Americans are waking up to trash politics and is putting to rest that kind of dirty politics. A big kick in the butt to the likes of Sen. Allen. What a relief that folks like him, who were dreaming about becoming President just a few months ago is now fighting to survive in politics. Salute to the American people.
Virginia Book Brawl Belies Webb's Desperation: Margaret Carlson
By Margaret Carlson
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- In the final days of the bitterest Senate race in the country, Republican incumbent George Allen went for a Hail Mary pass. He called opponent Jim Webb a novelist.
Well, a trashy novelist. By doing so in the final week, Allen assured the election would go down to the wire almost issue-free, with one candidate suspected of being a racist and the other a sexist.
Allen's move reversed his stated preference three weeks ago, expressed in an unusual two-minute paid television address, for a return to substance. That seemed like a better place for Allen, who had spent the previous weeks on the defense after describing a dark-skinned person with a word that means monkey and dodging accusations by former college football teammates that he routinely harassed black people. Topping it off was his squeamishness about his Jewish heritage.
That's inoperative now, sort of like stay the course. Issues such as Iraq, government spending, and the president don't work well for Allen right now. Better to pound the Democrat Webb for articles written three decades ago arguing against women at the U.S. Naval Academy and in combat.
There had to be more where that came from, so the Allen camp went poring over Webb's best-selling novels in hopes of finding the dirty parts. There were five or so worth quoting. Allen's aides fed them to reporters for weeks on background without success.
Time Running Out
With time running out, Allen took matters into his own hands. Last week, he passed the excerpts to the Drudge Report Web site and issued a press release with the offending paragraphs.
The highlighted parts feature a military nurse who does more than take temperatures, Vietnamese prison guards having sex with each other -- you get the idea.
Allen says he found the lack of women role models in Webb's writings disturbing and their treatment ``demeaning.' Webb portrays women as ``servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these,' according to the press release. The citizens of Virginia wouldn't want someone that ``chauvinistic' representing them.
Webb says there are strong women in his books and the graphic scenes plucked are true to what he saw in the war he was in. Allen was in a different world at the time, working on a dude ranch where perhaps he was surrounded by fully realized women while Webb was running into the other kind in the jungles of Vietnam.
Safe Subject
Allen did succeed in changing the conversation, and Webb's novels were the talk of morning radio and cable news last Friday. One conservative group called for Webb to withdraw. Indeed, it was hard to concentrate on Webb's substantive response to George W. Bush's Saturday radio address on Iraq during a month of shocking violence.
What Allen might not have counted on is that just because he hadn't written any books didn't mean the subject was a safe one. First, Webb is no ordinary dirty-book writer like Jackie Collins.
He has been compared to Homer and Ernest Hemingway in a stack of five-star reviews. The Naval War College magazine wrote that the ``Fields of Fire' has ``a completeness that is extraordinary and a realism that is almost eerie.' Soldier of Fortune magazine called it ``a classic war novel,' and the Houston Post said, ``Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth.'
In radio interviews Friday, Webb reviewed a few books himself. ``You ought to read what George Allen's sister wrote about him if you want to read about attitudes toward females,' he said.
Allen's sister Jennifer wrote a book about growing up in a football family, with references to what a jerk brother George was. In the most memorable scene, George dragged his sister up the stairs by the hair when she wouldn't leave the room where his buddies wanted to hang out, and once dangled her over the balcony of a hotel Michael Jackson-style in Niagara Falls, New York.
Webb also suggested we all ``go and read Lynne Cheney's lesbian love scenes if you want to, you know, get graphic on stuff.'
That assured the book battles would go on another day. Late Friday evening on CNN, as the vice president's wife tried to promote her new children's book, the questioning turned instead to Webb's comments. Cheney snapped that Webb was ``full of baloney.' Reporters who had read her novel, ``Sisters,' now out of print, say it is a hotbed of lesbian love, rape and brothels in the old West. In her official bio, there is no mention of the novel, only Cheney's more recent family-friendly fare.
Losing Ground
Two polls taken after Allen's latest attack show him losing this latest skirmish. On Oct. 30, the Rasmussen Report showed Allen trailing Webb by 5 points, a seven-point swing in less than a week. An Opinion Research Corp. poll taken Oct. 26-29 had Webb up by four.
If those numbers hold, Allen may soon discover, voters are more upset about trashy campaigns than the supposed trash he finds in books he hasn't read.
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