Keep the Page System
A close House ally of Speaker Dennis Hastert called Wednesday for temporary suspension of the congressional page program amid the uproar over former Rep. Mark Foley’s Internet exchanges with former teenage pages and Hastert’s handling of the problem.
“People are very, very concerned” about daily disclosures concerning Foley’s salacious messages,” said Rep. Ray LaHood, saying the program should be shut down at least for awhile. […]
Meanwhile, LaHood, who also is from Illinois, said that it’s not the speaker who should go and said the page program should be shut down, at least temporarily.
He questioned an “antiquated” congressional page system that brings 15- and 16-year-olds to the Capitol and has resulted in scandals in the past.
“Some members betray their trust by taking advantage of them. We should not subject young men and women to this kind of activity, this kind of vulnerability,” LaHood said in a CNN interview. He said the program should be shut down until problems can be resolved.
While I’m far from an expert and am not privvy to any details of the program, I don’t really see what is “antiquated” about the congressional page system. Sans a sick 50-something year old Congressman sexually preying on teenage pages, it looks good to me. Our fellow Dennis Hastert accolade gives himself away with the “it’s not the speaker who should go” and the “has resulted in scandals in the past”. He is protecting Dennis Hastert’s hide and trying to shift the focus.
I’m weary. As a rule, it is not a good thing to isolate adolescents completely away from the adult world and innoculate themselves into the whole of Youth Culture. (As Matt Drudge put it in his completely disgusting monolouge on Mark Foley: And I’ve seen what they’re doing on YouTube, and I’ve seen what they’re doing all over the Internet. Oh yeah. And you just have to tune into any part of their pop culture. — which I would hedge in various degrees but to some degree agree, but go with mainly because our Hastert accolade would undoubtedly agree with) Bridges to Adult Responsibilty and “the real world” (such that Washington, DC is the real world) are good things, and quite frankly rather non-existent in our culture. There’s a certain lameness to high school, and I found and find it impossible to take seriously the Measures dropped on teenage students as character and leadership building: school athletics and ASB Elected officials (the latter seeming to have had no other duty than to plan Pep Assemblies).
Thus this is taking away something valuable and, um, real because of Mark Foley and his political protectors. Just watch your goddamned Congressmen, and within the guidelines of proceeding with the page program, know that if you’re warning the kids in 1995 to avoid this Congressman because of his “creepiness” that you should probably keep closer tabs on him and edge him outward.
(Some clarification of adolescent — adult relations came when I read John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education The oft-cited reference that obviously popularly came from Gatto is of a 16-year old Ship’s Captain circa the 18th century, nobody doing a double-take — just a natural enough occurence.)