Former Florida Representative Mark
Foley returns to the spotlight on talk radio, three years after a gay
sex scandal forced him to retire from Capitol Hill, the AP reported.
Foley will host Inside the Mind of
Mark Foley, a Washington political talk show to debut September
22 on WSVU out of North Palm Beach, Florida.
Producers hope to take the show
national.
“I don't see anything stopping it,”
Joe Raineri, the show's producer, told the news service. “I can
tell you, he's very good.”
Foley resigned from Congress in 2006
after bloggers posted sexually explicit Internet messages he had sent
to male teenagers who had worked as Capitol Hill pages. Foley, who
insisted he never had sexual contact with teens, just inappropriate
conversations, escaped prosecution.
Gay monthly The Advocate outed
Foley in 1996, but the Republican Congressman continued to deny his
sexual orientation until after he resigned.
Two years after his fall from grace,
Foley, who while in Congress had earned a national reputation as an
adversary of child sexual predators and a champion of family values,
remained unwilling to accept full responsibility.
“There was never anywhere in those
conversations where someone said 'Stop' or 'I'm not enjoying this,'
or 'This is inappropriate',” Foley told the AP in 2008. “But
again, I'm the adult here, I'm the congressman. The fact is I
allowed it to happen. That's where my responsibility lies.”
Shortly after returning to public life,
Foley announced that he was gay, an alcoholic, and had been molested
by a priest at the age of 12. He then checked himself into a
treatment facility.
Producers of Inside the Mind are
calling it “a real insider's view into the inner workings of
Washington, D.C.”