Broken Hallelujah

Maureen Dowd: Death By Instant Message

So now we have our first IM scandal.

We knew it was coming, all this personal information zinging back and forth across cyberspace at the speed of write, all this constantly streaming technology being inexorably adapted to the needs of desire.

IM-ing is like whispering, perfect for furtive, racy exchanges — or slimy, perverted ones. It’s as if your id had a typewriter. In a world where everything is instant, the delaying and censoring mechanisms that contributed to a civilized life are gone.

In the old days, there was a chance that career- or marriage-destroying letters would be, upon further consideration, thrown into the fireplace. IM’s, e-mails and BlackBerry billets-doux, more perilous forms of drunk dialing, have the wings of Mercury and the indestructibility of mercury.

But peripatetic pols, like gossipy high school girls, will not give up computer messaging just because creepy Mark Foley (a k a Maf54) got caught with his e-boxers down.

Indeed, the president and his top advisers were IM-ing just last night about the party’s meltdown. I hacked into the OVAL1600 chat room and prepared a transcript. Warning: politically explicit language, reader discretion advised.

Decider: hey

Rover08: ya

Decider: Dick, u here? Don?

DarthV: ya, potus

Rumstud74: ditto, boss

Decider: I called denny to tell him i just can’t quit him ...brokeback party ... did we decide right?

Rover08: ya ... even if we’re now the party of gays and a weak military, let’s not let the Dems paint us that way

DarthV: obvi

*Continued in the Comments