politics

See Slime Run (But Try Not To Follow)

Even more strange twists and turns in the already strange Virginia Senate race.
October 30, 2006

At the end of last week, in George Allen’s attempt to force voters to consider explicit and bizarrely perverse excerpts from the novels of James Webb, his opponent in the Virginia Senate race, we had the perfect test case for timing the speed of its slither.

First, though, a clarification about the difference we see between this incident and the frenzy over macaca, or the newly discovered Jewishness of the cowboy boot-wearing senator, or the accusations that the slur “nigger” peppered his conversations throughout high school and college. Someone, probably a right-wing blogger, could make a convincing case that these, too, were just as slimy and disparaging to Allen’s person as broadcasting the strange Vietnamese pedophiliac tableau or ingenious fruit-cutting methods described in Webb’s book. (Don’t ask us, just have a look here for the explanation.)

But there would be two things wrong with drawing such an equivalency. First, the material for attacks on Allen came not from the Webb camp but from independent sources, namely journalists talking to people who had something to say. In this latest case, however, it was Allen’s people who were cynically cutting and pasting the excerpts from the books into press releases and sending them out. But a second, and even more critical distinction, is that the charges against Allen are based in reality, they actually happened or, at least, were claimed to have happened. This seems more than just a little different than using against an opponent the product of his own imagination (and Webb, for the record, says his books simply reflect the strange things he saw while in ‘Nam).

Late Thursday evening, Drudge posted the press release onto his Web site, alerting his readers that Allen’s campaign had finally “exposed his rival’s fiction writing,” whatever that means. It turns out, as a Washington Post article reported the next day, Allen’s aides had been trying for weeks to get other news organizations to write about Webb’s fiction. Drudge must have been their last choice, but it wasn’t a bad choice at all.

As soon as an item goes up on his site – regardless of the fact that Drudge himself admits that 20 percent of his reporting is wrong – it becomes controversy. And though covering the salacious details of such a slime tactic might be beneath the Times or the Post, they act as if covering the “controversy” over it rises to the level of a duty.

In her column on Sunday, Maureen Dowd worried that Allen may be able to hurt Webb if “he prints up all the steamy quotes on fliers and puts them on the windshields of Virginia churchgoers on Sunday.” But who needs to print up flyers when newspapers are happy to pick up the story from Drudge and run with it.

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By Friday, the Post, which has closely covered this race, began an article about the “controversy” by posing this nearly nonsensical question: “Should the author of a fictional work who runs for office be personally held to account for the scenes in his books?”

Further on, the piece offers this brilliant bit in order to balance out the notion, suggested by some, that if a writer describes a murder, for example, he might be a murderer: “Some people said Webb’s novels are works of imagination intended to be informative and provide entertainment, not statements of actions that Webb endorses.” You don’t say. Meanwhile, though taking a slightly disparaging tone about Allen’s smear tactics, the articles managed to put into readers’ minds the idea that there is in fact something weird about Webb’s writing. Sometimes this was done by leading with Allen’s characterization of the his opponent’s oeuvre as “lurid and inappropriate for a man seeking to serve in the Senate.” Elsewhere it was accomplished by quoting people who described the books as “Triple X” novels, and in another Post article on Saturday, two Virginia state senators said that Webb’s writings were “disrespectful and demeaning,” and “not suitable for children and, frankly, many adults.” Though most papers avoided reprinting the most off-putting excerpts, the articles found ways of including some details. Like the Times, which, in the process of providing the Webb camp’s rebuttal, made explicit the details in the initial press release: “Denny Todd, a spokeswoman for the Webb campaign, said that a scene in ‘Lost Soldiers’ that describes a father placing his naked son’s penis in his mouth involved a cultural expression of affection that Mr. Webb had witnessed as a journalist in Thailand.”

It’s obvious that by this morning, after a weekend of such coverage, Allen had achieved his goal of planting in the minds of at least some potential voters the sense that Webb is one sick puppy. The Post even helpfully reminded readers of the Foley scandal, tenuously connecting the activities of the real-life congressman with this fictionalized account of what is apparently a cultural practice.

There are two disturbing links in this chain of events. One is Drudge. When no one else would agree to post the unsavory excerpts and make a big deal of them, the Allen camp must have known all along that Drudge would bite. And the path from Drudge to the mainstream press, as we’ve seen, is well-trod. As a recent article on the ABC News Web site — which referred, absurdly, to Drudge as our generation’s Walter Cronkite — recently reported, “Republican operatives keep an open line to Drudge, often using him to attack their opponents … And then the mainstream media often picks it up.” Exhibit A is the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth allegations against John Kerry during the 2004 elections. Drudge publicized them regardless of their veracity and then the charges were duly reported on by the mainstream press.”

Drudge is harmful, but his reach and credibility only counts for something once the controversies surrounding his scoops get picked up by the big papers. And this is really the question we want to pose: Is it right for newspapers to ignore these affairs if their stench is in fact a manufactured one – a Karl Rove stink bomb, for example – and clearly not based in reality?

It’s a question without a clear answer. If people are talking about it then it’s de facto news. And most newspapers want to report about the chatter. But what if these papers decided to lead rather than follow? What if, for example, they decided to smash this piece of irrelevant information about Webb? In this instance, at least, it seems a no-brainer. But can we really imagine an editor being brave and maybe reckless enough to come to the principled conclusion that the fictional output of a man does not reflect on his character, and that therefore even though there’s a politician who wants to make an issue of it, his paper will not write even one story about the “controversy” so as not to further stoke the flames?

This would be leading. Not following, following, following. Something to think about.

Gal Beckerman is a former staff writer at CJR and a writer and editor for the New York Times Book Review.