Tom Shales

News coverage of the Rep. Mark Foley scandal may seem sketchy on network TV because network newsees are having a hard time getting members of Congress to talk about it on camera. They're clamming up like -- well, like clams, even though, since Foley is a Republican, you'd think the Democrats would be anxious to shoot off their mouths -- thus perhaps proving once again that Democrats don't seize opportunities, they spurn them.
 
Democrats are soft on Republicans. Vice is definitely not versa.
 
Obviously any sort of smirky gloating would look unseemly since the offenses with which Foley is suspected -- he hadn't been officially charged by anybody with anything at bloggy press time -- are so delicate and, to most people, distasteful: the sending of sexually suggestive or explicit emails to kids working on Capitol Hill as pages, meaning 16-year-olds and younger.
 
Maybe this is one of those issues where members of Congress close ranks on the grounds that even though the scandal only reflects on one member of one party, in the public mind it just reconfirms the notion that wicked Washington is sin city, a place where pedophiles not only run wild in the streets but in the marble halls of the Capitol and the congressional office buildings. It results in frustration for those charged with reporting the news, that's for sure. On the other hand, a casual or intense observer might think it makes members of Congress look cowardly when no one will come forward and speak decisively on the issues raised by the scandal.
 
Meanwhile AOL celebrated the 10th anniversary of Fox News with one of its informal and extremely unscientific polls. As of 8 p.m. Eastern time Monday, with just over 46,000 subscribers having voted, 61 percent chose Fox when asked which cable news network they preferred to watch. CNN got a piddling 26 per cent of the vote and MSNBC, the only other network listed in the poll, got 13 per cent.
 
"Proving" probably nothing more than that political conservatives are much more likely to vote in opinion polls than their political opposites are, the question "What do you think of CNN?" was answered thus: 59 per cent called it "too liberal" and 34 per cent called it "balanced," whereas 60 per cent of those polled found Fox News to be "balanced," just like the network's slogan claims, with 37 percent voting "it's too conservative."
 
Too bad voters weren't given the choice of "Too Dull' for CNN. That might have resulted in a landslide.
 
And MSNBC? "It's too liberal" said 56 per cent of those voting -- which is hogwash. But that's the country we live in: Walk down the street and ask almost anybody if any of the national media are too liberal or too conservative and eight times out of 10 you'll probably hear "too liberal" because it's an American mantra, a knee-jerk reaction, the conventional "wisdom" based almost entirely on superstition. Quick -- the National Enquirer -- too liberal or too conservative? "Too liberal" of course! And TV Guide? That's not as silly as it sounds. In the old days, when it was owned by Nixon pal Walter Annenberg, the magazine regularly ran commentaries by Patrick Buchanan.
 
Then again, some people probably find him too liberal too.