A Novel Attack

Maybe Mark Foley should have just claimed his IM’s were merely research for an epic trilogy.
With the almost sexually charged nature Brian Ross pursued the Foley scandal, one would think he’s taking a cold shower before chasing down Webb, reading to him on camera from his own novel.
C’mon, Jake. You know if this had been Allen’s writing, your guys would be on it like a media-sponsored Tailhook convention. mark Halperin at least has the decency to admit he’s shilling for the dems.
-T

Come on — tell me that if Bob Corker or any other Republican Senate candidate wrote those things that the press and the public wouldn’t demand a public flogging.
It’s just more of the same from the main-stream media and the left. They can dish it out, but cry like school girls when it comes time to take it.

These books were published years ago. Wonkette, and perhaps others, discussed them months ago when Webb became a viable candidate. Certainly, one of the first things Allen’s campaign did when Webb was nominated was to go through the books.
So why did they release the spicy passages now? Maximizing the impact on voters is certainly part of it, but I think there’s another factor involved.
I think it’s a move that will probably give Allen a couple of points in Virginia. That probably will be enough to put him over the top. Until this week, he never thought he’d need those points.
On the other hand, it’s the type of sleazy, deceptive move that people will remember, particularly in a presidential campaign. I’m sure Allen never wanted to do this and figured he could run a Hillary-type 2008 prelim campaign without ever talking a punch.
Now he needs every possible trick and advantage just to save his political life, so the effects on future campaigns must be ignored. It might be his tacit acknowledgment that the ship carrying his 2008 presidential hopes has sailed.
Now, we’ll see if Webb brings out a dog-eared copy of Jennifer Allen’s (nonfiction) book.

Way to go ABC! You guys prove once again just how biased you really are. Compare and contrast the coverage you gave ridicules allegations against Allen versus factual insights into the twisted mind of Webb! Had this book been written by Allen the story would have been front and center on your web site and evening news until after the election. Seeing as how this is bad for the Democratic candidate it gets minimal coverage and is relegated to an obscure spot on your web site.

This may work for Allen, I’m sad to say. It says much more about Allen’s character and that of his supporters, than it does of Webb, who, after all, was writing fiction based on things he witnessed. What would Allen have to say about the authors of the Bible? I doubt he’d say they were obsessed with incest and homosexual rape. Really, really pathetic.

I can’t in good conscience vote for Allen now.
What I was wanting to know from him is how he would chanbe things after the last two years…even some Republicans have seen the err in their ways. This just seems like more of the same err in those same ways. Diversions and finger pointing (“look away”) with no substance. Why would it be any different on Nov 8th with his re-election?

Bottom line: Jim Webb went to war and saw terrible things. George Allen did not. End of story.

I haven’t been so upset since Dan Quayle outed “Murphy Brown”. Please Virginians, send Senator Macacawitz to his hateful,prejudiced fantasy land!!!

This shows how desperate George Allen is and to what means he will go to to win. Instead of talking about issues, he stoops to mudslinging of the worse kind. Does anyone want a person of this type of character in the senate? What kind of backstabbing is he capable of behind closed doors? Truly frightening!

The Left considers what Sen. Allen may or may not have SAID thirty or more years ago as relevant to the current campaign but what Jim Webb WROTE years ago is irrelevant. Sorry! What is good for the goose is good for the gander! Jim Webb may have been writing fiction…but he put his own thoughts into writing. AND THAT IS A FACT!

This is one campaign, where it’s race to elect the lesser of two evils- and I think Webb seems less alarming to damage basic human values compared to Allen. While Jim Webb is no honest man, Allen is a kind of politician- in his tactics, treatment and attitude- who only can create greater drift, cynicsm and hostility toward politics.
I’m just glad and I don’t have to witness their names on the ballot here in NYC.

Perhaps…if everyone is fed up with the negative campaign ads people everywhere should boycot voting until politicians see that Americans are serious. How can anyone win if no one votes? They continue to get away with ALL the b.s that BOTH sides are participating in because Americans let them. I’m not saying to not vote. I would never say that. Just that if people are going to complain about it then they should be actively doing something to change it also.

Wow, the unabashed bias of both “journalist” and supposed enlightened libral readers. If this were George Allen that wrote these, even if he did it when he was in junior high, you leftys would demand his resignatioon and removal from the ballot. The fact of the matter is your all watching your failing coronation disolve before your eyes and don’t think your candidate should be held to the same standards us evil GOP folks are held to. Oh and um news flash: the reason the Allen camp sent the “document dump” to Drudge and Fox was they actually wanted the public to see them. I do have to hand it to ABC though, all of the other dinosaur media is too chicken poo poo to touch this story. Boy I can’t wait till Nov. 8th to sit in my big evil SUV with the gas burning engine idling as I listen to Rush and Sean celebrate our come from behind victory. GO USA.

Despearate times calls for desperate measures and actions. Its surprising that Allen didn’t dig up some old news from Hunter S. Thompson to support his ficticious claims against Webb. The notion that ones fictional writings is in deed their stance on the subject is small minded. There was a time in society when we were taught to use our imaginations to create suggestive ideas, it didn’t mean we supported the thought. We have slipped away from allowing creative methods of learning and teaching. Writings such as Webbs, encourages discussion and reaction. I believe that is the initial steps we take to move away from “traditional” forms of hate and separations of cultures. For Allen, this type of understanding is way over his head and unless he gets a new pair of glasses he’s going to continue to see a foggy reality. Hopefully he will be seeing it from his home and not from a office provided by tax payers!

demohyprocrite:
I disagree with your last comment. Democrats do have beliefs!
1. The Democrats believe in universal healthcare.
They want the federal government to eventually provide cradle-to-grave healthcare to every individual. But socialized medical care will drastically limit your choice of doctors and the federal government will determine which medical procedures are warranted and which prescriptions are covered. You will wait 2-3 hours to see your doctor — for a normal checkup. The waiting time in the emergency room will more than double the current waiting time. Oh, and you won’t be able to sue the federal government for malpractice. But in order to pay for this universal healthcare, it will require huge increases in taxes. While much of the increases will be targeting the “wealthy,” the Democrats are equal-opportunity taxhikers.
In the California primary, they attempted to raise the income tax of the top 1% in order to provide pre-school for every child. On the current California ballot is Proposition 87, which will impose an additional 1.5% – 6% on each barrel of oil (depending upon the value of the barrel) extracted from the ground in California, ostensibly to provide cheaper alternative fuels and reduce air polution. Yet also on the current California ballot is Proposition 86, which will impose an additional 13 cent tax on EACH cigarette (an additional $2.60 per pack) ostensibly to provide funding for emergency services, nursing education and health insurance to eligible children. Even the homeless and unemployed have to pay this tax.
2. The Democrats believe in wealth redistribution.
Even AFTER the Republican tax cuts (or as the Democrats say “tax cuts for the wealthy”), the top 1% of the wage earners account for 34.27% of the income tax revenue receipts; the top 5% of the wage earners account for 54.36% of the income tax revenue receipts; and the top 10% of the wage earners account for 65.84% of the income tax revenue receipts. Yet the Democrats would have you believe that the wealthy are not paying their fair share. Well, the top 50% of the wage earners actually account for 96.54% of the income tax revenue receipts. (Source: Internal Revenue Service for calendar year 2003.) But even that is NOT ENOUGH for the Democrats. They want to roll back all of the tax cuts and raise the income tax rate on the “wealthy.” All of this is designed to force the Haves to support the Have-Nots.
3. The Democrats believe in raising the federal tax on gasoline to reduce our dependancy on oil.
The current U.S. federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. Over the years a number of Democrats have suggested that the federal tax on gasoline should be $2-$3 per gallon to be more in line with what the Europeans pay for their gasoline. Actually the Euopeans pay nearly 3 times more than we do for gasoline, with taxes making up about 75% of the cost. And Oregon is already experimenting with charging a gasoline tax on a per MILE basis. That’s because as consumers switch to hybrids or more fuel efficient vehicles, there will be a huge drop off in revenues generated by the less consumption of gasoline.

I am so fed up with George Allen and his overblown rhetoric. This summer I served as one of two Boys Nation Senators from Virginia. During the course of the week, we formed a mock government, but also visited important sites, including the White House and the Capitol. One of the staples of the program included meeting, alongside our counterparts at Girls Nation, our Senator(s) and/or Representatives. We Virginians were surprised to learn that Sen. Warner, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a very senior member of the Senate, would be meeting with us personally, but that Sen. Allen was “too busy” so a staffer of his would meet in lieu of the junior senator.
The “meeting” with Allen’s staffer was first. I call it a “meeting” because the appointed staffer never actually appeared. Instead, after we had waited and waited a half-hour in Sen. Allen’s office, being repeatedly told that it would just be “five more minutes”, another staffer decided to take over. He led us through a good-sized conference room, but then claimed that it was too small for us (there were seven students total, four from Virginia and three from Connecticut), and led us into the office-building hallway.
In this hallway he gave us a very brief, unenthusiastic talk about Sen. Allen’s accomplishments as a senator and as Governor of Virginia. The accomplishments reduced to essentially cutting taxes and supporting the line-item veto (I felt almost compelled to scream that the US Supreme Court declared a very similar law unconstitutional in 1998 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_v._City_of_New_York]).
This latest stunt adds insult to injury. He has called for and stated his intention to run a “campaign driven by positive values.” Of course, one widespread video shows him preaching those words before calling a man of Indian descent “Macaca” and then telling him, “welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” The man was born, raised, and attends college in Virginia, coincidentally at Allen’s alma mater. As a side note about such a model native Virginian, Allen was born in California and lived there until he transfered to U.Va. in 1971.
I was first turned off by Sen. Allen last year, during the 2005 VA Gubernatorial race. Allen endorsed Jerry Kilgore, a man whose only position amounted to carrying out the death penalty for all sentences, even when new DNA evidence exonerated defendants. Last year I (and a stunning majority of Virginians) voted for Mr. Kilgore to go and get a real job.
If Sen. Allen is attacking what Webb wrote in his books, Virginians should attack what Allen has said and done. I didn’t know suppressing the First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press were “Virginia values.” A “Virginia value” to me is something in the vein of great Virginians like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, or James Madison. Allen is just a big-government liberal (supporting tax cuts does not engender conservatism) who also wants to police your bedroom. George Allen, time to get a real job!

I was prepared to support Webb in this years election. After reading the excerpts from his novels, I can’t do that now. My fellow Dems are freaking out because once the public see Webb’s own words in black and white, they’ll just stay home on Tuesday. The one about the soldier and his son would make Larry Flint wretch. The man is seriously disturbed, and we will sadly lose this year. Why can’t we keep the freaks out of our party? All that we had against Allen was the Macaca thing, and that was kind of thin – really.
Feigning outrage about that comment made it seem even more phoney. We need real issues to run on, and honest, clean electable candidates.

Chuck, I agree with you about the significance of Allen’s displaying a Confederate flag and noose in his office. They thrust the racist epithets of his college days into the context of who he IS, not who he WAS.
Jake, passages from books Webb wrote in the 1970s reflect who he WAS: someone who wrote novels during a time of literary experimentation that mirrored the over-the-top, real-life sexual experimentation among adults of the era.
You’re too young to have first-hand memories of how drastically things changed during the first half of the ’70s and how ridiculously even middle-aged people acted out. Revisit the movie “The Ice Storm” for a partial and very accurate (if retrospective) glimpse.
More telling about what was acceptable and even lauded in literature back then is the 1972 children’s/young adult novel _The_Man_Without_a_Face_ by Isabelle Holland. The 1993 movie of the same name (based on the book), directed by and starring Mel Gibson, utterly changed the characters and the plot and the book’s theme.
In the book, the character Gibson played is a 47-year-old gay man. Isabelle Holland apparently had no more clue than the majority of the ABC blogs posters that gay MEN are attracted to other gay MEN. The character, Justin McLeod, spends a summer grooming a 14-year-old boy, Charles, who is barely on the cusp of puberty and confused about his own sexuality.
McLeod does succeed in bringing the child into his bed under the guise of offering comfort, and in inducing Charles’s first orgasm. The next morning, McLeod challenges the boy by saying (this is paraphrased): “I know what I am. I’ve always known what I am. The question is, do you know what you are?” The boy flees–not freaked out by McLeod’s age, but by his own sexual response to another male.
In the first-person voice, an older Charles regrets never seeing McLeod again. It is NOT presented as a cautionary tale about creepy old guys messing with kids.
Holland’s book won awards. The American Library Association named it one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 1972. Later, the ALA included it on its list of Best of the Best Books for young adults, 1970-1983. The New York Times named it one of the Outstanding Children’s Books of 1972. It’s still on library shelves in the children’s and young adult sections. It’s still available on Amazon and in bookstores. And it was very much a product of its time.
In light of Holland’s laudatory reception by the literary world, Webb’s tripe for a ’70s adult audience is trivial and unexceptional. He was guilty of little more than poor writing. Allen’s campaign is only trotting out this stuff now to scare the anti-gay-marriage crowd. I’m sure it will work, but those voters would have voted against Webb no matter what. Anyone else with a modicum of sense should know that it has no bearing on the election of 2006.
And Jake, the Allen campaign not only got people like Drudge and Fox News to help them. They got you to help them by disseminating passages from the books through a more reputable news source–your coy, CYA disclaimer (“What do you think? Fair hit or below-the-belt desperation?”) notwithstanding.