Nov 1, 2006 6:21am
A Novel Attack in Virginia
EmailIs it fair to assail politicians for the fiction they write?
Lovely and talented Nightline producer Katherine Hinman and I took a look at this issue last night — ON DOT-COM HERE and (if you didn’t stay up to watch it on Nightline) FREE VIDEO HERE!
– jt
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You missed the point. What Allen points out is not the “dirty words”, but the fact that all of the women depicted in Webb’s novels are either strictly sex objects, or villains, evil and depraved. There are no positive female figures, which speaks to Jim Webb’s own attitudes toward women, which has been a subject of discussion since his days as a Reagan Administration member.
Posted by: Pat Kelley | November 1, 2006, 7:55 am 7:55 am
Enlighten us on this “fact,” Pat Kelley. I assume you read all Jim Webb’s books before you reached conclusions about the depictions of “all” the women in Webb’s novels. This issue is the biggest fraud yet. An absolute joke from start to finish. “Let’s deflect questions about Gearge Allen’s reality by focusing n Jim Webb’s fiction.” Hilarious.
Posted by: DKNY | November 1, 2006, 8:25 am 8:25 am
my comments are: It seems like the republicans are whining like a kid who got his arm pinched back by the person they pinched and thought it wasn’t fare. I recall when senator kerry was running for office he was being ridiculed by many about his participation in the “Vietnam War”! They laghed at the advertisement and even try to size up with him by again calling their bully audience to lashout with insults, laughing and teasing. My opinion on behalf of Sen. Kery: Being a president takes more than a basic job description of political venues, it’s also about experience, action and participation. “We the people and our families should be taken care of first”; thats why I thought we were the “United States”!!!
Posted by: marie | November 1, 2006, 8:31 am 8:31 am
I’ve recently come across an important letter and its response which I’d like to share:
“Dear Mr. R.,
I’m a candidate running for the Senate in a southern state who has somewhat conservative political views, but I mostly am in step with the views of my constituents. Or at least I thought so until now! I was leading in the opinion polls until I made the dreadful mistake of referring to someone by using a racist nickname. What even made things worse was that this entire exchange was recorded and later posted on the Internet, which, as Sen. Ted Stevens explained to me, is a series of pipes. The media kept reporting this incident over and over and tried to paint me as a racist–I don’t know why–even though I keep a noose from a lynching and a Confederate flag in my office. My poll numbers have plummeted lower than a rattlesnake’s belly. What can I do to save my bacon (not to be confused with Virginia ham)?
Vexed in Virginia”
“Dear Vexed,
I think your bacon’s already frying in the pan, but all is not lost if you wake up and smell the coffee, Bub! You have to go on the attack, not by wasting time in discussing issues and how you differ from your opponent, but by attacking his character IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE! If he hasn’t made the same goof-ups as you, then you really have to dig into his past for some embarrassing dirt which you should mention time and time again in your campaign to whoever will listen. NOTHING IS OFF-LIMITS! Have your staff go back and look at everything in his life–from his third-grade essay on what he did last summer to what his great-aunt Tillie thinks of him–to discover something humiliating. Remember that EVERYTHING is fair game–even stuff written decades ago–to be dragged up and used to embarrass him. Some may call this a sign of desperation, but I assure you that, come November 8, it will be your sign of salvation!
Mr. “I’m a Winner and You’re Not!” R.”
It seems that the Senator is simply following the advice given him, and who could possibly blame him? It remains to be seen if the voters of the state in question will buy these cheap, desperate tactics.
Posted by: chuck | November 1, 2006, 9:25 am 9:25 am
I read the dot-com piece. Look, I say if a politician is talented enough to be published, that’s an accomplishment in and of itself. To take it a step further: we should really hold politicians to a literacy standard. Perhaps such a standard would have weeded out our current president.
The O’Reilly excerpt was such a tease. Not printable on a “family website”? Now there’s an oxymoron for you. When will the standards nazis at abcnews.com realize that the internet is the wild west? When it censors dot-com and/or blog reporting, it shows a general ignorance of the medium.
Posted by: cordelia525 | November 1, 2006, 12:06 pm 12:06 pm