This little piece is by someone who not only takes John Kerry’s side, but thinks he really may have had a point in the first place. Maybe it wasn’t a blooper.
Troops With No Choice; An Opinion Piece From Air America on John Kerry’s Comments about Education and Serving in the Military; By JACKIE GUERRA [excerpt]
Serving our country in the military is a great service, one which we all admire and revere, but it’s more than that. It’s also a job.
And it’s a job that many Americans sign up for not only out of a sense of patriotic duty, but also because it often seems the best of few options.
At high schools like these across the country, inner-city and rural students, often from communities of color but almost always poor, do not have many options in George Bush’s America.
The Boston Globe, Kerry’s best buddies, didn’t even go as far as that; they characterized his efforts as dumb. This is the newspaper that helped Kerry finesse his promise to release his full military service records by letting one of their reporters look at them. The report on them was very carefully hedged; it made no mention, for example, of why his honorable discharge was granted by a review panel during the Carter administration, or whether his original discharge, which should have taken place years earlier, may not have been an honorable one, or whether he needed replacement medals in 1985 because he had been stripped of them.
Kerry is sort of a hothouse flower. He grew and bloomed in the controlled environment of Massachusetts. Kerry may thrive in a micro-climate designed to maintain his ideal growing conditions, but not in the harsh world outside; this was despite the efforts of the friendly national media to shelter him. The real mistake was when the Democrats decided to nominate him.
One can, for the sake of argument, take Kerry’s explanation (about Bush’s admin. being “stuck” in Iraq) at face value. If one does, what remains is a spectacularly stupid thing to have said.
Mr K might have grown up in a “controlled” environment but having served in war in Nam, it is plain dumb to say he was sheltered from reality! As for the Dems making a m istake in nominating him: perhaps. But then the GOP got a guy in place that is now approved by under 40% of the nation and a president who is going to be in the history books as either the worst president the nation has had or for sure a competitor for this spot.
This whole meme was brought up by Rangel a few years ago when he claimed blacks were over-represented in combat positions. It quickly came to light that blacks were in fact UNDER-represented in combat positions:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=465
======
I’d love to see Kerry’s records, because what we currently know about the situation doesn’t fit together. Something is missing.
======
Funny Kerry Story: Apparently inbetween wives Kerry had a date with a reasonably well-known actress whose name escape me. After dinner he took her back to his place and down to his basement where he had a couch and projector set up. He then started playing his vietnam footage over and over. There was not a 2nd date.
The date was with Dana Delaney; she starred in China Beach. I never saw an episode, but it got fairly good reviews; set in Vietnam, it was about nurses at a base there.
I suspect none of us would like to be remembered for the stupidest of our first (and only) dates. Still, his obsession with himself, with Vietnam seem wrapped up in that evening and explains those movies in which he “starred” in Vietnam.
Nate Zuckerman: …a president who is going to be in the history books as either the worst president the nation has had or for sure a competitor for this spot.
Sorry Nate, Jimmah locked that one up long ago.
I suspect that with the perspective of time Americans will look more favorably on W than many of us do now. We could have done a lot worse.
I suspect that with the perspective of time Americans will look more favorably on W than many of us do now. We could have done a lot worse.
Like The Ape Baboon of the Prairie, perhaps?