Discussion for article #237293
Ughh. I have no love for Dennis Hastert, but I do love the right to privacy, and what the news organizations are doing here seems more like stalking than reporting.
Is Hastert’s location relevant to the accusations? If not, why hunt him down? Even Dennis Hastert should be able to walk around in his own backyard without news crews hiding in the shrubbery.
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Being on property one owns sounds pretty normal to me. Why is this news??
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Call Geraldo Rivera and ask him. It is the type of “investigative reporting” he would do…
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Wish it could have been Cheney or Dubya stumbling in that media crush outside the courthouse.
CBS had shots of Hastert’s massive rural Wisconsin farmhouse the other morning and shots of Denny sitting in a folding chair in his garage playing with a dog…massive house, could have been a high school.
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Imagine if Hastert turned out, finally, to be a great man. What if he took a stand and said, “This is what happens when you demonize us. I am a gay man who has been forced to live a lie and sneak and hide and cheat and abuse… I have lost my way because there was never a path for me.” Imagine that… imagine if he took his moment and made it great.
I get that the fact that he helped cover up similar activities of a fellow politician when he was in office and that he committed many years ago. But it seems like most of this case is really about are his financial activities that triggered our system designed to uncover terrorist activities.
Running a GOP morality laundry.
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If I was wearing that shirt, I would be hiding too.
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I actually know where Eastman is – definitely off the beaten path.
Gay men are not by definition pedophiles; this is an ugly stereotype that needs to go away.
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No one has called him a pedophile or is claiming that the his sexual preference is material to the discussion. But he apparently is a person who used his position of authority to groom and prey on young men. This is a serious breach of the trust we place in the hands of those that work with children.
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Finally someone who no longer is let off the hook due to IOKIYAR!
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By “us”, do you mean those who are supposed to teach and protect kids?
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Oy… I made my point poorly, apparently… what I meant was, profound oppression can propagate dysfunction… of course I’m not conflating being gay with pedophilia, in fact, statistically, the opposite might be true. Hastert appears to be a very dishonest and unhappy man, he might also be a pedophile … I have no information about the ages of his alleged victims but I doubt if they were on the high school varsity wrestling team that they were children. My point is, the kind of self loathing that Hastert likely felt he had to live with can be mind twisting. I can’t imagine how awful life would be living that deeply in the closet… but I do have empathy for anyone who suffers from mental illness.
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No kidding… man, talk about a lynch mob.
“Were” for the unreal conditional, please. “If I were…”
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I somewhat agree, but when you are in the news you leave yourself open to media coverage. He was just indicted. It’s news.
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That appears to be their default mode. Easier to wait in a pack to shout a few fatuous questions than to do actual research or, you know, reporting.
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You doubt if they were on the high school wrestling team they were children? You think 15, 16, and 17-year olds are not children? Hastert was a coach for years. On what basis are you concluding that if he is guilty of illicit contact with students that he limited himself to the senior class only? Whatever weird point you’re trying to make by cloaking your odd views in some kind of parody of gay rights terminology, you’re only succeeding in coming across as odd.
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