How Kevin Jennings Survived

[Robb]

How Kevin Jennings Survived (The Atlantic)

A few weeks ago, Kevin Jennings was in trouble.

After social conservatives at the Family Research Council had opposed his nomination as director of the Education Department's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools earlier in the year, he came under a firestorm of criticism from conservative bloggers and Fox News pundits for counseling an underage student--a 15 year-old boy, it was reported--on a sexual relationship with an older man.

(snip)

If the boy had been under 16, Jennings would have appeared to violate the law, and that would have placed him in a very different situation, politically. With affirmed legal high-ground, one can bet that conservative pundits, bloggers, and political groups wouldn't have backed off in the least--and that the noise surrounding Jennings wouldn't have faded as it has. And the White House would have had a much more difficult time ignoring the calls for resignation.

The boy says he had no sexual contact with the older man, after all, so it's possible the point would have been moot. But, had the "underage" label stuck, attacks on Jennings probably would have resonated louder.

Instead, criticism of Jennings has devolved into a partisan back-and-forth. Without the objective gravitas of Massachusetts law to push it beyond politics, that's where it will probably stay.
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