Posted on 01/19/2004 10:47:52 AM PST by EggsAckley
KERRY APOLOGIZES FOR "DIAPERS" REMARK
(01/18/04)
U.S. Sen. John Kerry called U.S. Sen. John Edwards late Sunday night to apologize for suggesting Edwards might have been in diapers when he returned from Vietnam, aides to Edwards said.
While campaigning in Iowa Sunday, Kerry was asked how he differed from Edwards. Kerry touted his foreign policy experience and said that when he returned home after serving in Vietnam in 1969, "I don't even know if John Edwards was out of diapers."
Edwards responded Sunday evening before a stop in Mason City that drew an overflow crowd.
"I honor his service in Vietnam," Edwards said. "In 1969, I was sitting around the kitchen table with my parents trying to figure out how we would pay for college like so many Iowans do. ... And that is a difference between me and Senator Kerry."
Edwards attended Clemson University and then transferred to N.C. State when he could not get a football scholarship. Kerry attended prep schools and Yale University.
Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said Kerry called Edwards to apologize and that Edwards accepted. --John Wagner
Kerry looks every second of his sixty years, and clearly, Edwards doesn't look fifty. I just found that out today, and I was shocked. I really figured the guy for his late thirties, maybe forty or forty-one at most. Maybe Ketchup Boy didn't know Edwards was fifty, either. Certainly, he was trying to label Edwards as inexperienced because of his perceived youthful appearance.
It's crystal clear, though, he feels Edwards hot breath down his back. Kerry hopes to perform respectably in IA and NH, then win the big one in South Carolina, where he officially launched his campaign. He knows that if Edwards is out of single digits by the time of SC, he's got a harder slog there.
The senator searched phone books and the Internet and quizzed his cousins, but he was only able to learn fragments of family history. The story, it turns out, began in a small town in the Czech Republic that once was part of the Austrian empire. Birth records there show that Frederick A. Kerry was born as Fritz Kohn to Jewish parents, according to a genealogy specialist hired by the Globe. Kohn changed his name to Kerry around 1902 and emigrated to the United States in 1905, eventually moving to Boston.
In 1921, Frederick Kerry went to the Copley Plaza Hotel, entered a washroom, and shot himself in the head. It was front-page news. His filing in Probate Court listed him as practically broke. While Senator Kerry said he knew his grandfather had committed suicide, he said he knew no details until he was shown a copy of a 1921 article last week. ''How many times have I walked into that hotel ...'' said an emotional Kerry, his voice trailing off. He said it was the first time he had talked publicly about the suicide.
Kerry said he learned about 15 years ago that his grandmother was Jewish. That led to years of unsuccessful efforts to learn more about his grandfather's roots and his own. ''This is amazing; that is fascinating to me,'' Kerry said, in reference to the ancestral records. ''This is incredible stuff. I think it is more than interesting; it is a revelation.''
As Kerry runs for president, he is in many ways on a voyage of self-discovery. He said he had expected there would be intense interest in his life, going beyond the usual curiosity about his Boston Brahmin maternal roots in the Forbes and Winthrop families, two of New England's most prominent clans.
snip
Why are you asking me? What makes you think he didnt expect to be drafted? I didnt see that in the article.
However, as someone who was in college between 64 and 69, I remember that all you had to do was register in college and you automatically got a college deferment. They eliminated the grad school deferment around 68 or so.
I believe it was 1970 or 71 that the draft lottery began. Luckily I drew #331 out of 365. Not sure what Edwards number was but if it was anywhere near mine he would have known he wouldnt be drafted.
Yeah, and he even threw his medals across the Potomac!
Er, make that on the steps of the Capitol Building.
Er, make that somebody else's medals on the steps of the Capitol Building.
He might have taken the low road and said that Kerry was so much older that he needed an afternoon nappy.
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