The George Allen/Jim Webb campaign has reached a shocking denouement. A contender for being the most pathetic and dispiriting exercise in Democracy of the past fifty years, it clinched the title with yesterday’s revelation regarding some of the saucier bits in James Webb’s fiction.

For those of you not in the know and who enjoy the fact that this blog has family-friendly content, this might be a good time to check out what’s going on over at the Corner or with the Hedgehog. What follows is not for the faint of heart.

In one of his past novels, James Webb wrote the following passage:

A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s penis in his mouth.

At the risk of sounding like a Philistine who lacks the capacity to appreciate fine literature, Ick!

The Philistine charge reminds me of a little tale from my past when I was labeled just that. Remember what I said about those who didn’t like disquieting content? If you’re still here and not sure if you made the right decision, definitely skip the next few paragraphs. I’m serious – you’ve been warned.

A little over a decade ago, I had a work colleague who fancied himself quite the sophisticate. He told us about a friend of his who was an “artist.” The friend made little cartoon images that resembled Dick Tracy figures.

But it wasn’t the images themselves that made the man a true artiste. It was his choice of medium. All of these “paintings” were lovingly crafted by the artist employing exclusively his own feces and semen.

When the colleague told us, his co-workers, about this, we all thought it was the grossest thing we had ever heard. He wanted a dialogue on why this fellow’s art was somehow edifying, but none was forthcoming. Normal people didn’t need a dialogue to decide whether or not this was “Art” or in any way a healthy enterprise. The colleague quickly dismissed us as Philistines.

YOU STILL WITH ME? Good, I guess. My point is that most people will hear about what James Webb wrote and react, “What a freak!” There is no way that he can unring this bell. There is no way that he can talk about how this was just something he witnessed while a reporter in Bangkok and have the Virginia voters shrug and say, “Oh. Then it’s perfectly normal and acceptable.”

I know this isn’t a unanimous sentiment in the blogosphere. Allah thinks Webb effectively countered the story with this radio appearance where he offered the explanation that he was just reporting something really weird that he had once witnessed and offered up a spirited defense of “serious literature” of the sort that he putatively authors.

That won’t fly. I get the sense that the electorate is getting a little tired of its elected officials being a tad, shall we say, eccentric. With the widespread dissemination of this passage, Webb now has both feet planted in the eccentrics’ camp in the electorate’s eye. And there’s nothing he can do to change it.

Not that he won’t try. This is where the little dose of Schadenfreude comes in. In his radio appearance, Webb at one point inveighed, “This is a classic example of the way this campaign has worked. It’s just smear after smear.” Given the hideously ugly nature of the Webb campaign, Webb makes an unlikely 11th hour convert to the Marquis de Queensbury rules of campaigning.

And what does this say of Allen? Well, he’s the last man standing in the most idiotic Senate campaign in American history. In a campaign filled with moronic stunts and imbecilic tactics, he found the decisive one.

Nevertheless, I must admit to some relief that Virginia is now off the board and in the win column. That relief is only eclipsed by my disappointment that Bob Casey, Jr. is likely illiterate.

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