The Camille Paglia Interview at Salon

One is always in for a treat whenever Camille Paglia speaks. Paglia, one of the founding contributors at Salon.com, is at once consistently stimulating and entertaining. Never one to mince her words, she unleashes her poignant views on a variety of subjects from the feminists' stake in the success of Condi Rice to Bill Clinton's volcanic eruption on Fox News.

Her most astounding observations, however, are reserved for the Mark Foley scandal and the manner in which it is currently backfiring on THE DEMOCRATS. That's right...the Democrats and not the Republicans.

Paglia presents an interesting point of view on the subject, asserting that the entire story should have been news for two days, tops. Everything after that was overkill. She is particularly miffed at the manner in which Democrats handled the story, entering into an overt collusion with the mainstream media to keep the story at the top of the news for weeks.

As a liberal Democrat, Paglia reserves both her love AND her disdain for the Party.

According to Paglia, the Foley story was a no-win situation for Democrats determined to benefit from the 'October surprise.' The most obvious reason for this is the Democrats' duplicity and opportunism. The Mark Foley story was in the hands of certain Democrat operatives, including a few Congressmen, weeks and perhaps months before the story broke. Determined to create a scandal before there was any concrete proof of wrongdoing, the Democrats colluded with members of the media to break the story just weeks before the November election, demonize Foley as a pedophile although the House Page in question was of legal age, and portray the Republican House leadership as 'harboring and protecting a child molester.'

For weeks we saw Democrat operatives hitting the airwaves with the mantra, 'They were negligent in protecting our precious children who serve in the House,' although the Page in question was no child according to the law...at least not when it comes to consensual sex. He was 17--one year over the legal threshold.

In addition, after all these weeks and a swarm of investigations into the incident, no evidence has been found of any physical contact between Foley and the Page. The only possible thing that could be construed as 'evidence' is the series of emails and Instant Messages, which, according to Democrats of late, is supposed to be 'private.'

Is this not the Party that claims government snooping into the private conversations of Americans is unlawful?

Apparently communication that has even the slightest hint of sexual overtones is fair game for government snoops. Yet conversations between American citizens of questionable reputation and overseas terrorists should be protected by the Constitutional right to privacy.

It is amazing as to how sheer political expediency can produce such blatant displays of hypocrisy.

Paglia maintains that Democrat duplicity and opportunism played right into the hands of rightwing columnists such as Ann Coulter, who quickly pointed out that the Democrats' sudden attack of morality when it comes to Foley is odd given their vehement defense of Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, particularly when Foley was never actually physically involved with the Page, while Studds' lavish affair with a male Page was well-known.

One other point of note is that Paglia maintains that the hype given to the Foley incident makes Democrats and their comrades in the Press responsible for an unintended backlash against gay men. Paglia asserts that the whole mess may well place the very lives of gay men in danger, given the overt attempt to paint Foley as a sex-crazed, boy-hungry predator who preys on 'children.'

As a personal aside, when the story first broke, I was listening to NPR, and I had the distinct impression that somehow Foley had been caught with 8-year-olds. Only later did I discover that the individual in question was 17 years of age.

The unintended consequence of gay-bashing, hate crimes against gays, etc. can be laid squarely at the feet of the Democrat Party and the mainstream news media, which, in their attempt to vilify Foley for political gain only served to reinforce cultural stereotypes of gay men as child predators.

Given that the entire scheme was politically motivated from the start, the Democrats AND the media, deserve all the backlash they get from the general public.