First, Michelle Malkin again. This is very interesting because it comes after her first TV appearance:
Where in the world: Smutgate edition
By Michelle Malkin GÇó October 27, 2006 04:14 PM
***see updates...Ed Morrissey comes forward with details about how the Allen campaign approached him to disseminate the Webb novel passages. He declined...***[note: Morrissey writes a blog called CaptainGÇÖs Quarters]Update: Here's the vid. I believe I garbled "ends" and "means," but you get what I mean. Interestingly, I'm not getting much negative mail. A few "we have to fight fire with fire" arguments and "you are not a real Republican...I'll never watch/read you again!" fulminations, but most e-mailers agree this stunt was so beneath the Allen campaign. "But the other side does it!" doesn't cut it.
You know what I was originally scheduled to talk about? My column this week arguing why Republicans deserve to be re-elected on national security grounds and why Democrats can't be trusted to act like grown-ups.
Smutgate knocked that topic off the table. Way to go!
Whoaa! And supportive e-mails!
Next up: Radley Balko is a libertarian and a policy analyst for the Cato Institute, specializing in vice and civil liberties issues. He is also a biweekly columnist for Fox News. His take?
The scene everyone's up in arms about isn't remotely titillating or sexual. It depicts two Americans in an exotic and foreign locale. The penis-kissing incident involves a native man and his son in a remote, rural part of South Asia. It's clearly scene-painting, and both characters are shocked and troubled by it, and return to it later in the book.The genital-kissing custom, by the way, is fairly common in many parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. It isn't sexual. Yes, it seems odd to Americans (there have been several cases where Asian
adults in America have been prosecuted for it -- none have been upheld, with courts clearly finding the practice customary, not sexual) -- and it seems clear from the book that Webb thinks it's odd, too. It isn't as if he made it up as part of some latent perversion.
Glenn Reynolds, a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, is most widely known for his weblog, Instapundit. He is a strong supporter of the Iraq War and describes himself as a libertarian. Jon Henke in fact e-mailed him to defend the Allen strategy. HereGÇÖs what he says: http://instapundit.c...
I think that Allah [a blogger] captures both sides of this story best . . . "Have we actually reached the point where Senate seats now turn on the sex scandals of fictional characters?"
He quotes novelist Bill QuickGÇÖs observation:
Original source: http://www.dailypund...
I speak as a professional novelist with thirty some published books. Anybody who thinks characters, plots, incidents, or personalities in novels tells you anything at all about their author's personal life is a complete ignoramaus.This is the cheapest of cheap shots. And, unlike the novels of James Webb, it tells me one hell of a lot about George Allen, Jr.
One thing all the writers want -- is for both sides to stop the name calling and get to issues.
I agree, because Webb wins on the issues.
This example is a feeble one, at best, but we know of practices in other countries which we find disturbing, but are we so offended in even knowing about them that we need to suppress that knowledge? An enlightened human being is one who understands that we have individual differences. To fail to understand or to criticize the spread of knowledge of those differences is to believe that we are superior to the rest of the world, when in reality we have cultural practices which puzzle others as well, I'm sure. So if we criticize Jim Webb for his portrayal of things he actaully saw, we need to ban National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel and whichever channel might show the mating habits of the animals of the world and any number of other types of media who educate us to the things that go on in the outside world...because? I can't even think of a reason why we would do that, but I'm sure George Allen could think of a reason....after all being a cowboy and knowing horses, he knows what blinders are.