Given that Drudge is currently splashing the details of some bizarre, sexually explicit passages from Jim Webb's books on his site, the first line of this big profile of Webb in today's Washington Post is timely, but probably not helpful: "James Webb will tell you that he is first a writer, with several best-selling novels to his name." Oy.

This race is extremely close right now, and with only eleven days left the story of Webb's past writings is probably going to put him on the defensive and and chew up valuable time as he tries to explain and/or justify his choice of words. The counter charge that it's a "smear" by the Allen campaign probably isn't going to hold much water with the public either, since Webb is being confronted with words written by his own hand.

It'll be interesting to see how the mainstream media handles this story - if they cover it at all - and how the notoriously prickly Webb responds.

UPDATE: Since Glenn linked to my post and also to Radley Balko's comments, I wanted to second Glenn's follow up that I'm not in any way trying to cast aspersions on Webb or to equate this event with Foley. The guy was writing fiction, after all.

My only point is that as a purely political matter this brouhaha, fair or not, isn't likely to play well with Virginia voters and will probably take some explaining. In a very close race with only eleven days left, that will eat up valuable time and keep him, at least temporarily, from being on the offensive against Allen.