Yesterday, Odien mentioned that Tom Reynolds would be holding a presser at Daemen College - just up the street from Zetti’s - at 7:15 and would I like to go? Hells yeah, I’d like to go but I couldn’t abandon the Pizza Throwdown in good conscience since I’d helped organize it, got the space, and helped recruit the Spree.

But Geek and Odien went, and what they found was raw, unabashed political theatrics. Tom Reynolds appeared onstage flanked with …

Children.

Now, I’ve seen other politicians use kids as props, but usually it’s to promote an educational initiative. I saw some of the footage on the early news today and I’m willing to bet Reynolds has never, ever been placed under this type of scrutiny before for anything - especially not in his own district. Why? Because he was surly and, to quote the late Morton Downey, Jr., puked pablum.

Who the hell were those kids? Why were they there? Who wrangled them up? Who asked those kids if they wanted to spend their evening as a political prop? More importantly, what exactly did it prove? He was asked to remove the kids so that adults could discuss adult things like lurid emails and pedophilia. Reynolds refused.

From where I’m sitting, the only thing it proved is that Thomas Reynolds, Republican from Clarence, is crass enough to use children as a political prop in order to somehow prove that he likes kids.

But the question never involved whether he likes kids. (Evidently, he doesn’t really like them very much, otherwise he wouldn’t have dragged them out to Daemen last night). The question is what he did when he found out that a 16-year old congressional page was freaked out enough by Mark Foley that he complained to his immediate supervisor, who in turn told Reynolds.

That small fact - the kid making noise about it - was all anyone needed to look into this more deeply.

What did Tom Reynolds do?

He took it to his supervisor. All of a sudden, we’re supposed to equate Tom Reynolds with David Brent or Michael Scott? Apart from setting Hastert up for the fall, this is such a buck-passing. If Reynolds wasn’t meant to do anything, why was he informed? Why did Alexander go to Reynolds first? Why didn’t Alexander go directly to Hastert?

This was all about fundraising. That’s why. That’s why the response from Reynolds, et al. wasn’t to investigate the charges (which would have likely revealed the stuff that ABC News was able to uncover), but instead for Reynolds’ PAC to give $5k to Foley, and for Foley to give $100,000 to the NRCC. Reports are also arising that Reynolds’ staff tried to hush this up by cutting a deal with ABC.

I wonder what the cost would have been had Foley actually done more with those pages than exchange unwanted emails and IMs with them?

HT BuffaloGeek, WNYMedia.net. Also check out RandomThoughts101 who goes off.

RSS 2.0 Respond Trackback