Posted on 04/20/2008 6:23:28 AM PDT by Nony
If the words "swift" and "boat" must be combined and turned into a verb, then let us insist on its proper use. The word as a verb originates from the campaign undertaken in 2004 by the Swift Boat Veterans in response to the John Kerry presidential candidacy. The word means, or should mean, the exposure of a fraudulent autobiography of one seeking political office or public influence. It is the correction of a personal and professional record that has been selectively and dishonestly compiled, as the Swift Vets did so effectively to that of John Kerry.
Although swiftboating may be a neologism, there are other recent examples of this phenomenon. Justus Reid Werner, in a seminal Commentary article, exposed the fraudulent life story created by Edward Said to advance his political agenda. Dan Rather's macho claims to be an "ex-marine", when he did not finish marine basic training, were also revealed to be fraudulent. This is swiftboating in its truest sense.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
If the term is ever to reflect the truth, people need to keep correcting the definition over at lefty -pedia. (Ikky-pedea)
Just wait until this fall, when we will see the greatest swiftboat ads ever, with images of McCain in the Hanoi Hilton while Bill Ayers was blowing up police stations and military targets in the USA, then images of the planes hitting the WTC on 9-11, with the quotes by Ayers on 9-11 only regretting that he had not set more bombs, finishing with photos of Obama and Ayers shaking hands and smiling at one another.
As if the GOP would ever run it.
The GOP didn’t run the John Kerry Swiftboat ads either.
We are no longer Americans, we are liberals and conservatives.
Politics have gotten past the constraints of truth and honor.
Words no longer have meaning, it is now just bare knuckle partisanship.
They don’t have to.
This is what 527’s are for.
If I had the money I’d do ‘em myself.
Neither will anyone else
Redefining ‘Swiftboating’ and Rewriting History
Swiftboating needs no redefining or rewriting, and is not obsolete. It is basically the oposite of Borking a candidate to the US Supreme court. Swiftboating is correcting a lie, Borking is telling a lie.
Swift-boating: It’s a GOOD thing.
????What?????
How do you think the Kerry Swiftboat ads were run?
Any essay in defense of swiftboating should make reference to the Newsweek reporter who was granted inside access to the Kerry campaign and was unable to report until after the election.
In his eventual article summarizing the major developments of the campaign from his unique viewpoint, this reporter remarked that "Many people wonder why the Kerry campaign did not vigorously refute the charges made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. As explained to me by a campaign operative, the problem was they were mostly true."
Politics have gotten past the constraints of truth and honor.
Words no longer have meaning, it is now just bare knuckle partisanship.
And, one might ask, "Why is this so?"
In my view, it traces directly to the left's adoption of dialectical materialism as a philosophy and an adherance to Lenin's dictum -- Everything Is Political.
The left has chosen to make everything political, automatically resulting in polarization. And they readily redefine words and change their meaning, in accord with their philisophy, in order to further their agenda.
The rest of us (including the right) are merely responding to the left's initiative.
It's no longer like the politics of our youth -- where Democrats and Republicans were both Americans first -- sharing goals but disagreeing on methods -- and politics ended at the ocean shore. Those days are gone -- thanks to an invidious leftism that first infected the country's polity in the sixties.
bttt
To make the definition of swiftboating synonymous with "smears," "lies," and "innuendo" is to declare John Kerry's innocence. Once declared, one may conclude that it is the service of the Swift Vets that is tarnished, and that there may be some truth to Kerry's claims of heroism and charges of genocide in Vietnam. After all, both Kerry and the Swift Vets cannot be telling the truth. Whether explicitly, or implicitly with this newly created derogatory connotation of swiftboating, to declare Kerry's innocence is to do again to the Swift Vets in 2008 what Kerry and cohorts did to them in 1971.
Every time that a candidate today complains of being smeared by calling it swiftboating, he seeks the same exoneration or immunity that this redefined word gives to John Kerry, and, perversely, that candidate reinforces the false impression that the Swift Vets did something dishonorable in their campaign against John Kerry and in Vietnam years ago.
This clever manipulation of the meaning of words and its exoneration of John Kerry has much broader implications. In the 1970s John Kerry led a high profile movement that not only defamed American servicemen as crazed killers, but Kerry and his real "band of brothers" also successfully pushed policies that had truly genocidal consequences in Southeast Asia. To exonerate John Kerry is to exonerate his movement and all who participated in it for their role in the genocide. It is to whitewash all of them from the consequences of their actions...
Thanks for the ping.
Make no mistake about it - - Kerry will be back. Notice how quiet he’s been? I don’t know if he’s “endorsed” anybody yet but if he has, he sure isn’t enthusiastic about it. That’s because Kerry wants old McCain to win so that he, Kerry, can challenge for the Democrat nomination and the Presidency in 2012.
“Rewriting history” vis a vis the Swift Boat Vets is part of his plan. He’s just tidying things up.
Yep! He sure DOES get it.
Kerry, like his mentor Edward (Splash) Kennedy, is backing the Weather Underground's favorite Senator.
Yes, he sees why the leftists are redefining “Swiftboat” and the consequences of letting them make their definition stick. This is semantic warfare, and the only defense against it is a continuing series of articles like this one.
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