An Allen-supporting blogger, “Kilo,” has seen fit to ridicule my honest reaction -- A heads-up to book burners for Allen -- to the recent knuckle-dragging strategy of his ilk to cast Webb’s novels as pornography indicative of some sort of criminal and/or depraved mindset on the part of the author.On his blog, Spark it Up, Kilo suggests that I’m the only Virginia blogger using a “book-burning” characterization of this clearly anti-writer strategy being used by Allen’s most shameless and obedient loyalists.
Well, my use of “book-burning” is my own characterization of the fascist spirit of this strategy to smear Webb as an advocate of everything he writes about. If Kilo has no moral or intellectual standards to help him understand my objection to practicing politics at its worst, I can’t help him.
Like Jim Webb, I am a writer who can decide for himself how to portray something. So, Kilo, F.T. Rea says “book burners!” and I’ll stand behind it. Furthermore, I’m happy enough to stand alone in this way of seeing it, if that’s really the case.
Look here, I’m not taking my cues from anybody in any camp, much less sleazy operators who -- like their rightwing thug counterparts in history -- can justify attacking the art, music and literature of their opposites to gain power for their bosses. Yes, Kilo, this last-ditch, desperate attack on Webb as a pornographer has pissed me off.
Stung by the Foley scandal, scared by the most recent polls, apparently some sleazy Republican operatives have decided to use anything they can invent to slow down Webb’s growing momentum.
OK, if that’s the game, we’ll see how this plays out over the last days of the campaign. Meanwhile, for more on book burning read Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” or see the 1966 movie, directed by François Truffaut.
And, no, for Kilo and others who might be confused, neither Bradbury nor Truffaut really favored burning books simply because they created scenes in which books were burned.
10 comments:
Why are we surprised at the tactics of these Republicans?
Remember these classics?
A whisper campaign about how Ann Richards was a lesbian and trying to stage a covert takeover of the Texas government by appointing "hundreds" of gays and lesbians into government.
Bush wins the Texas governorship
Ads attacking Max Cleland’s patriotism
Cleland lost
Whisper campaign in South Carolina during the primaries that John McCain was mentally ill from Vietnam and that he had illegitimate black children.
Bush wins the Republican nomination
Smear tactics against John Kerry attacking Kerry’s Vietnam War record.
Bush wins his second presidential term
The reality is this type of appeal to the lowest common denominator of the electoreate works. These so called “compassionate Christain conservatives” seem in reality anything but. We’ve have a long history of the devil masquerading as a preacher man.
Bill Garnett,
Smears and sleaze work to turn off voters, in general, but such hardball tactics seem to work particularly well in discouraging cynical Democratic voters.
Sorry you are pissed. Can I offer you some tissue? Your candidate brought his books and his Christianity to the forum guys, not me. Rant away and please keep linking me. The last time you linked me I received 2 whole visits. I am sure many will be happy to keep this subject alive for 11 more days.
BTW- Knuckle Dragger is considered a racial slur by many people. Not that a enterpriser of Macaca t shirts would care.
This is the lowest moment in Allen's campaign. Someone might disagree with me on that and point to Allen's 'macaca' moment or his bizarre behavior regarding the 'revelations' about his Jewish ancestry, but those were gaffes. They weren't deliberate strategy. This nonsense with pulling passages from fictional books (out of context) is some moron's idea actual strategy. Some idiot sitting around a conference table somewhere actually came up with this idea...on purpose!
Allen's campaign has never looked more desperate, pathetic and grasping as it does right now.
The whole thing is so sick. Webb was writing about what he experienced in Vietnam in a way to show how that war affected our troops.
Yet, the Allen campaign is calling it "child pornography." I find it impossible to see how anyone but a pedophile would misinterpret Webb's writing in such a fashion.
It also is useful to keep in mind that child molestation is rampant in the GOP.
http://www.armchairsubversive.com/
Kilo,
You wrote: “Your candidate brought his books and his Christianity to the forum guys, not me. Rant away and please keep linking me. The last time you linked me I received 2 whole visits.”
And, you, sir, brought your grade-school-like taunting to SLANTblog. I most certainly didn’t seek you out. In my memory I have mentioned you/your blog twice, in both cases after you attacked me.
In general, as you know, I have stayed away from the sissified bickering and attacks on bloggers that you and other Team bloggers relish. As well, I’ve steered an independent course in my support of Webb. SLANTblog has not been a part of the cacophony over Allen’s racist talk, and so forth.
So, the likeliest reason for you to ridicule my words and cartoons is that you worry that they are effective. Unlike your puffed up style, I’m not preaching to the choir. Most of my presentations are designed to persuade an undecided voter.
That’s a far cry from slinging mud to grandstand for a clique of bloggers on a Team of wannabe Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs.
You wrote: “BTW- Knuckle Dragger is considered a racial slur by many people.”
As with your apparent inability to know the difference between literature and reality -- with your reaction to Webb’s novels -- it seems you have taken the facetious Geico television commercials featuring offended cavemen as reality.
However, if that term is actually a racially-tinged slur of some sort where you live, I suppose there’s some reason why.
Once again, I’m glad I live in Richmond.
Finally, after this comment I plan to have nothing more to say to you, or about you.
Note: One comment from Kilo, of the blog Spark It Up, has been deleted, as will all of his subsequent comments at SLANTblog.
Kilo is the second rightwing knucklehead to be banished from this comments section; the first was Skeptical Observor [sic]. As both of them are free to write whatever they like on their own blogs, anyone who cares to read their views should look there.
All of the quotes in the Allen press release are actual quotes from Jim Webb's writings. I checked out "Lost Soldiers" at the library to verify the pedophilic/incest quote. That isn't the only gratuitous bit in the book either.
If Mr. Webb is not ashamed of what he writes why the big fuss?
f mcdonald,
So, in your view, anyone who has written about subjects that upset/disturb your sense of what is a proper subject for literature to focus upon is unqualified to be elected to public office?
Who do you think you’re fooling with that Dark Age propaganda?
Here's what Kilo and the rest of the crowd are not going to quote...
"Allen was also asked about passages in his sister Jennifer Allen's book, "Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach's Daughter," in which Allen is described as a violent bully toward his siblings.
"It was a fairly rough and rowdy family ... but that book is a novel and fiction," he said. "People have asked my sister and she said it was a novelization."
So Webb's book is the truth while his sister's book is fiction? Textbook definition of a hypocrite.
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