The blurt can hurt
Due to attend the funeral of someone who was killed in Iraq, Donald Sensing writes "In about 30 minutes I wll leave to attend the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Buerstetta, killed in action in Iraq two weekends ago. ... High school graduate. College student. US Marine. Iraq. ... I dare you, Senator Kerry, to come to Lance Cpl. Buerstetta’s funeral and tell that to his parents. Tell them that their son, high school graduate, college student, was just too uneducated and too stupid to avoid enlisting in an all-volunteer military. You tell them that, Senator, you inexecrable, miserable excuse of a public servant."
I guess the Rev Sensing is pretty exercised but I have to tell you that I've heard Senator Kerry's sentiments expressed before -- that of being too superior to join a perceived lower class organization like the military -- usually by individuals who think themselves so highly educated and enlightened they are committed to a classless society. The irony is lost to them; and one wonders whether the irony isn't lost to them in all respects. It's possible that most varieties of self-righteousness are really forms of snobbery in disguise. The problem with being a snob, of course, is that you have to be so demonstrably and unassailably superior that the pose comes off as a fact, not affectation. Nothing is as wet as a man who tries to walk on water and can't. The Senator needs to work on it a little more.
So here's version 2 ...Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how. I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy. If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the president and his failed team and a Republican majority in the Congress that has been willing to stamp -- rubberstamp policies that have done injury to our troops and to their families. My statement yesterday -- and the White House knows this full well -- was a botched joke about the president and the president's people, not about the troops.
Read the rest at the NYT site. I kept asking myself, what's wrong with Kerry's rebuttal? It's got all the elements: defiance, anger, finger-pointing, pathos. I especially liked this part not because I admired it, but because it was simply astounding. "These Republicans are afraid to stand up and debate a real veteran on this topic, and they're afraid to debate -- you know, they want to debate straw men because they're afraid to debate real men." What's wrong with it was indicated by Kerry's first questioner, who if he didn't wink at the audience, should have:
Q: Do you need to go to joke school?
A: Sure
Send in the clowns.
posted by wretchardthecat at 10/31/2006 04:28:00 PM
28 Comments:
The video clearly demonstrates why the voters re-elected President Bush. What a miserable man Kerry must be.
The Gift that keeps on giving.
If Boston Brahim John Forbes Kerry wore stripes,
-
would he still be a Horses Ass?
Kerry..dissing our troops
Kennedy...offering the Soviets help to undermine a US election
Murtha ... on foreign soil giving
Jane Fonda comfort to the enemy
Rangel ... calls VP sonofabitch
Burger ..stealing top secret material and destroying it
Clinton ..selling secrets to Chinese for campaign donations
These are treacherous people. They should be tried and convicted and hanged by the neck until dead ..if found guilty.
They are at minimum subverting America and aiding our enemies..hell they are the enemy.
The list could go down the line of the Democratic Party Leadership...Lenin's useful idiots.
Democrats insult Americans and yet Republicans are behind in the polls… How screwed up is the Republican party when they are behind fools like Kerry in the Polls?
In which I explain who is the Straw Man, the Hollow Man, and why T.S. Elliot had John Keryy's number from the git go.
Doug said... 10/31/2006 05:58:33 PM
If Boston Brahim John Forbes Kerry wore stripes,
-
would he still be a Horses Ass?
Not necessarily a Horses Ass, I would see him as wearing a prison uniform, which would be appropriate for this despicable parody of a human being!
"Brahmin"
Sorry, John ("I'll Never apologize!" Forbes.
"Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how."
That qualification speaks volumes.
"If anyone thinks that a veteran, someone like me, who's been fighting my entire career to provide for veterans ... to help honor what their service is ... -- John Kerry, October 31, 2006
"...they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, ( aw hell, you know it by heart by now ) -- John Kerry, April 23, 1971.
-----oo-----
"This administration has given us a Katrina foreign policy: mistake upon mistake upon mistake; unwilling to give our troops the armor that they need... -- John Kerry, October 31, 2006
"I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." -- John Kerry, March 2004
the bill Kerry opposed did contain $300 million requested by the Pentagon to buy best-grade body armor for all troops in Iraq, and also contained additional combat pay and health benefits for reservists called to active duty. -- Factcheck.org
-----oo-----
what a nosebleed. How can a guy with his money and his advantages, be so damn humorless..?
Kerry is a piece of that stuff that floats in the toilet bowl and needs to be flushed. The man is so full of himself that he can't simply say, "I'm sorry. I didn't intend what I said and for that I apologize." He campaigned in 2004 that the President refused to admit mistakes. Hmmm, maybe he was looking in the mirror. If he wasn't before, he's now a burnt piece of toast. He might hang onto to his Senate in MA, but he's ended any hope of the Presidency.
"I meant to say if they didn't study, they'd get stuck on Iraq in the
Global Geography Test."
GOP Sen. John McCain, like Kerry a decorated Vietnam veteran and a potential 2008 rival, said while campaigning for Republican candidates in Indiana that "the suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat today."
Added House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., struggling to keep his party in control of Congress: "Our soldiers risk their lives in the face of grave dangers on the battlefield, and no one who chooses to courageously and selflessly defend our country can be considered 'uneducated.'"
White House vs. Kerry
When someone like that,Mr. Kerry was almost president you can tell that the American system of government is under tremendous pressure.
It has been pretty obvious to many people what he is but where did all those people come from who look up to him and voted for him. Do they all believe the rocks are millions of years old? Do they all believe in evolution? An animal is cleaner and has more morality than this guy. People are expressing an unnatural demeanor. It's wierd.
Sort of suits halloween. The October Halloween surprise for the Dems and by the Dems.
"By this time tomorrow night people won't remember what John Kerry said because the story line will move on and they're be talking about Iraq and how badly the war is going...”
McCurry's statement eloquently illustrates the conventional PR calculus. The audience has the IQ of a retarded dog and when we show them images of Fido Dog Food that's all they'll be able to think about. And he's probably right because that type of calculus springs from a long study of audience habits. What's the old saw, no one ever went broke underestimating the consumer's intelligence?
Stephen said...
"It was certainly ad man Rosser Reeves who described the process and progress of the depth interview as developed by James Vicary et. al. in the 1940s and 50s.
Unfairly exploited by Vance Packard in The Hidden Persuaders, the depth interview was developed as a response to generally poor sales of products built and marketed according to consumer responses to direct questions about what they wanted.
It turned out they either didn't really know, or they lied."
- Elephant Bar
Where Lurch Kerry practices his humor.
Neuroshrinkage
Geez Wretchard...
The problem is that even as the left displays their newest and best doggie grub...
The right is scooping up the resulting mess with Kerry's empty Can-O-Crap...
This will be fun...
Too bad times are serious, eh...
Tell me something:
Wouldn't you rather be 'stuck in Iraq' than 'stuck on stupid'...
doug,
I suppose it could have been a joke, but normally there's a little bell that rings inside of us that tells us to be extra clear when we make jokes about race, religion or other people's teenage daughters. Most of us know we are in shoal water and therefore when we mean well we normally set it up so there is no room for ambiguity. When quoting Joseph Conrad's "Nigger of the Narcissus" at an NAACP meeting one would take extra steps to convey that this was the title of a book of world literature so that nobody gets the wrong idea.
Public figures are usually sure-footed in loaded situations and Senator Kerry's slip-slide is probably why they call him "tone deaf". He ought to have realized, within a half second of his remark that he needed to add something to make it clear who his target was, whoever it was. It is conceivably true that in every speech before a Democratic crowd in California that all pejorative references are "in" references to George W. Bush. But the text needed clarification and Kerry had to provide it later because the original remarks were not clear in themselves. Mark Halperin is forced to defend Kerry on the basis of "I think that" Kerry meant it to be a joke. He may be right but Kerry didn't give his defenders very much to defend him with.
There is one other possibility. During the Vietnam War it was possible to sometimes get a deferment from the Draft by enrolling in college or being in graduate school. Not being able to get good grades meant losing this shield and an increased risk of being drafted and "stuck in Vietnam". This powerful association between the winners who could get a deferment and the hapless kids who were sent to Southeast Asia because they couldn't "make the grade" was certainly known to John Kerry. Whether it subconsciously worked itself into his speech is anybody's guess.
Okay, stop with the excuses for Lurch. This isn’t some isolated comment. It is a pattern this man has exhibited for over thirty years. I believe that while Kerry might have "winged it" in front of an audience mostly of young people, and that he didn't intentionally set out to insult the men and women of the United States military, what he said is what he truly in his heart believes. There was no joke intended despite his lame attempt to explain this away. Watch the video. You see a smile on his face as he is setting up the "joke"? Nope. What you see is a "father-figure" dispensing his time-honed wisdom to the younglings before him. He was counseling the young people to “hit the books and study hard” so that they wouldn’t end up in Iraq. That was what the intention of his words. He may not have intended to insult the troops and those of us that have lost family members in the line of duty, but that is what he did. Period. End of story. He needs to apologize to the military, and to the nation. His party needs to demand that he apologize. But given the neither has done so speaks volumes about their true character. The only thing you hear from Democrats is the worry that Kerry may have blown their chances in the mid-terms. Not one, I repeat, not one Democratic leader or candidate has stepped before the microphones and demanded that Mr. Kerry swallow his misdirected pride, admit his mistake, and apologize for slandering those that have volunteered to service in the military and for the insult to the families of fallen service personnel. The shame is now not only Kerry’s, it is now the Democratic Party’s as well. They deserve to go down in flames in the mid-terms along with Mr. Kerry's Presidential hopes.
The real joke is Kerry's idea of a joke. What he should have said is, "One plus one equals three, and if you believe that, Yale University will deconstruct a Degree like mine for you."
"Do they all believe the rocks are millions of years old? Do they all believe in evolution?"
I'm astounded there are still people who DON'T.
Victor Davis Hanson has a few brief and perceptive remarks. He finishes thus:
The Democrats should use this occasion to have an autopsy of Kerryism, or this strange new tony liberalism, that has turned noblisse oblige on its head. It used to be that millionaire FDRs and JFKs felt sympathy for those of the lower classes and wished to ensure that the hoi polloi had some shot at the American dream. But today's elite liberals-a Howard Dean, Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, George Soros, Ted Turner-love the high life and playact at being leftists simply because they are already insulated from the effects of their own nostrums that always come at someone poorer's expense while providing them some sort of psychological relief from guilt. Poor Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave-from bourbon, cigars, and poker to wind-surfing and L.L. Bean costume of the day says it all.
Once a prep school blowhard, ALWAYS a prep school blowhard.
So clearly and repeatedly demonstrated that one must wonder about the party/MSM sychophancy that surrounds and insulates him.
Wretchard,
"During the Vietnam War it was possible to sometimes get a deferment from the Draft by enrolling in college or being in graduate school."
Not "sometimes", it was automatic until 1972...if you were in college you were exempt, if you were in grad school you were exempt. Things changed with year group 1972, there was NO college deferment...PERIOD. If you were in grad school and kept your grades up, you kept your deferment.
How do I know? I was year group 1972 and on August 5, 1971 I received lottery number 6. I had both the draft and pre-induction physicals and just before Christmas 1971, I received my induction elegibility letter. On December 28, 1971, I joined the Marine Corps PLC Program; turns out that was one of the best days of my life.
Colleges back then would keep in almost anyone they let in so as to keep them away from the draft. Trick was getting in...there wasn't the prolferation of community colleges or expansive state college systems that we have today. Reserve and National Guard slots were another routine dodge, but they went to the sons of politicians, political party apparatchiks and mid-to-upper level government functionaries (this would include Klintoon42).
Warthog wrote: "It is dishonest to tag him with dissing the military in this instance. We're better than that. He is a jerk of infinite capacity but not (in this instance) dissing our troops."
It is not dishonest to say so if one sincerely thinks Kerry really feels the people in Iraq are there because they're not smart enough to stay out of the military.
Two possibilities: Kerry was misinterpreted: 0.1%
Kerry was correctly interpreted: 99.9%
Excellent one, Kerry's a tool...
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
admire dhimmidiots
hug a terrorist today
for they all just want peace
.
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