Redstate

Other than one sentence in Lost Soldiers, this isn't going to bother anyone who's ever had sex or listened to Howard Stern.

is not that he wrote explicit things. It's that his writing is awful.

As Mencken once wrote of another bad writer, it "reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights."

"During my lifetime, all our problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions from the English-speaking nations across the world." - Thatcher

were to be elected and write his own floor speeches, the FCC would probably have to crack down on C-SPAN.

"Sen. George Allen, R-VA, unleashed a press release late Thursday that exposed his rival's fiction writing, which includes graphic underage sex scenes." - Drudge

I won't post the excerpts here. I'll leave that to those here at Redstate that are above my pay-grade. If you wish to view "what Jim Webb has written"...

From the Allen Campaign:

"If a [Democrat] had written this book..."

"Jim Webb likes to remind voters that he is a writer. He’s correct. And since he does like to mention that that he’s a writer — in interviews, on his campaign site, in commercials — it’s perfectly fair to tell voters what Jim Webb has written."

***

"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan

In light of what Webb has done (or what has been done on his behalf) as regards George Allen the sentiment of schadenfreude is echoing back and forth in my head. That said, the pedophilia was the only snippet that would and should be offensive to the vast majority of the citizenry; the rest is no worse than the average sitcom script. Nabokov wrote one of the best novels of the 20th Century from the perspective of a pedophile; does this make it less an achievement of prose? (not that even Webb is delusional enough to compare his writing to Nabokov) To anyone who is even an occasional consumer of literature this hullabaloo must seem much ado about nothing.

I suppose sex sells, but homoesexual sex? And, apparently, pedeophilian (is that a word), incestual homoesexual sex.

The Liberal's definition of torture: Anything that provides useful information from the enemy

Maybe a candidate has to do whatever it takes to get elected, but i dont think you have to bend over backwards for him and pretend like he's making a sane point. This is a stupid issue and a stupid post.

One of the commonest fallacies in the blogosphere is to suppose that "most people" see the world as one himself does. One wants to guard against this error. Christian men who fight every day the secret fight against lust within their own breasts will seldom cast their pearls before the proverbial swine! They don't post their innermost thoughts in threads like this. Men of the world, on the other hand, who loudly declare perverted fiction to be no big deal, ought to understand that by declaring, they forfeit the just confidence and overshout the quiet counsel of those who love and serve the Lord. This may be fine with them, but how then can they suppose to count their moral foes?

Well, Mr. Webb is going to count them on election day. Will he win or lose? I don't know. I am quite certain that his perverted fiction will cost him some votes, and rightly so. Whether it will also gain him some votes is a matter of which I desire to remain ignorant.

There is another side to this, however. Mr. Webb wrote not of random debauchery but of lonely soldiers in harm's way, far from home, which (as George Will has recently observed) is something Mr. Webb knows about and Mr. Allen does not. I don't think that George Allen quite understands this. I suggest that voters, even faithful Christian men, who unlike Mr. Allen have worn the uniform, will understand what Mr. Allen does not. The quotes are perverted, but Mr. Allen's making them a last-week campaign issue will backfire to some degree -- as it should. It will swing some votes back to the Webb camp.

Me, I would still vote for Mr. Allen, whom I like and tend to trust, but I do think his campaign tactic boorish.