John Kerry, Teen Outcast

CBS News ^ | 04/06/04 | Franklin Foer

[bannie]

The crab apple didn't fall far from the tree.

[sevry]

The New York Times' David Halbfinger wrote last month, "[Kerry] may tailor his stands to an audience or even run away from past positions." By trying too hard to win audiences, he is said to project a phony persona.

I'd say to, Foer, that I guess Kerry was just misunderstood - is that it? Poor guy. Tough life. He wasn't the grasper. He wasn't conceited. He didn't imagine himself to be the reincarnation of JFK, then, or now (it's not as if previous Dem nominees have ever linked themselves to JFK - either). No, none of that. Oh, and he's a faithful Catholic, too, which got him into so . . much . . trouble. Yeaah.

And all this pointless Kerry-bashing is due to - what now? that the reporters all wear the same 'school-ties'?

It's just possible, Foer, that Kerry IS conceited, that he IS a typ. Dem pol, that he DOES lie, that he is NOT personally liked for all that and more, that he is NOT a faithful Catholic and would even be denied Communion in certain archdioceses, and that people who complain of his flip-flops are not doing so because they despise ambition, but because unlike the 'more mature' who seem to overlook anything and everything, they are offended by a man who would lie, who would say anything, at the moment, to get elected. Maybe all politicians sometimes do that. But not all politicians do so with such relish as JFK - Just for Kerry.

[Mike Fieschko]

This is such bunk. They didn't dislike him becuase he was a Catholic liberal, they disliked him because he is a congenital POS.

New England Protestant Republicans were a breed apart. Wonder what things would've been like for him if they knew his family was Jewish.

[secret garden]

Bump to read later.

[spodefly]

You'd have to be a total prick for your classmates to hold on to that thought for 40 years.

[TASMANIANRED]

No wonder the cretin is obcessed with money.

Next thing you know ole flip/flop will try to paint his childhood as the little match girl, just to show he's just folks.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Kerry's lack of wealth wasn't all that separated him from his classmates. As a child, Kerry had been deeply Catholic, serving as an altar boy and toying with joining the priesthood. At St. Paul's, it wasn't easy for Kerry to keep his faith. On Sunday mornings, he would take a taxi into Concord for Mass -- and then have to return to attend two mandatory Episcopal services at school. In other words, every week, he was forced to remind his classmates of his religious affiliation. And, given his classmates' attitudes toward Catholicism, Kerry would probably have preferred to keep his faith to himself. When Bobby Kennedy attended St. Paul's in 1939, his mother, Rose, pulled him from the school after only a month because she couldn't stomach its anti-Catholic ethos. While that attitude atrophied somewhat, it hadn't entirely disappeared by the late '50s. Barbiero told me, "There were jokes about Catholics. I had more than one classmate tell me that 'those people' had their own clubs and own societies, and they weren't part of our society."

Very interesting.
Does this explain Kerry's loathing of his own Catholicism?

[laconic]

How many of us had rich aunts that could pay our way through a swish private school like St. Paul's instead of attending public schools? This article is hokum.

[RightWhale]

He never passed the puck. Pretty bad.

[dennisw]

Very thorough treatment.

[FreedomSurge]

Why does this not surprise me?

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

What a horrible upbringing. Sounds like a visit to one of the antechambers of Hell. What kind of parents would put a kid through a horrible place like that?

[Vigilanteman]

You are right. When a jerk marries money, he simply becomes a rich jerk. I fear JFK is another head case like Al Gore. If he doesn't get what he feels he earned, there will be h*** to pay.

[RobbyS]

Brinkley's biography is hokum. Talking about kinning A___!

[mbraynard]

This is all irrelevant. I'm sure anyone of us has some people in our sub-18 days who could say rotten stuff about us. But short of a criminal record, just forget about it and focus on the today and what his issues are now and his record in the Senate, not his record at boarding school.

[Torie]

Fascinating piece. Of course, the upper class mid Atlantic WASP culture is now largely extinct. Instead, Jews and Catholics over time tend to become more and more WASP lite. Everybody is regressing to a mean. Hardly surprising.

[RobbyS]

What could they have been thinking? But I knew a (public) school principal who sernt his girls to a high-tomed school. They did just fine. He said the only thing they asked was that he rent a good car when he drove up to visit.

[laconic]

The part about the student buying the record store smells like horse manure; I don't believe it. Plus, what did someone like Kerry expect at a school where the average parent had a ton of money? If he wanted egalitarian education, he could have attended the local high school like the rest of us did,

[RobbyS]

We can see how attenuated their connection with the Catholic Church has become.

[Servant of the 9]

The defense of Kerry in the second half is pathetic.
I knew guys who went to almost all of the top prep schools during the same period, almost none of whom had an aristocratic background and many of whom were not wealthy.
They never had any trouble fitting in and being accepted. The reason John F. Kerry was not liked or accepted is that he is an ass.

So9