Posted on 07/20/2004 7:07:46 AM PDT by Melpomene
Sent by his American parents to a posh Swiss boarding school in the foothills of the Alps, an 11-year-old John F. Kerry did what most any other kid would do - he learned to curse in Italian.
``Spaccare la faccia, porco,'' Cam Kerry remembered his older brother saying, a phrase which, loosely translated, means ``Shove it in your face, pig.''
But John Kerry wasn't any normal kid.
Just a few years later, tucked in another high-brow boarding school - this one the exclusive St. Paul's in Concord, N.H., a teenage Kerry helped form a debating club and won a prize for a speech that probably raised the hackles of his classmates.
``Resolved: That the growth of spectator sports in the Western world in the last half century is an indication of the decline of Western civilization.''
And so, even then, the terribly diametrical lives of John Kerry were on full display.
An awkwardly tall but athletic hockey and lacrosse player, he was so competitive he was known as ``keep the puck Kerry.'' He was a descendant of Massachusetts ``royalty'' and old Brahmin money, but was shunned as one of the poor kids among the true elite.
The son of a lawyer and diplomat who would debate around the dinner table, Kerry took pains to emulate the speaking patterns of President John F. Kennedy. His classmates openly joked he would some day be just where he is today - within reach of the presidency.
Innumerable profilers have called Kerry rootless in his youth. Kerry disputes that, calling his upbringing ``normal'' and ``fun'' but acknowledging he had an unusual determination.
``Being determined and being clear about things early in life is counter to lots of people's place, as I've learned as I get older,'' Kerry told a profiler.
``But I have no regrets about it. I mean, I'm comfortable with it. So what if nobody loved you? I don't look backwards.''
Kerry grew up one of four children. His mother descended from the Brahmin Forbes family and from Gov. John Winthrop, who helped establish Boston in 1630 and first spoke of the ``city on a hill.'' His father traced his roots to Jews who fled to America from Austria and the Czech Republic.
Physically, Kerry's upbringing was rootless - he attended seven schools in America and Europe before high school. And, while the family didn't struggle by any means, their wealth wasn't as vast as is widely believed.
At the Institut Montana Zugerberg outside Zurich, St. Paul's and Yale University, Kerry stuck out as not being truly one of the ruling class because of his less noble upbringing and his Catholic faith in the largely Episcopalian world.
``John was never part of the Eastern elite, if you will, whatever that means,'' his longtime friend and Yale roommate David Thorne said recently. ``He was not in demeanor or otherwise the product of a rich family.''
But that slowly changed, particularly at Yale, when Kerry got the famous ``tap'' to join the world's most secretive secret society, Skull and Bones - two years before George W. Bush got a similar tap. And he began dating the likes of Janet Auchincloss, half-sister of then-first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
The buzz was Kerry was one to watch.
Filmmaker George Butler said he took 6,000 pictures of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and a young John Kerry - knowing they were both men of ``destiny.''
Friends say Kerry encouraged the talk.
``It was an aura he created,'' Yale roommate Harvey Bundy told Time magazine. ``We sat around the room talking about, `What are our positions going to be in John's Cabinet.' ''
Although Kerry considered joining other sons of money in going to school overseas or joining the National Guard to dodge the war escalating in the jungles of Vietnam, he ended up enlisting and becoming a Naval officer.
There, he was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and Silver Star for battlefield conduct while commanding a Swift boat up the Mekong Delta.
Kerry returned more disillusioned and joined the growing domestic protests to the war in Southeast Asia.
He immediately tried to parlay his protest into a political office, running briefly for Congress in the third congressional district of Massachusetts before bowing out. He married his longtime college love, Julia Thorne, in May 1970.
Kerry became a leader in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War - taking his first national star spin before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, asking ``How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?''
When a ``60 Minutes'' correspondent asked if Kerry wanted to be president, the young vet laughed it off. ``Of the United States? No,'' he said.
But Kerry was said to have enjoyed the attention and was hotly in demand to run for office after Senate testimony and appearances on ``The Dick Cavett Show.''
``(Politicos) were all drooling over him to be a candidate,'' ally Adam Walinsky, a former speechwriter for Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, said.
Kerry shopped for a sympathetic congressional district in which to run, settling first on the Massachusetts 5th district, based in Lowell.
He lost a bruising campaign to Republican Paul Cronin, a defeat he still counts as one of the real learning experiences of his political life.
After the birth of his first daughter, Alexandra, days later, Kerry retreated into private life. Confident a law degree would help his political career, he enrolled in Boston College Law School and, in 1976, joined the Middlesex District Attorney's Office.
After some time in private practice - and the birth of his second daughter, Vanessa - Kerry found himself listless and bored again. Family life was trying, his wife was slipping into what she later called a ``deep depression,'' and Kerry wanted another take at public life.
In the fall of 1981, he decided to take a stab at the little-known, and less attention-grabbing office of lieutenant governor.
kerry, testimony before Congress, 22 April, 1971, kerry says, "I have been to Paris. I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government,...."*(not on any authorised mission by the U.S. Government or by the U.S. military, kerry and his VVAW group meets and negotiates with the then enemy).
*excerpted from the Official U.S. Congressional Record dated 22 April, 1971.
"revamp the U.S. military", read as kerry's plan to PURGE the U.S. Military of Pro U.S. Military Veterans and Republicans, make it totally dependant on U.N. forces support for any significant achievement capable military(similar to france,germany, etc.), Turn home based U.S. Armed Forces, Intelligence agencies and Law Enforcement agencies into the democratic party's{including CPUSA and DSA} Praetorian Guard!!!!
kerry stabbed U.S. in the back continually since his return from Viet Nam. How much more backstabbing from this 22 April, 1971 testimony(self confessed traitor) before Congress that he(kerry) met with the then enemy in Paris, are we supposed to stand????
Some More Interesting historical news about kerry:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160580/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1165078/posts
Some of kerry's friends listed below:
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/
DSA's "Progressive Caucus" Links below:
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp
They are the Enemy Within!!!!
I have at least one or two interesting posts about said such subject matter, below:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1165983/posts
And see:
http://tonkin.spymac.net/hanoikerry1.html
More: Communist Party Backs the RATS!!!! below:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1171176/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1172055/posts
Kerry is a traitor to America and to the good men and women who served in Vietnam. In my opinion he holds his current office illegally because he gave comfort to the enemy. He in NO WAY should be Commander In Chief. The people that served with him in his 3.5 months in-country say that he is a nut-case and is irresponsible and erratic, and lacks good judgement. It would be like electing Jane Fonda president.
#4. Thanks for your Post, Viet-Boat-Rider. Well said.
D2
Amazing that he found it so easy to toss away his marriage vows and children because he was listless and bored. We know he's still listless, but I take it he's running for President because he's also bored again. He's probably waiting for Tuhrayza to kick the bucket so he can inherit his share of the Heinz estate and find himself another rich widow.
Oh, do I feel a rhyme coming on? Maybe WTF, Kerry? LOLOL!
Can't you just imagine him as a lederhosen clad Lothario, scamming the rich frauleins in his Swiss village? LOL!
And for political reasons (Boston, you know) he pretended to be Irish until just recently.
I don't see any mention of that......
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