Say Anything Blog

Yesterday both on the front page and in the reader blogs news of some nasty passages from Virginia Senate Candidate Jim Webb’s novels was posted.  My immediate reaction was revulsion, but as it turns out when Webb’s writing is put into context it’s not quite as bad as it seems.

As I noted in a previous update, what Webb describes is actually a fairly common and completely normal custom in the Vietnam/Cambodia areas.

  Thira Srey, office manager for the Southern California-based Cambodian Association of America, said it is acceptable for a mother or caretaker in Cambodia, especially those from rural areas, to kiss the penis of an infant or put it in her mouth as a sign of respect or love.

  The child is usually 1 year old or younger, “but no more than 2 years old,” he said.

  The act has nothing to do with sexual feelings, he said, noting that it can be viewed as a sign of high respect by a caretaker for a future “master.”

I’m with Michelle Malkin on this:

Remember how pathetic it was when the Left tried to make scandals out of books written by Lynne Cheney and Scooter Libby?

Cheney wrote a pulpy novel, “Sisters,” about a frontier woman that included graphic sexual passages and lesiban lovers. (A conservative-bashing site reprinted excerpts here.)

Libby wrote a pulpy novel, “The Apprentice,” a “story of innocence and temptation” set in turn-of-the-century Japan that included graphic sexual passages—including bestiality and a scene in which the brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter.

Both were works of fiction. You know, stuff that’s made up.

Now, the George Allen campaign has detonated its October surprise using the same tactics as Cheney’s and Libby’s critics—attacking the fiction of his Democrat opponent, James Webb via an official “press release” sent to the Drudge Report last night. Are the passages in Webb’s “Lost Soldiers” bizarre and perverted? Yes. But they are no more proof of Webb’s immorality and unfitness for office than the passages in “Sisters” are proof that Lynne Cheney hates men or that the passages in “The Apprentice” are proof that Scooter Libby endorses sex between children and bears.