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BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Kerry Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot



Thursday, November 02, 2006  

Kerry Opens Mouth, Inserts Foot


As we enter the homestretch (just one week to go, mercifully) towards an election that every indicator says will be an historic Democratic victory, and the Republicans are crippled by Bush's horrible approval rating, general discontent over the quagmire in Iraq, and endless Republican financial and sex scandals, John Kerry mistates something in a speech that gives the right wing and mainstream media something to obsess over. Kerry's sin, as reported by ABC News: Kerry said:
"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Kerry's office has released the following as what they claim are the actually lines prepared for the delivery of the Angelides speech:

"It's great to be here with college students. I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."
Kerry was trying to make a joke against Bush, and by leaving off a few words it sounds like he made a joke about our armed forces being full of people who slacked off in school and had to join the military since they couldn't afford college or get a real job. The right wing media and Republicans of course leapt all over this one, since they make a living being pro-war and pro-military (at least publicly, not so much when it comes to actual veterans benefits and such) and they've been dying for anything to change the subject from their own run of unpopularity.

I don't know if Kerry really meant to joke against Bush and screwed it up that badly, or if he meant what he said. What I find amusing is the elephant in the living room, which is that what Kerry said is both true, and conventional wisdom. Of course the US military recruits heavily from poor and rural areas, and of course kids who don't have good job prospects or college options join up. This is news to exactly no one, but politicans in the US have to perpetually honor soldiers and veterans (with words, if not actions) and dance around the reality of who actually joins the military, and how often boot camps are full of guys who had the choice of army or jail, guys who couldn't get into college, guys fleeing bad home lives or pregnant girlfriends, etc. It's great that people have that option, and the military is an improvement in life for lots of young people in the US, but it's not like the experience is fun. You spend years living in a sort of drab green prison with little personal freedom, sleeping when you're told, rising when you're ordered, working at whatever shit job they order you to work on, and being paid horribly for the privilege. Yeah, four or six years in the Army saves you a decent nest egg, even at the slave wages the job earns, but that's only because soldiers have almost all of their living expenses covered, and they're so seldom free that they never get to spend any of their money.

Meeting enlistment goals has become especially difficult since Bush's Iraq war began, and military service became deadly, which is why recruit requirements have been steadily lowered, recruiting efforts have intensified, "stop/loss" rules have been changed to prevent soldiers from quitting when their tours are up, and so on. The fact that a shitstorm is whipped up when a US Senator and near President (and decorated veteran) like John Kerry even broadly hints at any of this reality is quite an indictment of the mentality of the US media and the eagerness of the current Republican power structure to use any personal issue for political gain.

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Comments:

Since this was covered on both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, I think it actually made the Republicans who are criticising Kerry look far worse than Kerry himself.

Whether he actually meant it as stated, or if it was a mistake, it seems to be acurate anyway. But if you do take it at face value, it seems to be every bit as much a shot at the military lowering their standards to "anyone with a pulse (so long as they aren't gay)", which is still a result of Bush's clusterfuck in Iraq. It really is pretty sad that this is what the Republicans have to beat to death on the verge of the election -especially so since it seems that nearly everyone in Bush's inner circle has either been convicted of, or is awaiting trial for, some horrendous crime that is very real, not just a random sentence spoken at a random college.

My favorite part of the whole thing was the part where the Republican (press secretary? I think) was trying to say that the sentence "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." couldn't make sense if the word "us" was added to it. A child of three can see that that it makes perfect sense if you put "us" between "get" and "stuck", yet this guy wasn't able to wrap his brain around the complexity of the whole concept.

It is sad to think that roughly 50% of about 40% of the registered voters in the US actually voted for these people.


 

Come on. Kerry deserves some heat for this. What a stupid thing to say by someone who is used to being in the spotlight.


 

Give me a break. To anyone with half a brain, that prescripted comment thing looks and sounds totally bogus.

This is why the Dems didn't win in 2004, should have picked Edwards.


 

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