“Mark Foley wants you to know that he is a gay man.”

Mark Foley is fascinating. He is but one man, yet he encompasses the entirety of modern-day, scandal-making problems. Sketchy relations with the barely legal. With the barely legal who also happen to be working for him. Sketchy use of the Internet. Closeted homosexuality. Which is enough, you'd think, but there's more. He was also--how very last season!--molested by a clergyman when he was a kid. And--how very Mel Gibson!--he is, sniff sniff, an alcoholic. Add on Delta Burke as his wronged, bulimic wife, and this is officially the perfect Lifetime movie.

I've enjoyed following the Mark Foley story because it's a return to the America of my youth, the rollicking 1990s, when apologetic fuck-ups, not al-Qaeda, were what made the news. Remember Amy Fisher, the Long Island Lolita? OJ? Monica? Not to discount the sufferings of Mary Joe Buttafucco and the like, but those were better days.