newspaper in Florida? How did they then find their way to ABC? Was he dissatisfied with the decision of his parents not to force an investigation of Foley or what is the story there?

  • Add:
    Mike W, thanks for being so open but what’s your point? Kids have sex, often with non-kids. No one is shocked by this, or if they are, they need to get out more.

    These boys/young men didn’t want, request or initiate nasty e-mails from this D.O.B. Whether they are gay straight, bi is totally irrelevant. Whether Foley is gay, straight, bi is totally irrelevant.

    It is the difference between a good friend giving me a slap on the ass or someone I just met doing the same thing. One is funny, the other is just plain creepy.

  • Everyone seems to be missing another major issue related to this crimminal activity. There are mandatory reporting laws in all 50 states, including DC, that require those who have “care” of a minor to report child abuse to the proper legal authority in the jusrisdiction. “Care” is defined in Title 42, Chapter 67, subchapter VI as; “the provision of care, treatment, education, training, instruction, supervision or recreation to children …” The law includes varying individuals by state, but in all states includes school employees and volunteers working in the schools. Given that Pages go to school as part of their time in Washington and that the school is operated by the Congress, all legislators are mandatory reporters. The failure of the Republican leadership to report Foley for suspected child abuse is crimminal activity adn should be treated as such. When will the legal authorities start making the arrests?

  • Focus, people.
    Word is that the Repubs knew for YEARS, and warned their pages. No warning was given to the Dems pages.
    Coverup? Even worse, enabling this perv to continue.
    That’s helping him prey on boys.
    Helping him prey on boys, that’s what they did. Lock this as symbolic of all their actions. Every R vs D argument should include that they helped a pedophile, on top of everything else.

  • Mike W., I’m with TAIO. Of course, our experiences color our viewpoints in life and this whole issue clearly resonates with you and I get that. But to whatever extent you or any other minor “seduces” an adult, it’s the adult’s responsibility to know that it’s wrong and to stop it. In your case, you may have been able to come to terms with what happened or your role in it. But that doesn’t come close to excusing the conduct of the adult in your situation or Foley in this case or any of the others.

    I heard a great line once that teenagers can’t be Monday morning quarterbacks because they haven’t made it to Monday yet. The point is that a 16yr old doesn’t have the capacity, I don’t care how precocious they are, to understand the import of their decision to engage in sexual conduct, gay or straight, with a 52-yr old. Adding in the “power” aspect of Foley being a congressman only increases the abusive aspect of this sordid story and makes it that much more beyond the ability of a 16yr old to make rational decisions in his own best interest.

    I guess if your point is that maybe Foley wasn’t a predator, ok, but from reading these emails, that doesn’t seem accurate.

  • “I don’t want to put a damper on all this gloating over a Repugnant’s downfall, but I don’t think most of you are giving (some) teens credit.” – Michael W.

    Actually, I think Foley was trying to give the teens credit. It sounds to me like he would carefully scope out each year’s crop of new pages looking for just the kind of teens who would be interested in his advances, and then working them over time to find the ones who’ll get into it.

    On the other hand, there was a story on NPR quoting the head of the page’s alumni association saying that some ‘victums’ claimed to have gone along with Foley’s game because they worried about future employment possibilities.

    The problem of course is the whole power structure issue. I doubt Foley could tell, if he even cared, the difference between some gay young man who got into it and some scared little home-schooled shit who had no job prospect other than working as a Bushite.

    Or does that seem a little disdainful of the types of kids who become Republican’t house pages?

  • Tony Snow shares with a frightening number of other Republicans a woeful awareness of the internet and modern communications. Here’s what the New York Times is quoting Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas as saying:

    While congressmen caught in a sex scandal is nothing new, the way the story broke shows the power of Web technology to influence politics. Few people may have even been aware that instant messages can be saved and copied, but they have turned out to be a powerful weapon. Before the Internet, a story like Foley’s might have kicked around for months, with conflicting accounts, and possibly never surfaced. Once the existence of the e-mails became known, Foley was swept away within hours.

    Wham, bam, thank you, mam.

  • Ed (#10), are you saying that Bill Clinton was a victim of Monica Lewinsky? If so, I have to disagree. IMO, even if he were a target, he definitely was no victim. I take him at his word when he said he indulged himself (and Monica’s advances) because “he could.” Putting aside the morality of cheating on his wife for a moment, he demonstrated very poor judgement. And his opposition exploited that poor judgement in a reckless manner. But, Bill Clinton is a smart, charismatic, and deliberate guy. I do not see him as a victim of Monica Lewinsky.

  • You know, this whole thing could’ve been caught ahead of time if Foley had just involved himself in youth community theater …

    (For those that are wondering, see this CBR post. Also, I realize that being gay and being a pedophile are waaaayyy different.)

  • “simply naughty emails”

    Hideous…

    What an absolute linthead….

    This guy couldn’t find a moral compass with a lattern at high noon.

  • Mike W.- check out the latest release from ABC. The teen involved in that chat doesn’t seem to be quite so willing.

    Besides, remember the audience we are talking about. Congressional pages are pretty much a group of kids who are hyper-motivated by politics. For many of them, meeting up with a Congressman would be like your average teenage girl getting an invitation to dinner with Brad Pitt (or whomever the latest ‘heart-throb’ is). And it really should be couched in those terms- a pseudo-celebrity worship, if you will.

    We, as a society, attach a particular distaste to interactions which involve a power play like this, because we understand that it is hard for people to say ‘no’ to someone who holds a special place of power (same reason that teachers are often more harshly punished- their unique positions of power over the kids).

  • Okay, okay. I surrender. Covering up “naughty” letters between an old man and a teenage boy is way more interesting to America than finding out that the Administration could have prevented 9/11. (Weird world we live in. Where disgusting letters generates more passion than finding out what really happened the day that “changed everything”.)

    But if the Dems are going to “exploit” this issue, and I’m beginning to see they probably should, can they at least focus on the cover up? After all, it was the under oath “lying about the sex” that gave “credibility” to the investigation of the Lewinsky affair, wasn’t it? Sure, remind people it was a cover up of an illegal correspondence between a Republican Congressman and a young boy, but it’s the cover up that damns the party leadership, not the actual correspondence, right?

  • “Sure, remind people it was a cover up of an illegal correspondence between a Republican Congressman and a young boy, but it’s the cover up that damns the party leadership, not the actual correspondence, right?” – Doug

    Right (cough, cough). That is just the way to frame it. What went wrong here was Hassert and Reynolds and the chump who’s the Page committee chairman. They sold years of congressional pages out for a few hundred thousands of dollars from Foley.

    The sex talk and stalking, that’s just the demonstration of their corrupt natures.

  • New Rule:

    When someone is caught red-handed using their power and influence to sexually exploit children… political party spokesmen attempting to spin that news in a warm way… shall have their necks shaved by a guillotine.

  • Indeed, he was rather condescending about the whole thing, as if clued-in people should be accustomed to a certain degree of depravity on Capitol Hill.

    Or maybe we just need to take a damn long, hard look at Tony Snow.

    Comment by Susan — 10/2/2006 @ 12:59 pm

    You look, and tell me what you see, it hurts my brain to look at him anymore. Smug, degrading, condescending, elusive – all the things I despise in leadership, personified. Ari at least had a smidgen of humility that crept out on occasion. Tony is just turning out to be a taller, meaner Scotty.

    -GFO

  • This is ridiculous. First, the Bible tells us that we should fear no evil, for the Lord’s rod and His staff, they shall comfort us. Congressman Foley is simply following this injunction and walking in the footsteps of Jesus. He is asking himself, what would Jesus do? Well, Jesus would comfort this poor 16 year old sinner with His rod and His staff, and that was all that Congressman Foley was trying to do. He is a good decent Christian public servant and all of you should be ashamed of yourselves for condeming him.

    Besides, this is all just liberal gay bashing. You hate the gays and you take every opportunity to persecute them. The Republican Party welcomed this good Christian gay public servant and gave him acceptance and protection and now that the liberal MSM has invaded his privacy and callously revealed his personal lifestyle choices for public ridicule you revile him. When he is simply asking himself what would Jesus do, and anyway, it is none of your business. Liberals are the first people to hate on the FBI for using its programs to eavesdrop on everyone’s emails, until it is a Republican whose privacy rights are tossed on the trash heap, and then you all dance a jig. You are all despicable hypocrites.

    And everyone is now comparing this to Republican prosecutions of Bill Clinton. Well, let’s all remember what you godless liberals always forget — Bill Clinton committed ADULTERY. That is specifically forbidden by God in the Ten Commandments. And that is a little bit more serious than doing a little bit of typing over the Internet.

    You people make me sick. God will judge Congressman Foley if judgement is necessary. All of you should be strung up from the nearest lamp post and now that we have a godly Supreme Court I look forward to it happening very soon.

  • SuperPat-

    Exxxxcellent satire. It’s tough to write good Republican satire right now, but you’ve done such a wonderful job. Good use of Bill Clinton; I’ll grant you there are some similarities (powerful vs. less powerful) but you’ve missed the overall–this involved Hastert, Reynolds and Boehner–the LEADERSHIP of the UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES!

    But let’s all calm down. Just ask yourself this question, if you can: would you *vote* for Foley in the Florida 16th so it would go to some other Republican for ‘more of the same?’

    I’ll bet most Floridians wouldn’t either.

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