Loneliness, Lies & Videotape

"If Democrats think they are being clever by not falling into the Republican 'trap' of engaging in a debate on this issue, they have outthought themselves once again."

This Nancy Grace saga is starting to get a lot of attention, and San Francisco Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius is not exactly a fan:

"Nancy Grace was in vintage form on her national talk show on CNN's Headline News. Her guest was a soft-spoken 21-year-old mother named Melinda Duckett. Police in Florida suspect Duckett had something to do with the disappearance of her 2-year-old son, Trenton, on Aug. 27.

"But Grace wasn't satisfied with suspicion. She wanted to solve the case right there in front of a coast-to-coast television audience.

"'Why are you not telling us where you were?'' Grace demanded, pounding the table. 'Miss Duckett, you are not telling us for a reason. What is the reason?'

"As the woman stumbled over her words, trying to come up with answers, a small yellow text box appeared at the bottom of the screen: 'SINCE SHOW TAPING,' it read, 'BODY OF MELINDA DUCKETT FOUND AT GRANDPARENTS' HOME.'

"That's right. Grace was interviewing a dead woman. Just hours before the taped interview aired last Friday, Duckett committed suicide at her grandparents' house.

"Given the circumstances, Grace's grandstanding, badgering interview was bad enough. But the idea that her producers at CNN elected to go ahead and run the interview, even though they knew Duckett had killed herself, has veterans of television news shaking their heads."

George Allen and Jim Webb debated on "Meet the Press" yesterday, clashing over Iraq . Meanwhile, National Review scolds the Virginia senator for his latest tack:

"Now Allen has risked alienating conservative voters by launching his own silly attack on Webb.

"The Allen camp hit Webb, a former Navy secretary, for an article he wrote when he was an instructor at the Naval Academy in 1979. In the article, entitled 'Women Can't Fight,' Webb argued that his alma mater shouldn't admit women because they are unsuited to combat. At a press conference organized this week by the Allen campaign, five woman Naval Academy graduates said that Webb's colorfully argued opinion had been hurtful and harmful to them. Webb wrote in his article that the academy's sole dormitory was 'a horny woman's dream,' and that he hadn't met a single female midshipman he 'would trust to provide those men with combat leadership.'

"The graduates attributed sexual harassment at the academy to male midshipmen's being emboldened by Webb's views. What nonsense. In any case, Webb long ago disavowed this position. As his campaign pointed out in response to the Allen press conference, within a few years of writing his controversial article he supported integration of the military academies; and as Navy secretary he cracked down on sexual harassment in the service and significantly expanded the operational assignments available to women. The campaign also pointed out that eleven years ago, as governor of Virginia, George Allen opposed (correctly, in our view) integrating the all-male Virginia Military Institute, saying 'it wouldn't be the VMI that we've known for 154 years. You just don't treat women the way you treat fellow cadets.'