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Mark Steyn: Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid
The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 08/24/04 | Mark Steyn

Posted on 08/23/2004 4:21:30 PM PDT by Pokey78

According to Francis Harris in Saturday's Telegraph, allegations that John Kerry "lied about his Vietnam record" are "unravelling". Oh, I wouldn't say that. Right now, it looks like the sanity of the Kerry campaign and its pals in the media that's beginning to unravel.

Switch on the TV these days and you'll see John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going berserk.

The other day it was CNN host James Carville, former skinhead-in-chief to Bill Clinton, yelling and howling all over O'Neill's answers before brushing him aside with, "I've got no use for this man."

Meanwhile, the grandees at the New York Times, having studiously ignored the story for two weeks, decided that, with the Kerry campaign all but paralysed by the issue, they'd have to sully their lily-white hands with the ghastly business and kill it themselves. Maureen Dowd, the paper's elderly schoolgirl columnist, dismissed the dissenting Swiftees as "creepy-crawly", "stomach-turning", "sleazoids".

Pat Oliphant, who appears in the Washington Post and many other newspapers, offered a cartoon showing the Swiftees as Bush-backing deadbeats sitting round a bar bitching: "I never seen Kerry do nothing hee-roic," says one loser. "Damn right," says another. "You and me was right there in latrine maintenance. We orta know."

The redneck spelling's a nice touch, ain't it? I wonder which of the anti-Kerry campaign's 254 Swift vets, including 17 of Lieutenant Kerry's 23 fellow officers, Oliphant thinks were in latrine maintenance. Maybe he's got in mind fellows like Paul Galanti, who appears in the latest anti-Kerry ad and whose plane went down over North Vietnam in 1966. He was held in the "Hanoi Hilton" Viet Cong POW camp until 1973. That's seven years getting tortured by the gooks, only to be mocked by some lame-o cartoonist as a redneck latrine operator.

I've never quite understood the preferred formulation of big-time Democrats – that "of course" they support our troops even though they oppose this war. But in practice they "support our troop" – singular – just Lieut Kerry and the handful of Swiftees willing to appear in public with him. The rest can go to hell and any of 'em impertinent enough to question the Senator are just "sleazoids" wading through their own backed-up latrine. I wonder if the Kerry campaign and its media cheerleaders have really thought this one through.

Nothing the "sleazoids" say about Kerry is as bad as what he said about them 33 years ago in his testimony to Congress, when he informed the world that his comrades – his "band of brothers" – had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads" etc, throughout their time in Vietnam.

Unlike John O'Neill's book, he didn't bother to give specifics: the US Army in general was rife with ear-severers. If you want to know why Paul Galanti is appearing in an anti-Kerry ad, it's because he first heard about this speech from his Viet Cong captors who cited it to try to persuade him and his fellow prisoners that resistance was now futile and they might as well cross over to the other side.

I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?

I wouldn't stand for Parliament on a family values platform because I know someone's bound to bring up the 123 gay porn movies I had a bit part in back in Amsterdam in the 1970s.

How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history – in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness – into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting? Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry, and, if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President.

That can happen to rich guys, particularly touchy, thin-skinned rich guys who prefer to surround themselves with yes-men. Kerry was apparently infuriated by the cool reception he got from a veterans' audience last week. But why would he expect anything different?

And even if he'd never slimed his comrades, there's something ridiculous about a fellow with four months in Vietnam running as Ike, the Duke of Wellington and Alexander the Great rolled into one. On Sunday, after calling on the Senator to apologise to the 2.5 million veterans he slandered, Bob Dole couldn't resist chipping in his own view of Kerry's wounds.

"Here's, you know, a good guy, a good friend. I respect his record. But three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of," he said. "I mean, they're all superficial wounds." Dole's right arm is withered and useless from wounds received in World War Two, and he never made a big hoo-ha about it in the '96 campaign.

But, more significantly, Dole prizes bipartisan Senatorial chumminess over almost everything, and my guess is he wouldn't be slamming Kerry if he weren't so revolted by the unseemly showboating of this campaign. If Vietnam vets loathe him, World War Two vets seem to think he's a buffoon. Short of reversing over the last 128-year-old Spanish-American War veteran in the retirement home parking lot, it's hard to see how Kerry could more comprehensively diminish his military support.

Still, he's doing his best. After going around huffing and a-puffing that, if Bush wanted a debate about Vietnam, "Here is my answer: BRING. IT. ON," he's now gone to ground and is demanding Bush call it off. Meanwhile, his lawyers are threatening suits and the campaign's complained to the Federal Election Commission to get the Swift vets taken off air.

His hagiographer Douglas Brinkley, after an intriguing interview with the Telegraph's David Rennie, seems to have entered the witness protection programme. If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: johnkerry; kerry; marksteyn; swiftboatveterans
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To: Pokey78
John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going berserk.

Omigosh, I love this man's way of thinking and his way of expressing! I laughed at the title, I laughed at this and so many other paragraphs.....laughing (and Steyn) makes ya feel good all over!

41 posted on 08/23/2004 4:49:24 PM PDT by okimhere
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To: Pokey78

Great post, Pokey!

I watched very little of the dem convention, but heard endlessly about Kerry's "reporting for duty" statement and his salute, and all of the hype about Vietnam and his service qualifying him to be CIC. I wondered then if he really knew what the heck he was doing, and all I knew about then was that he had testified to the "war crimes".

My thoughts then were that Kerry couldn't possibly be that stupid, but I guess that he is. (Not that that's such a BAD thing, mind you...)


42 posted on 08/23/2004 4:51:37 PM PDT by Theresawithanh ( Flush the Johns in 2004!!!!!)
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To: Pokey78

Yes sir...sKerry is starting to unravel!


43 posted on 08/23/2004 4:51:49 PM PDT by timestax
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To: Vigilanteman
"...CNN host James Carville, former skinhead-in-chief to Bill Clinton . . ."

Did anyone else initially read this as "foreskin-headed"? (I did, I really did.....)

44 posted on 08/23/2004 4:51:56 PM PDT by Irene Adler
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To: Pokey78
That can happen to rich guys, particularly touchy, thin-skinned rich guys who prefer to surround themselves with yes-men. Kerry was apparently infuriated by the cool reception he got from a veterans' audience last week. But why would he expect anything different?

Because Kerry has spent the past 20 odd years in the Senate, where one minute you're calling your opponent a lying scoundrel and the next buying them a drink at the Gentleman’s club.

45 posted on 08/23/2004 4:53:53 PM PDT by PogySailor (Proud member of the RAM)
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To: Pokey78

bttt


46 posted on 08/23/2004 4:53:58 PM PDT by Christian4Bush (I approve this message: character and integrity matter. Bush/Cheney '04)
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To: Dog Gone
...let me add that he's too stupid to be President.

"He's stooooopid!"

47 posted on 08/23/2004 4:54:23 PM PDT by TC Rider (The United States Constitution © 1791. All Rights Reserved.)
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To: BullDog108

Those were his only cards. This guy's a loser.


48 posted on 08/23/2004 4:54:50 PM PDT by maro
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To: Pokey78
Maureen Dowd, the paper's elderly schoolgirl columnist, dismissed the dissenting Swiftees as "creepy-crawly", "stomach-turning", "sleazoids".

Well ain't THAT rich, from a woman with a bunny-boiler fascination with Michael Douglas! ;-)

49 posted on 08/23/2004 4:55:59 PM PDT by Happygal (Liberals - fully au fait with their 'rights', utterly ignorant of their responsibilities)
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To: Pokey78
Mark Steyn nails it when he says that the MSM would rather believe Kerry and a few others than the 250 odd SwiftVets who have come out against him. I never heard this O'Neil guy before, but Rush's interview with him today is on his website. The guy is a calm, well spoken, one man wrecking crew. The MSM will try to keep him away from a mike or camera because he's a man on a mission with all the facts at his fingertips.
50 posted on 08/23/2004 4:58:24 PM PDT by finnigan2
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To: Pokey78
Switch on the TV these days and you'll see John O'Neill, principal spokesman for the hundreds of Swift boat veterans who oppose their old comrade Kerry, talking calmly and patiently about the facts, citing chapter and verse and relevant footnotes, while some deranged interviewer is going berserk.

I've noticed this, too. They're so hysterical to stop the truth, they're destroying any credibility they might have had. Hopefully, they'll never catch on to this.

51 posted on 08/23/2004 5:01:05 PM PDT by irv
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To: Pokey78; sonofatpatcher2

<< How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history – in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness – into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting?

Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry and if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President. >>

Yep.

And: that can happen to strange, stuck-up, stupid, second-hander rich gigolos and particularly to parasitical, strange, stuck-up, stupid, self-loathing, sitzpinkler, touchy, thin-skinned, rich gigolos who have long surrounded themselves with yes-girly-boys.

Yep yep yep


52 posted on 08/23/2004 5:04:26 PM PDT by Brian Allen (I am, thank God, a hyphenated American -- An AMERICAN-American -- and A Dollar-a-Day FReeper!)
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To: Pokey78

I like Mark!


53 posted on 08/23/2004 5:07:31 PM PDT by Ditter
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To: finnigan2
Mark Steyn nails it when he says that the MSM would rather believe Kerry and a few others than the 250 odd SwiftVets who have come out against him.

Something I've noticed in the last few days is that the MSM rarely mentions the overwhelming number of Swiftees who oppose Kerry.

54 posted on 08/23/2004 5:08:21 PM PDT by independentmind
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To: Pokey78
"What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?"

this idiot...


55 posted on 08/23/2004 5:10:41 PM PDT by petercooper (Kerry passes up terror briefing: "They have offered to brief me. I just haven't had time.")
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To: Irene Adler
ROTFLMAO! Now that you mention it, his head does look a lot like a penis.
56 posted on 08/23/2004 5:13:49 PM PDT by Vigilanteman (crime would drop like a sprung trapdoor if we brought back good old-fashioned hangings)
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To: Pokey78; quidnunc
See... it CAN be done.









I'm referring, of course, to posting the ENTIRE article. Thanks Pokey!!

57 posted on 08/23/2004 5:14:30 PM PDT by upchuck (Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?)
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To: Pokey78

Ah, so what are the odds that the October Swift Boats Vets' ad features Paul Galanti saying his VietCong captors, while he was imprisoned, played videos or read him Kerry's lies when appearing before congress saying American soldiers were all baby killers, torturers, etc., and that the VietCong used Kerry's testimony as part of their psych. warfare/torture to get them to defect. Wow. That would be a killer ad for sure.


58 posted on 08/23/2004 5:15:02 PM PDT by hershey
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To: Freee-dame

If this campaign were any more inept, Michael Moore would be making a documentary claiming Kerry's a Republican plant secretly controlled by Karl Rove and the House of Saud.


%%%%%%


Every sentence is a gem!!!


59 posted on 08/23/2004 5:15:13 PM PDT by maica (BIG Media is not mainstream. We are right. They are left, not center.)
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To: Pokey78

Kerry: strange, stuck-up... and stupid

s -- s -- and more s----


60 posted on 08/23/2004 5:19:28 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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