Desperate Times
With DC, Maryland and Virginia being so close and all, and with people working in one and living in the other, the news of one jurisdiction also becomes the news of the other. At election time, it can be downright annoying. The campaign commercials and ads for Maryland’s races are tiring and stupid. Virginia, however, has far outdone Maryland. The ads for the Virginia Senatorial race between George Allen (Rep and the incumbent) and James Webb (Dem) are enough to make you return the television to Best Buy and stop newspaper service.
Let me first say - I think Allen and Webb are both idiots. Big, big idiots. Allen, however, wins the clueless simpleton award. He’s a member of the Senate and, apparently, has no clue what the word “fiction” means. If you somehow missed this story, here’s the brief version: Webb wrote a bunch of novels, most about wartime. Some based on his experience with the titles like, Lost Soldiers, Something to Die For and Fields of Fire. Definite war stories. Allen, the genius, took excerpts from Webb’s fiction and tried to get a bunch of newspapers to run the excerpts in an attempt to show that Webb writes graphic scenes and says demeaning things about women, etc. The newspapers didn’t go with the story. Drudge did.
Allen’s campaign manager Kay James says this: “How can women trust Jim Webb to represent their views in the Senate when chauvinistic attitudes and sexually exploitative references run throughout his fiction and nonfiction writings?”
Kay, have you ever read a book? Ideas, imagination - any of these concepts mean anything to you? Kay, how does one write about Vietnam War experiences and have everything sound sunny and rosy? Not exactly a pretty time. And, Kay, did you miss the part where Allen supporter and fellow Republican vet John McCain praised Webb’s books?
Allen said this:
“My record as a United States senator is an open book. My opponent has a record as well,” Allen told reporters. “He, in his advertisements, points out that he’s an author, that he’s a writer of books. That’s part of his record. These passages in his books are part of his open record. I’ll let the people of Virginia be the judge as to whose record they are more comfortable with.”
They’re books, you moron.
Forget the issues. Forget Allen’s racial slur a few weeks ago. Forget that Allen’s sister wrote a book describing Allen as a nasty piece of goods. Let’s start making decisions about who authors are as people based on the fiction they write. I’m assuming that means James Patterson will be arrested later this afternoon. After all, women tend to die in vicious ways in his books. That can only mean he’s pro-woman killing, right?
October 29th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Here in PA we’re suffering through the nasty ads too.
In our case we are lucky enough not to have the foolishness of what was written in a book.
October 29th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland so I get treated to ads for Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. Local and state. It’s enough to make any sane person want to toss things at the tv. Is it November 7th yet?
October 29th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
I live in Oregon and I cannot wait for Nov.7 to pass!
October 29th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Live in Ky. And all the political candidates are bashing each other in the ads. Can’t wait till the election is over.
October 29th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
HelenKay, I saw one of those anti-Jim Webb ads today and this quote made me laugh and roll my eyes; Jim Webb wrote an article (they don’t tell you he wrote it in 1979) and said that a U.S. Naval Academy* residence hall is a “horny woman’s dream.” *snort* I wonder why more romance novels haven’t been set in a US Naval Academy residence hall?
October 30th, 2006 at 11:31 am
The governor’s race here in Georgia is just as bad. The incumbent has this ad where he takes one of the least flattering pics of his opponent and as the “gov” makes his “points” and tells us what a liar his opponent is, he makes the opponents nose grow like Pinocchio. Urrgh. It is incredibly juvenile and insulting.
I am so tired of ads that skirt the issues. Tell me what you are going to do for me, not what horrible things your opponent has done.
October 30th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
The two men running here in AZ for the Senators race are awful All they do is badmouth each other. So I wont be voting for either of them. It’s disgusting how they act like children.
October 31st, 2006 at 11:14 am
I had occasion to meet Jim Webb when “Fields of Fire” first came out. That was– gulp–
TWENTY years ago. Different political climate, perhaps? Different cultural climate? I seem to remember it as such. Angst and bitter division over the war, veterans with delayed stress syndrome, lots more drinking, open philandering, and fewer apologies for getting caught at it.
No, wait— maybe only the last part is different. Now it’s “whose turn is it to apologize this week?”
I don’t remember quite as much stupidity, either, but that might have been my own blindspot, or the stupidity was kept to a personal level, not broadcast to the rest of the nation every half hour. [shudder]
Someone should do a study on the use of Presidents’ names as pejorative throughout American history. I’m sure someone in 1780’s thought they were insulting their neighbor if they called them “that Washington!”