Posted on 10/27/2006 9:20:40 AM PDT by truthandlife
To: Jim Webb Campaign Headquarters
Mr. Webb,
As you well know, the American people want to protect our children against child predators. Recently, Congressman Mark Foley resigned from Congress on September 29, 2006 as allegations surfaced that he had sent sexually explicit instant messages to male former Congressional pages, through AOL Instant Messenger. As a result of the disclosures, the FBI and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened investigations of the messages to find possible criminal charges. Mark Foley did the right thing and resigned. In February, DOJ launched Project Safe Childhood, an initiative to “combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children.” Some of your writings are very disturbing for a candidate hoping to represent the families of Virginians in the U.S. Senate and do not help the cause of combating the sexual exploitation crimes against children. Most Virginians and Americans would find passages such as those below shocking, especially coming from the pen of someone who seeks the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, one of the highest offices in the land:
– Lost Soldiers: “A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s penis in his mouth.”
Bantam Books, NY, 1st Edition, 2001, (hard cover), page 333. Quote is from para. 10,.Chap. 34.
We therefore call on you to immediately withdraw your candidacy from this race. We the undersigned ask that you put your personal ambitions aside, think of the greater good of the people of the United States and do the right thing — drop out of the U.S. Senate Race rather than persevering in one of self-interest that only serves to hurt the cause of combating the proliferation of sexual exploitation crimes against children.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
If such things actually happened in Nam, and the incident were handled with more skillful literary craft, that would be one thing. Neither is true. It was just out of the blue gratuitous shock sex to sell books. Of course the books should not be banned, and it is not "sick" to read trash novels - just a waste of time.
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 the 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.
Oct. 14, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Cambodian woman faces sexual assault charge
Attorney: Putting son's penis in mother's mouth cultural display of love
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Oct-14-Sat-2006/news/10225038.html
And Allen's on his second, so he doesn't have a huge moral advantage there.
Bangkok is not Saigon, much less the rice paddies, and has nothing to do with the verisimilitude of fiction describing what happens under the stress of battle in Nam. I will submit Webb got his idea from Bangkok, the king of anything goes sex, and ran with it, to sell his books. We all have to make a living after all.
Cambodia has a very different culture from Nam.
The book is fiction and I don't, maybe you do, know the characters.
The point is that this occurs in that area of the world and a description of it occurring is not out of bounds in a raw type book.
It is not sex and it is not pedophilia.
Until two days ago, I never knew of this practice. Now I do. I've learned something new. I don't see acquiring new knowledge as a bad thing.
Even if the practice is revolting to my sensibilities, I still hold that writing it in a scene is legitimate.
Would it be legitimate to write a fictional story about the mother in Las Vegas and describe the incident leading to an arrest?
Oh.
Well, would you object to some protesters at his campaign stops carrying signs that say, "Yes, we have no bananas?"
A sick puppy?
Why would I?
It happens. Even in the US.
If you are saying that Webb included it for shock value, you may be correct, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.
And it certainly doesn't make Webb a sexual deviant. I pegs him as a capitalist who wants to sell a book.
And Bob Guccione is a capitalist who wants to sell a magazine. Shall we put him in the Senate too?
I never said Webb was a pervert. I said he was into it for pecuniary greed. Maybe you are mixing me up with some other poster. Yuck :)
I think it's called a "book review"--and this business about "judgementalism" is pretty silly. If you make prurient imaginings for the reading public--that's within the rights of publishing.
But it's hardly judgmentalism to hoot and guffaw at his chapter on banana splits or other throbbing prose he sees fit to put into print. It's already public. He obviously wanted people to READ it, didn't he?
Maybe I am, but that is not the argument.
The Allen attack, joined by a majority of posters here, is that the inclusion of this scene, and others, disqualify Webb as some kind of a sexual deviant.
With that I take issue.
I guess we have some show bidness "artistes" here who equate ridicule/criticism with the Gulag.
Madonna does it all the time when she drapes herself in Christian regalia--"I'm so courageous."
Come on!!!
One, I'm not arguing to put Webb in the Senate. I am arguing that this attack is unfair.
This is exactly the point, Torie. He is being attacked as a pornographer of the most vile subject- pedophilia. Think that's fair?
No, that overstates the case. I prefer to make the winning case, rather than the overstating losing case, but that is just me.
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