CNN Ambush Interview with Lynne Cheney

The big political news today is the "unusual" imagination of Senate Dem candidate James Webb and material in his novels that smack of pedophilia, denigration of women, and all kinds of other unfamily friendly stuff. It's not exactly the kind of material that most families would want their children to be exposed to, and anyone who would write that stuff might not be someone you want representing you in the Senate. The details are here.

The DNC is in full scramble crisis mode as these revelations about Webb could serve to act as the Dems own Foleygate scandal, with Jim Webb's warped imagination implying a similar attitude in other Dem candidates. Just as Foleygate caused GOP fortunes nationwide to take a hit, there's a potential of Webb's fantasies doing the same to the Dems.

So how do they counter Webb's problem? As is usually the case with Dems, they try to find Republicans who have done something similar enough that they can make the case that what their guy did was really no big deal. Of course, it's usually up to the media to do that for them.

Enter CNN. Lynne Cheney, wife of the Vice President, is on the road promoting a new children's book entitled The 50 States. Mrs. Cheney has written other books in the past, including novels with adult themes, but nothing as prurient or weird as Webb's. Today Cheney was scheduled to talk about her new book with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Instead of dealing with Cheney's children's book, Wolfie decided to try and drag Cheney into the Webb mess by making comparisons between a previous novel of hers and Webb's bizarre stuff. Cheney would have none of it.

Hugh Hewitt has posted some of the transcript of the interview in which Blitzer is clearly trying to draw some type of moral equivalence between Cheney's novel and passages from Webb's books that can't even be read on the air without risking an FCC fine. From the transcript, it looks like it got pretty testy.

Wolfie met his match, though, because Cheney is no shrinking violet. She's not running for anything, nor does she have to explain her past writings to the voters of the country. She left it like this:

LC: Wolf, Wolf, could we talk about a children's book for a minute?

WB: We can talk about the children's book. But I just wanted to...

LC: I think our segment is like 15 minutes long, and we've now done ten minutes, so...

WB: I just wanted to clarify what's in the news today, give you a...

LC: Sex, lies and distortion. That's what it is.

WB: This is an opportunity for you to explain on these sensitive issues.

LC: Wolf, I have nothing to explain. Jim Webb has a lot to explain.

Game, set and match to Cheney.

No one should be surprised the CNN would try and carry the water for the DNC, but this is a cheap shot even by their extremely low standards. Despite Wolfie's best effort, this is not going to take the edge off the Webb controversy as hoped by CNN and the DNC.

And one more thing - if a Republican had written the things that Webb wrote, do you think CNN would be searching for a favorable comparison? No. They'd be dissecting every word he wrote for any sign of sins real or perceived that could be used against him.