Posted on 10/27/2006 8:19:01 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Webb Says His Novels 'Inappropriate' for News Radio By Nathan Burchfiel CNSNews.com Staff Writer October 27, 2006
(CNSNews.com) - In an interview on Washington Post Radio Friday morning, Jim Webb, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia, said excerpts of his novels are "a little bit inappropriate" to be read on news radio.
"I don't know why you're reading that on WTOP," Webb told host Mark Plotkin. "I think it's a little bit inappropriate."
Plotkin was reading an excerpt from Webb's novel "Something to Die For," in which Webb describes a female stripper performing sexual acts with a banana.
"I don't think that's appropriate for you to read on WTOP," Webb said again as Plotkin finished the excerpt. (Washington Post Radio is WTOP's sister station.)
The campaign of Republican Sen. George Allen on Thursday released excerpts from some of the war novels Webb wrote between 1978 and 2002. The books include some graphic sexual passages, as well as frequent uses of a racial slur for blacks and descriptions of Vietnamese women as "monkey-faced."
Among the excerpts is a scene from the 2002 novel "Lost Soldiers," in which a man embraces his four-year-old son and places the boy's penis in his mouth.
Webb said the release of the excerpts was "a Karl Rove campaign tactic" and a "classic example of the way this campaign has worked. It's smear after smear."
He defended his fiction as "illuminative."
"It's not a sexual act," Webb told Plotkin regarding the "Lost Soldiers" excerpt. "I actually saw this happen in a slum in Bangkok when I was there as a journalist."
"The duty of a writer is to illuminate his surroundings," he added.
Coincidentally, a Cambodian woman in Las Vegas is facing sexual assault charges for performing a similar act on her young son, according to an Oct. 14 report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The article quotes an office manager for the Cambodian Association of America, who described the act as a sign of respect or love. Webb criticized the Allen campaign for focusing on excerpts from his novels.
"The most important issue facing the country, he hasn't got a statement to make on it," Webb said of the Iraq war. "This country's been breaking into pieces economically ... they've got no position on that.
If they're going to assume the worst and go nuts about "macaca", then Webb's fiction seems fair game to me.
I just saw Norah O'Donnell (man is she hot!) on MSNBC interviewing Tom Daschle, and they were of course discussing the 06' elections. Surprisingly she questioned Daschle whether the Senate race in TN was basically over, and if the excerpts in Webb's book will somehow depress democratic turnout? She appeared very reluctant to discuss these topics, like she was almost ready to cry. Too bad you hot momma!
The hero of the democratic party, Bill Clinton has already testified UNDER OATH--that that activity is NOT sex. So why the big deal? /s
Yup. They want to bash Republicans with second hand rumors too, but this is from the mind of Webb. He may have seen some of this sick stuff, but it's in his mind too. And he wants to profit from spreading it. Does he want kids in Virgina schools to read it?
Thanks for the YouTube link to Sen. Dodd on Imus. How predictable. Dodd says we are facing real problems in this country, truck drivers are listening to Imus and are worrying how to pay for their kid's college and whether they'll even have a job next week and now the nation is worried about books.
Dodd is saying we shouldn't worry about the words written by our candidates for high office. Typical hypocrisy from the left. They rode Foley for weeks for much milder words written in emails and Foley did the honorable thing and immediately resigned. But now Dem U.S. Senators are saying the passages in the book, which are infintely more vile than Foley's emails, are nothing to worry about.
I would have never thought it possible for a human to exist with such cognitive dissonance.
The Democrats brought the moralizing up with Foley. Now, it's "can't we all be adults and not prudes." Well, they should be hit hard on their hypocrisy. The MSM should too for all the water they carried for the Democrats in the Foley affair, who as you said, had already resigned. Woody Allen Democrats are alive and well today.
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The hero of the democratic party, Bill Clinton has already testified UNDER OATH--that that activity is NOT sex. So why the big deal? /s
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Yes indeed. Slick Willy helped usher in the "GirlsGoneWild" era by redefining what is not sex.
The books include some graphic sexual passages, as well as frequent uses of a racial slur for blacks and descriptions of Vietnamese women as "monkey-faced."
If this was written by a Republican, the MSM would be going ballistic. What a double standard.
Sure. And in the next room they had a donkey show!
First the Democrats defended same sex coitus, then pedophilia, then bestiality, and now they've moved on to fruits. What's next, vegetables?
"OMG!! WHy would ANYONE write about that horrible scene??? He SHOULD have tried to talk with the Ambassadors to get them to STOP that kind of thing....if it really happened!! It's disgusting."
I'm as conservative as they come and I find your "moral outrage" and that of many others regarding this matter far more disgusting.
This is a novel, a work of fiction, apparently based on actual customs from a land far from here, by people westerners don't fully understand.
I give Webb a huge pass and give Allen much scorn for manufacturing controversy where there is none.
Get a life. Defeat democrats honestly. Get over you fake rage.
Um. A Republican, Allan, is defeating a Democrat, Webb, honestly.
Allan didn't author those materials -- Webb did.
I didn't think much of this line of inquiry, although it certainly is getting news play.
However, I wish Webb had done his own narration on the audio books, that would have been fun.
I've got ONE of his books on audiotape, but there is a different narrator.
I saw the Imus interview, it was great, but I wish the I-man went after this story as much as he's been after the Foley story. In the end I'm happy Imus hit the dems, when you consider how liberal he's become I can't complain.
And my point is that what he wrote is NOT OFFENSIVE to anyone with even a slight knowledge of the numerous bizarre customs that actually exist on this planet.
When someone can make political hay from something as utterly insignificant as this, I then have to question the very integrity of the republican party.
If you claim moral outrage, shame on you.
I can site a dozen equally bizarre cultural traditions, and if I included them in a book, would I be a moral outcast in your eyes?
-Female circumcision
-Suspension by means of hooks inserted into the flesh
-Eating of peyote for religious purposes
-Oral maceration of casaba root as a means to make a fermented beverage
-The whipping of women and girls at Easter time
-Multiple wives
-Pagan bestiality
Ad infinitum. THIS is our world, too. Not just your anti-septic, homogenized, Disneyfied safe-room.
It is not a crime, a sin or even morally questionable to point out these practices as a means of coloring a story.
If you do not know that the context Webb's passage was a benign example of a strange cultural tradition, then educate yourself.
If you DO know it and choose to excoriate Webb still, then I for one, will never support you in that matter.
Thanks for the post.
I don't know why I am so irate about this. I have ZERO love for Webb, too, but I REALLY want to see the republican party behave with intelligence, grace and dignity more than anything else.
Apparently it takes a big leap to be a true conservative AND see the innocence of Webb's passage. You and I passed the test-- let's hope others follow.
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