Mark Foley is out of rehab and back in Florida where he attended the funeral of his father. His email contacts with teenaged boys are finally being scrutinized by law enforcement.

You wouldn’t necessarily know this from watching cable news, however. Mr. Foley’s re-entry has been relegated to “other news,” at the same time that MSNBC is giving us live shots of a brick wall — the back of the building in Italy where Tom and Katie are to be married today. (The lead story is President Bush’s visit to Asia, where we are all anxiously waiting to see if he will follow in his old man’s shoes and vomit at a state dinner.)

Why wasn’t an angry-looking media gaggle there trampling the lawn in Tucson, shouting questions at Mr. Foley as he skulked out of rehab in a baseball cap? Has Old Media given Mr. Foley a pass out of deference to the death of his father?

Does that sound like them?

What has happened here? Where are the cameras that staked out the comings and goings of former Rep. Gary Condit, Scooter Libby, the Enron gang, Elia Gonzalez, Monica Lewinsky and other scandal figures?

Granted, no one has been killed and no stained GAP clothing has popped up in the Foley scandal — but how did it become a non-story so quickly? Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Foley was a major player in the self-destruction of the Republican Congress and the poster boy of GOP sexual hypocrisy. His party leaders almost undoubtedly knew about his fetish for chicken and covered it up. Investigations are ongoing, and the careers of former Speaker Hastert and other former and current Republican bigwigs could hang in the balance.

Even Mr. Foley must be disappointed to be yesterday’s news so soon.

The media gaggles of yore may have been rude, aggressive and unpleasant but, ugly as they were, at least they were doing their jobs.