When Sen. ‘Macaca’ Allen accuses his Democratic opponent Jim Webb of writing a book with lurid descriptions, it smacks of being just a tactic to deflect the growing voices criticizing Allen’s own shortcomings (racism, concealment/repudiation of Jewish heritage, etc., etc.).
"Allen told reporters after a campaign stop in Harrisonburg that Webb’s books are demeaning to women. "My opponent hasn’t been in public office," he said. "But he talks about the books he’s written and his creative writing, his novels. Those are some of his writings. . . . People can make that judgment."
…
Webb said the graphic scenes in his novels, many of which are set in wartime, are taken out of context and do not accurately reflect the books or their content: combat. He said he has written about disturbing scenes that he witnessed on the battlefield or as a journalist in Southeast Asia.
"It is an observation about how the human species lives," Webb said after Mark Plotkin, the radio show’s host, read one of the more lurid passages, prompting objections from the candidate.
Webb told Plotkin that listeners should read a book by Allen’s sister, Jennifer, who described her brother’s harsh physical treatment toward her. He also shot back that Vice President Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a novel, "Sisters," which contains scenes of rape and a lesbian love affair. "You can read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian love scenes if you want to get graphic on stuff," he said."
Lynne Cheney in a relatively belligerent interview by the normally unctuous Wolf Blitzer defended her own writings and declared Webb to be "full of baloney", denying writing sexually explicit scenes in her novel ‘Sisters’.
It’s election time, silly! That’s why these politicians are clobbering each other’s heads with books the opposition wrote, pulling out any whiff of sex in each and every book.The readers know that it was put in primarily to make the books salacious and saleable. Dull treatises may be all very well for the pol’s public image, but sex sells!
Accidental Blogger 
2 responses to “Books? – Baloney! (Sujatha)”
Sujatha:
This story is timely and quite hilarious.
I was really amused by Lynn Cheney’s desperate attempts to divert attention to her “children’s book” with Wolf Blitzer instead of the “adult literature” she had penned earlier. Cheney is a classic Republican dragon lady. Smart, a heart of stone, the hide of a rhino and zero compassion for those who are of no use to her. She appears to be even more cold hearted than her husband, if that is possible.
I had read portions of the book that George Allen’s sister wrote about him some time ago before Macaca and other problems caught our attention. (Newsweek had carried the excerpts) In the book Allen comes across as a bully, a hypocrite and a rather unpleasant person. I am surprised there wasn’t more discussion of that book during the campaign.
I haven’t read Webb’s books – I don’t much care for the genre. But now my curiosity has been piqued. I’ll see if I can find a copy of Lost Soldiers or Fields of Fire at the local library.
I am wondering if the Amazon sales rank of Webb’s books have spiked since the latest fracas. It happened for Noam Chomsky when Hugo Chavez held aloft his book during his “The devil was here” tirade against Bush at the UN. Also William Blum’s book “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” shot up in sales when Osama endorsed it. Nothing helps book sales like having an enemy mention it in public.
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I don’t think that the Amazon sales rank for Webb’s books have gone up ( around 25,000 for Lost Soldiers and 454 for Fields of Fire, which must be quite a reasonably good seller) The reviews seemed largely positive though and many were from military or ex-military personnel.
Tedium was the main note struck by a fast flip through the ‘Sisters’ pdf. The most interesting part came at the footnote that described Mrs.Cheney as a ‘lifelong student of the 19th century and PhD in Victorian literature’ She might be able to write a dissertation, but the novel was insufferably boring. An A.S. Byatt in the making she most certainly is not.
Another aside on politician’s novels, I happened to read ‘A Time to Stand’ co- authored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, and ended up feeling faintly cheated. Yes, there were some insights into the corridors of power but the main plot was cliched and the characters seemed flat and unremarkable.
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