t a l l a p e

I suspect that most who are going to read this have at least noted the issues surrounding Mark Foley, the Republican Rep from Florida who resigned on Friday.

For those who haven’t, the basic issue is this: it’s come to light that over the past three or four years Foley has been sending sexually explicit text messages and e-mails to (male) house pages, all of them (to this point) teenagers.

The general problem here is, I assume, clear and easy to understand.

What’s actually been catching my attention has been the difference in the language that some of the commentators on the scandal have been using. There are two distinct categories:

• “gross”/”disgusting”/”icky”/”sickening”/etc – all of which roughly translate, in my mind, into something like “Oh, my god. Mark Foley is GAY!”
• “wrong”/”immoral”/etc – which statements translate, in my mind, into something like “This behavior is wrong and cannot be tolerated.”

I’m not usually particularly sensitive to language, being someone who prefers to take meaning over semantics. But in this case, there’s too much of the first set of words and not enough of the second.

(As usual, I’m coming late to the party on this one: John Dickerson has more in Slate.)