Topic: NewsBusters
An Oct. 28 NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd attacking the Washington Post for not including an example in one of Virginia Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb's novels in which a father greets his 4-year-old son by putting the boy's penis in his mouth, Shepherd claimed that by claiming that claiming that it was "not a sexual act," Webb was defending the practice, calling Webb "quick to defend arguable incest."
That is misleading; nowhere has Webb been quoted endorsing the practice. What Webb, in fact, defended is the inclusion of that incident in his book, not the incident itself. Yet, in a comment on the post, Shepherd adds:
Maybe in that culture it is not. But it says something that the first thing to spring to his mind in an interview is to DEFEND it rather than say, "Yeah, it's pretty sick, but that's part of their culture."
Mind you, this is apparently merely a passing mention in Webb's book -- neither Shepherd nor the CNSNews.com article he quoted offer any indication that it is anything more than that, let alone that Webb's book endorses or celebrates the practice.
This whole Webb fiction controversy -- shopped by the George Allen campaign and eagerly lapped up by Media Research Center arms such as NewsBusters and CNSNews.com -- appears to be yet another example of the depiction-equals-approval fallacy. Shepherd appears to believe that because Webb didn't condemn the act he depicted, he must therefore approve of it. Again, that's a logical fallacy for which he has no evidence.
Shepherd is susceptible to peddling such faulty logic; he did so in an August post claiming that because the Washington Post didn't explicitly condemn the acts of dumpster-diving it depicted in a article, it "glorifie[d]" them.
