I think the various media outlets pretty much have the political orbituary typed out, and ready for one click of a “Publish” button, for Dennis Hastert.

What can be said about Dennis Hastert? He was never the leader of his party. Newt Gingrich had his political implosion in the year 1998, and sans Bob Livingstone — the political vacuum had to be filled with seemingly whoever wandered by at the correct time.

What is interesting is that at that precise moment, in that precise vacuum, the Republican Party was about to prepare a minimal and half-hearted pursual of the investigation into Bill Clinton’s sexual pecadillos. But sans Bob Livingstone, and absent any real leadership — leadership that was never filled by this empty suit that is Dennis Hastert but was even more absent at that time — the Republicans in charge fell to the likes of Tom DeLay and Tom DeLay beings. And thus the investigation and the Impeachment went on full bore.

I remember watching on the woeful McNews entity that is Channel One a stupid interview with the new Speaker of the House. It was inane, as everything on Channel One is (chopped up next to deodorant and Mountain Dew commercials to this captive teenage audience). I shouldn’t make too much of it, but it really was my first impression of the man who I doubt many Americans know a damned thing about. He’s a former High School Wrestling Coach. The inane hosts of Channel One made much of that fact. I’d make more of the fact that Dennis Hastert had few political reasons for being Speaker of the House.

Ah. Bring me back Tom Foley. Or bring me Nancy Pelosi, I suppose.

The Willamette Week’s coup de grace will forever be an investigative piece which uncovered the pedophilliac relationship of an Oregon Favourite Son — a popular governor who, as Portland mayor, is credited with making Portland what it is today and as governor of Oregon is credited with making Oregon what it is today. As he moved on, Neil Goldsmidt had his hands all over the Oregon Democratic machinery. Thus the uneasy untying of alliances many politicos had to undergo when he had his fall from grace. It is akin to the banning of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part Two” from NFL stadiums — the inextricable extraction of complicated interlocking compartmentalizing is never easy.

The Great Scandal of the Oregon Governor was, however, the wanton cover-up. People knew. People swept it under the rug. It was spoken up in hushed voices. The Media and various powerful forces looked the other way and pretended like they didn’t see anything.

Which brings us to the case of Mark Foley. What did they know and when did they know it, and why couldn’t the red flags be mulled and pulled and worked over in-House; first privatedly to see if there was any fire attached to the smoke of a close relationship between a 55 year old Congressman and a 16 year old Paige, and then a more public airing of “diappointment” and “tsk tsk” and “There’s the Door, Mark Foley” when the fire is verifiably attached to the smoke? Why was it up to a media outlet to uncover this whole sordid mess and stink? It’s a failure of the House Ethics process, I suppose, and we all know who to blame for that (unspoken) breakdown, don’t we?

And why, when I listened to a bit of Michael Savage on Friday, was the host’s go-to-position to consider this a witch-hunt against a “solid conservative member of Congress”? “I don’t care about his sexuality!” A charge of hypocrisy against the LIE-BERALS!! (A blurring of the lines of homosexuality and pedophilia, while we’re at it.) See… if this sexual relationship were with an adult, the one valid attack would be largely political — Hypocrisy if his/her political persona were based on a “Moral Majority” anti-homexual kick — ala the former mayor of Spokane, James West. (Who had an added bit of creeptitude with the fact that the entrapment exposed him as waiting for a 17 year old to turn 18 — creepy stalk-horsing, that.) As it were, the hypocrisy of Mark Foley remains: he was an active anti-pedophilia legislator. But this hypocrisy is incidental and beside the point. And so it goes.

Wanting to jot down a batch of stuff regarding that play I just acted in, and not wanting to change the topic of this here blog, I have started a new blog for the duration of this month.

http://lavantgardederobynhood.blogspot.com/.

There are things that either need to be said or don’t. I’ll leave it at this for the moment: If the play had averaged its highest audience total, it would have nearly broken even. Figure it out from there.