the Scott Stein


There are lots of Scott Steins out there, but this is the Scott Stein, the one you’re looking for

Novel Stupidity
Posted on Monday October 30, 2006 at 9:33am.
As if there weren't reason enough to be sickened by both major political parties, we have George Allen, a Republican from Virginia, and Jim Webb, his Democratic challenger. The stupidity of the Allen-Webb Senate race has escalated in recent days beyond the merely stupid. Beyond even the supremely stupid. It now officially qualifies as astronomically moronic.

During the campaign, Allen was accused of having said "nigger" a couple of decades ago, or something.

Then "Allen's campaign accused Webb, a former Navy secretary of 'demeaning women' and 'dehumanizing women, men and even children' through his fiction writings." Yes, a novel is being used as evidence against the character of the politician who wrote it.

In response, "[t]he Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out a news release listing sexual passages in books by [Lynne] Cheney and other GOP conservatives, including Dick Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich [...] The DSCC said Cheney's books featured brothels and attempted rape."

The good news is that each side can say that the other side started it. Just like five-year-olds.


Source: CNN. If you read the article, you'll see that, instead of drawing a clear distinction between the demands of a work of fiction and the views of its writer, Webb takes the road we'd expect a politician to take.

Note: There should be a comma after "Navy secretary" in the CNN quote in paragraph two above. Just saying.