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October 29, 2006

A Racist or A Pervert?

I don't envy the voters of Virginia right now, trying to choose between Republican George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb for the Senate. Unless they have the time to really look into the facts, many are going to think they have to choose between a Racist Republican and a Pervert Democrat. Maybe I can offer some assistance.

Sen. Allen's racist past came to the forefront recently after his on-camera use of the denigrating word "macaca" to describe a non-white campaign aide of his opponent's. Other revelations include the fact that he had a noose hanging from a tree in his law office (think lynchings) and a Confederate flag displayed at his house. While governor, he called the NAACP an "extremist group" and, while resisting the establishment of Martin Luther King day, proudly announced "Confederate Heritage Month," the proclamation of which said not a word about the role of the slavery issue in the Civil War. Most damning of all, in my opinion, is that two former college football teammates have confirmed that following a deer hunt one day, Allen asked for directions to the part of town where black people lived and placed a severed deer head in the mail box of a black family he did not know, thinking it was funny. Oh, yes, and he is widely rumored to have used the "n" word on several occasions. Okay, so Allen is a racist asshole. What's the problem now with his opponent, Jim Webb?

Apparently, Webb has penned a few well-known, classic war novels, some of which were, shall we say, gritty and raunchy at times. They were based on what he actually saw during his service in Viet Nam and later as a journalist in Beruit in the 1980s: real-life horrors of war. Allen's campaign is excerpting the steamiest, most disgusting parts of these very adult novels, written for military men, and plopping them down on families' kitchen tables. Like one scene where a female stripper gets friendly with a banana. The most controversial, however, is a scene in which a man embraces his naked 4-year-old son and puts the boy's penis in his mouth. Matt Drudge's headlines have been screaming that Webb does not view a father's placement of his son's penis in his mouth as a sexual act – completely removing all context from the story. By western culture, this is obviously obscene. And while it is not widely accepted throughout the far East, where Webb claims he actually observed that very act, it is known to occur as a sort of affectionate or reverential act, more common when the child is an infant and more often performed by a mother or caretaker. Weird and gross, but then the world is full of weird and gross cultural quirks.

Another problem Allen's campaign is pointing out about the Webb books is that they are demeaning of women. Drudge writes, "Webb’s novels disturbingly and consistently – indeed, almost uniformly – portray women as servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these. In novel after novel, Webb assigns his female characters base, negative characteristics. In thousands of pages of fiction penned by Webb, there are few if any strong, admirable women or positive female role models." I have to ask, was Webb portraying his own feelings, or was he showing the reader how life is "over there"? Many quotes from his books are listed, and certainly they aren't very "senatorial," but are we still living under the delusion that the halls of Congress are filled with moral men?

Let me ask you which is worse – that Webb wrote about demeaning women in the context of what he actually saw in a war-torn world, or that George Allen seems to have actually inflicted "harsh physical treatment" on his sister, who wrote a novel of her own that revealed that treatment. Allen responded, "Her book is a novelization. . . . I didn't write those passages in my sister's book." That's correct – he didn't write them. He actually lived them.

Personally, I find it amazing that anyone with political aspirations or an interest in being a political figure would ever pen a novel. Novels have smudged the reputations of a number of conservatives lately, and some of their writings are most certainly more offensive – even sick – than any of those by Webb. For example, Scooter Libby's book, "The Apprentice," made waves several months ago because it contained a scene in which a child was locked into a cage to be raped by a trained bear, bestiality with a dead deer, the rape of a girl by two men who had just murdered her father, and numerous sex scenes with underage girls forced into prostitution. Lynn Cheney's book "Sisters" includes lesbian love scenes, which really is only a problem if you are the wife of the Vice President in an Administration that opposes gay rights. Bill O'Reilly's "Those Who Trespass" features a repulsive drug dealer asking underage girls whom he has lured into drug use to get his "pipe up" – poorly-written, self-indulgent crap, really. It all makes me wonder whether maybe this Webb story is political pay-back for Democrats having had the nerve to out these Republicans' trashy novels.

Of course, no debate over whether the scum on the left is worse than the scum on the right would be complete without a weigh-in by Michelle Malkin, who thinks all the earlier to-do over Republican dirty novels was "pathetic." See, they were writing fiction. Since it came from the deep recesses of their imaginations, it's okay. Malkin then flings the good-old-standby Republican response in such cases: "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."

God help me. I want to punch something every time I hear that rationale come out of the mouth of a Republican, and it happens all too often. Usually, it's followed by the other good-old-standby that at least Republicans kick out their own when they find out about wrong-doing. Democrats rally around the bad guys. Look at Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton, for chrissakes. You know when this one gets thrown out there, the debate is over, and not because you're wrong, but because the person is so ill-informed they'll never believe you no matter how many examples you list to prove them wrong. For instance, I got into this discussion yesterday with someone and pointed out to them that Republicans have done nothing to oust Grover Norquist (the first example that popped into my head). The response was he isn't elected, so he doesn't count. And it would seem that will soon be a nice, easy response for Republicans wishing to brush off the Republican dirty novels, too. None of those authors were running for office; therefore, they don't count.

Webb, who is running for office, gave a pretty good response to Allen.

"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."

So for all those confused Virginians out there, trying desperately to choose between a racist pig and a pervert, maybe this will help you sort it out. Forget all that stuff and ask yourself whether, in a time of war, you're best served by a man who didn't have to serve his country and instead lived a life of comfort and privilege, during which he could play "harmless" pranks on strangers after a day of hunting with his football buddies, or by a man who served his country in Viet Nam, spent years studying what life is like during war, and then wrote realistic novels about it that are today being recommended to soldiers as helpful reading by the military and being used in college courses all over the country. Personally, I'd throw that racist out on his ass every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Posted by Becky at October 29, 2006 01:32 PM