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arymann
PO3
Joined: 24 Aug 2004
Posts: 269
Location: GA
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 Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 11:38 pm Post subject: How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man |
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Frank Rich of NY Times wrote this article, which is all-in-all pro Kerry, but it has some great lines in it. And, of course, the Swifties are the bad guys!
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/arts/05RICH.html
(login: dardardar pw: dardardar)
Excerpt:
| Quote: | . . .But there was still this Vietnam problem. One guy went there, one may have gone AWOL. Enter Karen Hughes. Having helped fictionalize Mr. Bush's wartime years, she now resurfaced to undermine Mr. Kerry's, using her April book tour (for her memoir "Ten Minutes From Normal") to introduce the rhetorical insinuations of mendacity that would surface in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth assault four months later.
The rest is the rewriting of history. Democrats are shocked that the Republicans have gotten away with it to the extent they have. After all, John O'Neill, the ringleader of the Swifties, didn't serve "with" Mr. Kerry anywhere except on "The Dick Cavett Show." Other members of this truth squad include a doctor who claims to have treated Mr. Kerry's wounds even though his name isn't on a single relevant document and a guy who has gone so far as to accuse Jim Rassmann, whom Mr. Kerry saved from certain death, of being a liar. How could such obvious clowns fool so many? It must be Karl Rove's fault, or Fox's, or a lack of diligence from the non-Fox press.
To some extent, this is true. The connections between the Swifties and the Bushies would be obvious even if the current onslaught didn't mimic the 2000 Bush attack on John McCain, or even if each day didn't bring the revelation of overlapping personnel. When Marc Racicot, the Bush-Cheney chairman, says (dishonestly) that Mr. Kerry has called American troops "universally responsible" for Abu Ghraib, his message sounds coordinated with the Swifties' claim (equally dishonest) that Mr. Kerry once held American troops universally responsible for the atrocities committed in Vietnam.
By turning spurious, unchecked smears into a mediathon, Fox has given priceless nonstop hype to commercials that otherwise would have been seen only in seven small to medium markets, where the total buy of airtime amounted to a scant $500,000. Though the major newspapers, including this one, did vet and challenge the Swifties' claims, aggressive reporting on TV was rare.
But Mr. Kerry, having joined the macho game with Mr. Bush on the president's own cheesy terms, is hardly innocent in his own diminishment. From the get-go he's tried to match his opponent in stupid male tricks. If Mr. Bush clears brush in Crawford, then Mr. Kerry rides a Harley-Davidson onto Jay Leno's set. When the Democrat asks "Who among us does not love Nascar?" and lets reporters follow him around on a "day off" when his errands include buying a jock strap, he is asking to be ridiculed as an "International Man of Mystery." In the new issue of GQ, you can witness him having a beer (alcoholic) with a reporter as he confesses to a modicum of lust for Charlize Theron and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Presumably the only reason he excluded the demographically desirable Halle Berry is that her Catwoman outfit too closely resembles his own costume for windsurfing.
The flaw in Mr. Kerry is not, as Washington wisdom has it, that he asked for trouble from the Swifties by bringing up Vietnam in the first place. Both his Vietnam service and Vietnam itself are entirely relevant to a campaign set against an unpopular and ineptly executed war in Iraq that was spawned by the executive branch in similarly cloudy circumstances. But having brought Vietnam up against the backdrop of our 2004 war, Mr. Kerry has nothing to say about it except that his service proves he's more manly than Mr. Bush. Well, nearly anyone is more manly than a president who didn't have the guts to visit with the 9/11 commission unaccompanied by a chaperone.
It's Mr. Kerry's behavior now, not what he did 35 years ago, that has prevented his manliness from trumping the president's. Posing against a macho landscape like the Grand Canyon, he says that he would have given Mr. Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq even if he knew then what we know now. The setting may be the Old West, but the words do sound as if they've been translated from the French. His attempt to do nuance, as Mr. Bush would put it, makes him sound as if he buys the message the Republicans hammered in last week: the road from 9/11 led inevitably into Iraq.
The truth is that Mr. Kerry was a man's man not just when he volunteered to fight in a losing war but when he came home and forthrightly fought against it, on grounds that history has upheld. Unless he's man enough to stand up for that past, he's doomed to keep competing with Mr. Bush to see who can best play an action figure on TV. Mr. Kerry doesn't seem to understand that it takes a certain kind of talent to play dress-up and deliver lines like "Bring it on." In that race, it's not necessarily the best man but the best actor who will win. |
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neverforget
Vice Admiral
Joined: 18 Jul 2004
Posts: 875
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| Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 11:57 pm Post subject: |
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| This guy is so full of it even the whites of his eyes have turned brown. He is an entertainment critic attempting to be a political genius. He failed...at both. |
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rparrott21
Master Chief Petty Officer
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 760
Location: Mckinney, Texas
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| Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 12:01 am Post subject: |
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| Time to fold up the tent, go home and let the real men work..P.S. don't forget your medals...the one's you didn't throw over the fence... |
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Nomorelies
Vice Admiral
Joined: 11 Aug 2004
Posts: 977
Location: Texas
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| Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 12:30 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The truth is that Mr. Kerry was a man's man not just when he volunteered to fight in a losing war but when he came home and forthrightly fought against it, on grounds that history has upheld. Unless he's man enough to stand up for that past, he's doomed to keep competing with Mr. Bush to see who can best play an action figure on TV. Mr. Kerry doesn't seem to understand that it takes a certain kind of talent to play dress-up and deliver lines like "Bring it on." In that race, it's not necessarily the best man but the best actor who will win. |
John Kerry is not Clint Eastwood. He is not John Wayne. He is not Ronald Reagan and he sure ain't George Bush.
When you listen to Kerry think Shakespeare! The perfect line for Kerry?
Et tu brute
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