From America's First Black President to Second Black President (Part 2 of 3)

Justin Washington, the Blogger ^ | 01/08/2010 | Justin Washington

[wayne_shrugged]

By the time it was ready for the 2004 presidential election, the Democrats’ “every man’s” presidential candidate, John Forbes Kerry (aka “Lurch”) was not only Bush’s distant cousin but also his challenger for the White House. (Whoever said inbreeding doesn’t result in odd genetic mutations?) Lurch’s biggest claim to fame is that as an ambitious, young man, he served in Viet Nam for several months then spent the rest of his life as a professional politian — sort of like a ward of the state only with a nicer title and better perks.

He was also the only known Viet Nam vet on record to have taken a movie camera with him into combat to record his heroics while on his tour of duty, footage of which would later come in handy for future political campaigns. During his service, he received two purple hearts for injuries sustained in combat, the validity of which was later called into question by fellow Viet Nam vets who were called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” during the presidential campaign. This group was so effective in changing public opinion that the term “swiftboating” became a part of the English lexicon; the anti-Kerry crowd used the term to describe getting the truth out about a political opponent thus crippling his chances of being elected while the pro-Kerry crowd — much to their chagrin – used the term in the exactly the same way.

After he returned to the US, Lurch ran for senator from Taxachusetts, riding on a tidal wave of anti-war sentiment. Kerry went so far as flamboyantly flipping his war medals over the fence of the White House with dramatic flourish to protest the war and then appeared with ”Hanoi” Jane Fonda at an anti-war demonstration in 1970. (This is before her Academy Award-Winning performance in Klute in 1971 in which she played a prostitute, so I suppose one could say she was just doing research for her character.)

On NBC’s Meet The Press in 1971, asked whether he had personally committed atrocities in Vietnam, Kerry responded:

“There are all kinds of atrocities, and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed… Kerry shouldn’t have been so hard on himself if by “atrocities” he meant bad acting in staged war home movies.

All of this occurred before he became a “kept-man,” marrying Teresa Heinz, widow of the enormously wealthy Republican US Senator Henry John Heinz III, scion of the Heinz Ketchup fortune. (Talk about adding salt to Mr. Heinz’s wounds…) If Ms. Heinz had wanted a “trophy husband,” one wonders if there were not someone more suitable and lighter on his feet than Lurch.

In summary, the only amusement to be had during this election cycle was watching Madame Ketchup hit the sauce before hitting the campaign trail. Notwithstanding (but perhaps because of) this and the sideshow created by Lurch windsurfing in Spandex pants and failing to appear adequately manly in catching a football and appearing in strange bunny suits, Bush won by a wide margin which did not much please the mainstream media who liked to describe the voters as not being sophisticated or nuanced enough to have voted for a ”European, cultured” figure like Lurch who was ”for the war, before he was against it,” earning him the sobriquet of “presidential waffler” or “flip-flopper.”

Meanwhile, after Gore’s ignominious defeat in 2000, Gore disappeared for a welcomed rest (at least it was for the American public). Since nothing good lasts forever, Gore reappeared like the political version of Jason returning from the dead in the latest sequel to “Friday the 13th.” This time he had resurrected himself as the High Priestess of the Religion of Man-Made Global Warming and in short order went on to accept an Oscar for best ”documentary” called “Inconvenient Truth” in which he “starred.” ”Inconvenient Truth” was in fact conveniently not the truth as we were to learn in late 2009, when the academic center for the collection of all the “global warming” drivel upon which the hype was based was hacked and emails released that showed that the scientists involved were more political operatives than they were real scientists.

This decade certainly continued to advance with amusing, sometimes ironic consequences…