Foley's Dirty IMs Continue to Make Life Hell for Jabba the Hastert, R. Ley Ermey Thinks You're an Idiot, and Kubrick Was Sad When He Died

This Mark Foley thing keeps on rolling. Speaker Hastert gave a press conference today and pretended to take the blame but didn't resign, which is probably a win for Dems. By ducking responsibility for lying and obfuscating all weekend, and opting to keep a Pagehound in office rather than risk losing a seat thus, Hastert shows all the voters what kind of people they have representing them in our nation's Capitol. My guess is the scandal will grow larger over the next few days.

In more Foley news, Drudge Report is reporting in one of his personal exclusives (which means it's a 50/50 shot as to whether it's true) that the IM messages that blew up on ABC News last week were just a kind of prank between two non-homosexual pages that got into the wrong hands. In the vein of "Let's see what we can get that homo-perv Foley to say in IM!" Sounds somewhat plausible, but this is Drudge and Drudge always tows the party line with added fervor around election time, so this could just be that.

Also of interest, R. Lee Ermey gave an interview to Radar Online to promote "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning" and talked a little about a conversation he had with the late Stanley Kubrick a couple weeks before he died. Apparently Stanley hated "Eyes Wide Shut" and Ermey inplies that the reason for his movie "turning to shit" had a lot to do with having Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in it. I wonder how much of this was just hyper-self-criticism that a lot of artists deal with, and how much of this was genuine angst about the state of what turned out to be his final movie. I hope he didn't really hate it. That would be a sad way to end a career.

Also, in this interview, Ermey reveals himself to be a wingnut conservative among wingnut conservatives, which would seem to track with his past as a drill Sergeant and his military background. He says anyone who equates Iraq with Vietnam is a "fucking idiot". He says he's been to Iraq a few times and says the US military in Iraq is "doing just fine over there", which speaks to either some sort of baseline delusion or just willful ignorance. Neither's too good. Additionally, he calls David Fincher "a little chicken shit" because Fincher didn't listen to Ermey's "ideas" when filming "Seven". I'm not saying Fincher was right to freeze Ermey out of the creative process, but if Ermey is as batshit crazy as he would seem in this interview (which, admittedly, probably helped fuel his brilliant performance in "Full Metal Jacket"), then I don't know if I'd have listened to his ideas either, especially in such a tightly-written movie like "Seven". Anyway, take a read.

Also: for Salon's review of Charles Frazier's follow-up to "Cold Mountain", "Thirteen Moons", click here.