James Lileks: Slinging Slime or Citing Facts? ("Slimy? No. Saying your opponent dates a goat…")

The Newhouse News Service ^ | March 31, 2004 | James Lileks

[quidnunc]

Fractured as the bones of the body politic may be, we can all agree on one thing: This will be the longest, grimmest, harshest campaign in living memory. Right?

That's the conventional wisdom: It's going negative sooner than ever before, and the mud being slung is particularly disgusting. Blame, of course, the Republican Slime Machine, which will stop at nothing. Just look at how it attacked Richard Clarke — by sending out operatives to point out Clarke's contradictions. Heavens. Decent people everywhere took to their fainting couches over that one.

Slimy? No. Saying your opponent dates a goat and likes to set cats on fire is a slimy attack. Saying your opponent hangs around schoolyards in a trenchcoat passing out cotton candy — slime. Saying your opponent belonged to a group that took a vote on assassinating government officials — that's slime. No, wait a minute, that's truth. John Kerry belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a proposal to kill some senators was discussed and voted down at a VVAW meeting in Kansas City, Mo., in 1971. Granted, Kerry says he quit the group just before that meeting — but ask yourself whether such a subject ever comes up in your social circle. Perhaps your book club regularly turns to the question of which high government official you plan to kill, but most people don't travel in such, ah, motivated company.

-snip-

[babble-on]

no one screeds like Lileks. He is the best.

[ravingnutter]

Granted, Kerry says he quit the group just before that meeting

Nope...he attended the meeting AND was representing VVAW as late as 1973, THEN has the nerve to hire Scott Camil to work on his campaign.

Two witnesses have placed John Kerry at a Kansas City meeting

Kerry Continued to Represent the VVAW after November 1971

John Kerry Watching Nixon on Television

John Kerry, a Vietnam vet and head of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, watches as President Nixon announces an agreement on a cease fire in Vietnam. Kerry, who lost to Republican Paul Cronin (R-Mass) in the November general elections said, "my initial reaction is thank God that the prisoners are coming home and that we at least have stopped American participation in the war."

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Date Photographed: January 24, 1973

Location Information: Lowell, Massachusetts, USA

Kerry camp hiring 'assassin'? (Man who plotted murder of congressmen offered job)

[hunter112]

Is it just me, or do those thirty years ago Kerry pictures make him look like that British guy on "The Jeffersons"?

[HenryLeeII]

Saying your opponent hangs around schoolyards in a trenchcoat passing out cotton candy — slime.

Unless your opponent is named Kennedy or Clinton - then its probably true!

[JeeperFreeper]

Great find. He hit the nail on the head as well. The mainstream media elite can no longer hide the conservative light under a bushel basket of selective ediiting. Cable, satellites and the internet have let the facts out. Bit by bit, step by step, the conservative voice is heard and growing. (P.S.: JimRob should take a bow now for his efforts.)

[BenLurkin]

Truth is the enemy of the left.

Like garlic and vampires.

[beckett]

You gotta love this guy. In a way he is even a better writer than Steyn, and that is really saying something.

[muawiyah]

Hey, the only guys saying Kerry voted against the assassination program are his own campaign staff.

So far no one has come forward with any evidence that he voted "no"!

Absent such evidence, this guy shouldn't be allowed on Capitol Hill to say nothing of the floor of the Senate.

And what's he running for? ~ President ~ the Dems are certainly headed for the big dumper of history this time.