Desperation

The Allen campaign, just days after whining about nasty, personal tone of the race and pleading to “get back to the issues”, fired off a salvo of attacks against Jim Webb’s writing. Allen cherry picked some sexual passages from Webb’s books, sent them off the Drudge Report, and questioned his moral fiber on that basis. Several of these books are held in such high regard that the Navy and Marines teach from them. A bitch move to be sure, but one very telling about Allen, who admitted that he had not even read the books.

Webb, to his credit, got pissed and fired back.

"The fish rots from the head down," Webb (D) said, referring to his belief that Allen (R) is responsible for his campaign staff's tactics and has now shown his true character. "Our government should no longer be in the hands of a group of unprincipled, small-minded, power-hungry character assassins."

[Snip]

The one-time boxer charged that Allen, the son of a former Washington Redskins head coach, has lived a life of privilege as a "a pampered public official." Allen, who did not serve in the military, was a college football player at the University of Virginia and spent one summer working on a ranch.

"When George Allen and his campaign take some small excerpts from my novels and not only criticizes them but uses them to question my ethics, my profession, my character, that is a line that should never be crossed," Webb said at Edgar Allen Poe Middle School in Annandale.

"I have lived in the real world, and I have reported the real world in my writings. I started working when I was 12 years old, and I fought in a brutal war. I saw its ugliness while George Allen was hanging out at a dude ranch," Webb said at a get-out-the-vote rally attended by about 300 people.

Too make things even more interesting, Webb drew the awful Lynne Cheney into the controversy by citing some explicit passages from her novel “Sisters”.

Speaking to Washington Post radio, Webb said, "I mean we can go and read Lynne Cheney's lesbian love scenes if you want to, you know, get graphic on stuff."

Cheney then told CNN, "Jim Webb is full of baloney. I have never written anything sexually explicit."

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out a news release listing sexual passages in books by Cheney and other GOP conservatives, including Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer’s show yesterday, ostensibly to defend the Administration policy but got into it with the Beard over her own book. Wolf grilled Cheney for her statement that her novel had no sexual content when it clearly does and poor Lynne just melted down. It is rare to see an adult have a full blown hissy fit on national TV ("CAN"T WE TALK AOUT THE CHILDREN"S BOOK WOLF! - the CNN link above has the video) but it made for great entertainment. During the interview, one can actually see Cheney’s credibility get up and walk out of the studio. Good fun!

The bottom line here is that, despite all of his high minded rhetoric and good old boy charm, George Allen is just a spiteful, underhanded brat. He will lie about anything and smear anybody to keep his seat. That obvious lack of character, among other things, has pushed the Virginian Pilot, the Roanoke Time, the Washington Post, and the Daily Press to endorse Webb. Hell, even Fox News, the Republican house organ, has called out Allen for his dirty campaigning; a pretty tough trick for a conservative.

Virginia is ugly. This is one no-class campaign.

Reaching into the buckets of old trash, literally, the Allen campaign found excerpts from fiction Webb had written as a novelist and released it as...as what?

As an effort to discredit Jim Webb as the kind of person who would write man-boy fiction, which must be worse than the kind of person who would use the “n” word in real life or be embarrassed to be Jewish or call an Indian-American “maccaca,” all incidents along the troubled path of this year’s George Allen Senate campaign.

I pray to God that the Commonwealth will not re-elect this shameless, bigoted, liar. Vote Webb November 7th – Virginians deserve better.