Cooter #13 - Testimony

Trentino's Magazine ^ | August 18, 2004 | Cooter Thompson

[Davis]

E-mail to Candidate Kerry #13

From: James (Cooter) Thompson

re: Testimony

Dear Senator Kerry:

Where you been this past week, Senator Kerry? None of us guys down to Daryl's Bait Shop have seen hide nor hair of you. We are bound in good conscience to tell you it ain't doing your campaign one damn bit of good.

It's like this. We are reasonable people, in the main. We have some experience of this world. When we sit on juries, we expect a defendant to testify in his own defense. Yes, the lawyers and the judge can caution us that the prosecution has to prove the case. A defendant doesn't, as a legal matter, have to testify at all. But, that is only as a legal matter.

As a practical matter, there comes a time when it is totally unreasonable for a defendant not to testify. Under those circumstances, when a defendant does not testify, we can reach our own conclusions. When we sit on juries, we do that. We make up our minds regardless of the lawyers' arguments and the judge's instructions. Well, we don't exactly ignore our legal duty. We just temper it with good common sense.

We think one is obliged by good sense to testify when considerable evidence had been produced against you. When they bring in the blue Gap dress, it behooves you to speak up.

Last year you were saying you quit the Jane Fonda outfit, Vietnam Veterans Against the War before a meeting in Kansas City in 1971 where the Executive Board voted on a proposal to assassinate six US Senators. When the proof came in that you had been at that meeting and hadn't quit until a year and a half later, you let your press people and stage directors deal with your "memory lapse." Some of us, including and especially, Armen Yazoo, remember this very well. We aren't pleased with a presidential candidate who has a defective memory. It don't exactly thrill us to imagine a guy with a defective memory running things from the Oval Office. We are of the opinion it would have been better if you had come forward and taken the flak for it. It would have shown good character.

Likewise, there was no call for your reversing things, revising your history in your acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention a couple of weeks ago. Your stage directors all but dressed you up in your old Navy uniform, stuck that fruit salad, those medals and ribbons—the ones you either did or did not toss away in disgust with America—and pushed you out to testify concerning your Vietnam service. That was testimony of a sort. It was your direct testimony, as Armen Yazoo, our resident legal scholar, calls it. But, there's been a lot of water washed over the levee since then. You have failed to show up for cross-examination.

There has been considerable evidence admitted in the Court of Public Opinion that your Vietnam service was not what you claimed it to be. The blue Gap dress of your campaign is the subject of an entire book, Unfit for Command.

We know the press has hammered the authors, challenged their motives, but we have yet to see any counter-testimony to challenge the facts of that book. Your press people have been squirming around dealing with your Christmas in Cambodia story, saying this, that, and the other, offering explanations that only a sociology professor would not immediately recognize as ridiculous.

So, we. Boudreau, that is, and Armen, and Freddie Dobbs, and the regulars down to Daryl's, we reckon, Senator, that the time is ripe to hear from you. From you, not from an agent or an angel or some slip-sliding press secretary, but from you. In our considered judgment, your testification ain't optional. You got to come out from under that cone of silence, put your hand on the Bible, swear to tell the truth, and answer the hard questions put to you.

Sincerely,

Cooter (with the help of J. Boudreau and A. Trentino)

[Davis]

Evidence? Evidence is only considered when it's presented against conservatives. Liberals mock evidence and dance around--ala McGreevey.

[hrhdave]

The time isn't simply ripe for Kerry to answer these charges himself, it's over-ripe. So is Kerry. You can catch the aroma of rotting Massachusetts/Cambodian fishheads all over his stupid campaign. Douse them all you want with Mrs. Kerry's ketchup, they still stink.

[Davis]

ping for Cooter