Monday, October 02, 2006

I am so angry

This whole Foley thing has made me so angry. Angry about many things. But when I thought about it I realized what made me angriest of all.

The entire blogopshere is just beating it's chest in indignation and anger over what Foley did. It seems writing dirty messages to a 16 year old is something we can all agree is wrong, wrong. Oh, the screaming of "child predator" and "pedophile" could be heard from one end of the blogosphere to the other.

But then I started thinking about the blogopshere's reaction to the teacher who had sex with a 14 yr old boy. Debbie Lafave. Also someone who had authority over youth and took advantage of it. But she didn't just instant message this boy with sexual suggestions. She actually seduced and had sex with him. Many times. Yet the reaction then was very different.

Oh so different.

All I read on blogs (both right and left) was how lucky this boy was. How they wished they had a teacher like that in Jr. High. About how stupid he was to have told.

And adult seduced a child, and in this case it was not only a minor, but it WAS below the age of consent. And yet the men of the net (with few exceptions) could only talk about how hot the teacher was. There was a whole lot of cyber winking and "you know what I'm, saying?" going on. Do we remember this??

Just for a taste, check out the comments here and here. (left or right, all the same)

The hypocrisy of the reaction to Foley compared to the teacher isn't all that ticks me off. I read on my libertarian blogs how awful the Foley thing is. I have news for you. If your 13, 14, 15, or 16 yr old is on the computer EVER with out you right there I guarantee he or she have read and seen MUCH MUCH worse than anything Foley wrote to that boy.

So some of you can spare me your indignation. You don't care how our children are hurt on the net by what they see or who IM's them. It's only the parents responsibility, right? I mean we all know that at least one parent is home all the time with their older kids, right?? We all know that kids never get on other children's computers where the parents don't care, right? Because it's all about free speech and the smut and porn that pops up to your 12 yr old is just a part of that, right? It's what our forefathers fought for, right?

So if you are going to get mad and disgusted at Foley, get mad at the hundreds of thousands of porn and smut sites that target our kids everyday. One click and they are there. One innocent looking ad or pop up and our kids are THERE, seeing and reading far worse things than Foley every thought about.

Today, I am just sick and mad at the world.