« Breaking the Ice | Home | Autumn »
Enough Already With the Fake Webb Outrage, Hannity
By T Blogger | October 28, 2006
I began my adult political life as a Democrat. I cast my first vote in a presidential election at the age of eighteen. My vote went for John F. Kennedy. Over the years the radicalization of the Democratic party has driven me into the Republican fold, and I find myself transformed into a conservative Republican. I am quite comfortable being one. Lately, however, certain self-appointed spokesmen for Conservatism are really getting on my nerves.
The worst of these is Sean Hannity. I listen to his radio show at work — or to be more accurate: I have his radio talk show playing in the background as I sit at my computer and work. I often find myself muttering “Give it a rest, Hannity” after he has managed to construct five or six different ways to say the same thing (over and over and over again). His latest rant about a few passages from James Webb’s novels really irritates me. In fact it sickens me. What someone writes in a novel has absolutely nothing to do with his ability to serve in the Senate. If I lived in Virginia, I would certainly vote for Senator Allen. I thought the whole “macaca” kerfuffle was silly. but all this hand-wringing and fake shock at a few explicit sex scenes and characters using racial epithets is even sillier. Hannity’s embarrassing whining today made my skin crawl: “Who would even think such things?” he asked after reading a few passages from Webb’s novels, liberally substituting juvenile euphemisms for the “offensive” language. This conservative feels obliged to ask Mr. Hannity who elected him High Commissioner of the thought police? After all, hundreds of serious novelists have written much more salacious and otherwise controversial stuff than what Webb did. My God, it’s fiction!
The really sad thing about this silly squeamishness on the part of so-called conservative commentators is that it implies that conservatives are a bunch of prudes. We are not. I don’t think Webb should be in the senate, but that’s because he is an anti-Iraq war Democrat, not because of what he may or may not have written in some work of fiction. The citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia need to make their decision about who should represent them in the senate based on what the candidate is likely to do if elected. If I may be permitted to misquote James Carvell: “It’s the issues stupid!”.
©2006, Tom Weeks
Topics: Current Events, Good Stuff About Politics | No Comments »
