CNN Headline: Lynn Cheney novel churns controversy in Senate race

Emphasis added.

Jim Webb's novel is mentioned briefly towards the end.

Lynn Cheney's novel causes controversy in Senate race.

Who'd have thought this could have been so easily turned against a nonpolitician not running in the race at all?

Well played, CNN. Very well played.

The other cute thing is that the article quotes Webb and other Democrats insisting the book features "graphic" scenes of lesbian sex, and that Cheney denies this.

Gee, I guess it's an open controversy -- he said, she said.

Except it's not. If the passages were graphic, CNN would quote them and settle the dispute. But they're not, so they don't, leaving it up to readers to guess at.

I've read the supposedly "graphic" passages quoted, and they're not graphic. They're Harlequin-type melodramatic silliness, but I didn't see anything "graphic."

As Slublog says, I hate the media.

I Question The Pattern: It always seems to go the same way.

1) The liberals cry foul over something absurd.

2) They then use this as a justification to push something nasty they would have pushed anyway. (If no immediate source of fake outrage is available, they claim they had to do this to "get tough" and because of the now 18 year old Willie Horton non-scandal.)

3) The media goes after the story like gangbusters, sparing the Democrats of the inevitable loss of favorability rating caused by going nastily negative. So it's a win-win for the Democrats-- they get the benefits of negative campaigning, as it's the media, not them, most responsible for it, and none of the drawbacks.

I notice that Jim Webb's novel Lost Penis In Boy's Mouth did not becomne a media issue until the George Allen campaign took the risky step of making it an issue through a press release. Blogs like Right Wing News had it for a while, but the media refused to bite.

Notice how quickly, however, the media is willing to run with dirty laundry pushed to them from the left.

posted by Ace at 04:15 PM

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