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.
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.
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."
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...
1. 200+ Navy veterans that served under/with/above Kerry during the Vietnam War thought Kerry was “unfit for command”. No amount of Kerry spin could refute this
2. Kerry's manipulation of the medal awarding process, the 3 PH's and the likely court martial/pardon that generated the oddly worded “reinstated and reissued” line on his 214 could be argued, but who cares given point #1?