Politics and pulp fiction
Remember how pathetic it was when the Left tried to make scandals out of books written by Lynne Cheney and Scooter Libby?
Cheney wrote a pulpy novel, “Sisters,” about a frontier woman that included graphic sexual passages and lesbian lovers. (A conservative-bashing site reprinted excerpts here.)
Libby wrote a pulpy novel, “The Apprentice,” a “story of innocence and temptation” set in turn-of-the-century Japan that included graphic sexual passages–including bestiality and a scene in which the brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter.
Both were works of fiction. You know, stuff that’s made up.
Now, the George Allen campaign has detonated its October surprise using the same tactics as Cheney’s and Libby’s critics–attacking the fiction of his Democrat opponent, James Webb via an official “press release” sent to the Drudge Report last night. Are the passages in Webb’s “Lost Soldiers” bizarre and perverted? Yes. But they are no more proof of Webb’s immorality and unfitness for office than the passages in “Sisters” are proof that Lynne Cheney hates men or that the passages in “The Apprentice” are proof that Scooter Libby endorses sex between children and bears.
John Hawkins, who first highlighted Webb’s fictional work here and here, does make a good point about media double standards:
It goes without saying that any Republican who wrote this sort of thing and ran for office would be absolutely ripped into a thousand pieces by the mainstream media.
Of course, John’s right.
Allah does him one better:
If George Allen had written this book, not only would the left be going berserk, they’d be circulating lists of characters in his other books whom they suspect of being gay.
Heh.
I don’t think, however, that the Allen campaign–couldn’t they leave this to surrogates?–should be trafficking in this late October muck. It is beneath them and there’s plenty else about Webb that is damning.
Or his non-fiction writing about women in the military.
And what happened to focusing on Webb’s stance on taxes, as fiscal conservatives in Virginia have been urging?
Political strategists in the Beltway are exulting that “Webb is toast” as a result of this Drudge/Allen bomb. But if this what Republican Senate candidates need to do to win elections, I don’t think any of us should be cheering.
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