“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
Kerry keeps saying it's a "botched joke."
No, It's a very good joke - if the audience was limited to Radio America listeners.
Yanno... we've all screwed up a line here or there - meant to say one thing, actually said something else, maybe even something offensive or crude. It happens to all of us.
Problem is, all of us, when we do such a thing, immediately make a play of it, making funny faces, saying "lemme try that again, in English," or something along those lines. We show our embarrassment IMMEDIATELY - with one exception.
That exception is when we don't think we've said anything wrong. That's why Kerry's "botched joke" line doesn't work - because it's an obvious lie, and not even a very good one.
If a conservative Republican had made a similarly "botched joke" that just happened to echo other noxious statements he made in the past, the MSM would have no trouble whatsoever concluding that it was planned as "a signal" to his extremist supporters or at the very least was a Freudian slip that showed how he really felt.
You just KNOW that would be the story they would write.
Or Air American - Franken would think it was funny...