Posted on 06/17/2008 9:06:07 AM PDT by thinkingIsPresuppositional
Short Pants’ Short Memory
Swift-boat THIS.
by Steve Finefrock
Michael Kinsley is wearing his intellectual short pants again, in his essay on Swiftboating. Wishing upon wishes for a ‘clean’ campaign of purity, he asserts, “Swift-boat is shorthand for the brilliant, despicable Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry's honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor in his campaign. The phrase has become more broadly the term for a particular category of campaign tactics and has even become a verb. To ‘swift-boat’ somebody is to use these tactics against him or her.”
Kinsley is not stupid, nor ignorant, but plainly very conveniently ‘forgetful’ of much history in his lifetime, never mind that of the DNC and its minions earlier in the century, before Kinsley’s mind was even a glimmer in his parents youthful eyes. Swiftboating began in January of 1929, nine gestative months before the Black Tuesday stockmarket crash foreshadowed the Great Depression, and the swiftboating by historians and journalists of Herbert Clark Hoover.
Kinsley’s claims, and definitions, go further: “Swift-boating's essence is a particular kind of dishonesty, or rather a particular combination of shadowy dishonesties. It usually involves a complex web of facts, many of which may even be true. It exploits its own complexity and the reluctance of the media to adjudicate factual disputes. No matter how thoroughly a charge may be discredited, enough taint remains to support an argument. The fundamental dishonesty is the suggestion that the issue, whatever it is, really matters. This is how swift-boating differs from its cousin McCarthyism, which deals in totally baseless charges that would be deeply serious if true. Swift-boating is McCarthyism lite...
(Excerpt) Read more at modernconservative.com ...
It wasn’t the ‘swiftboating’ of Kerry that permanently turned him into the enemy of my society. It was his TESTIMONY IN FRONT OF CONGRESS where he flat out compared our soldiers to the hordes of Genghis Khan, guilty of all manner of tortures against innocents. THAT IS WHAT I HOLD AGAINST THAT MISERABLE ... (words fail)!
If you read that paragraph carefully, all he says is that "Swiftboating is a tactic."
I guess Kinsley doesn't dare raise anything specific, otherwise he might be forced to defend his position.
I didn’t think the Swiftboat Vets were a Republican group...
‘Mark Foleying’ is also a tactic.
Kerry “swiftboated” his unit and all the Vietnam veterans who served honorably. He especially “swiftboated” the POW’s who were tortured for things Kerry said for free. He did not even get close to fulfilling his duty as a Naval officer. We also need to stop using the term the leftists invented for their own agenda.
>>>>I didn’t think the Swiftboat Vets were a Republican group...
Come to think of it, John O’Neill was said to be a Democrat (though it was unconfirmed rumor).
The Democrats get most upset about dirty-tactics that they have used that have been turned back on them. Even a suspicion that a tactic has been employed is enough to send them into a rage.
Exhibit A: The manufacturing of evidence to support the rumor that GWB got ‘preferential treatment’ during his TANG service. No hard evidence has ever surfaced to support that claim, so some nameless Texas Dems just manufactured it.
Exhibit B: The infamous ‘Swiftboat’ affair. Enough evidence exists to support the conclusion that Lt. Kerry manipulated the awards system to gain an early out from combat duty in Vietnam. None of that evidence was ‘manufactured’. Much of it comes from Navy records, backed up by the testimony of officers who served with Kerry.
I have debated the Swifboat campaign with Democrats & the best that they can point to is shadowy Republican operatives who helped pull the group together. Well, OK, but show me where the INFORMATION is wrong.
The way I remember it they were not part of a Replican tactic, they were independent of both parties. Many of the Swiftboat Vets were actually Democrats. But facts have never seemed to matter much to Kinsley and the liberal left.
In his own words he supported Edwards in the '04 primaries. I always wondered if Kerry picked Edwards for veep to mollify O'Neill--if so it didn't work.
ping
The Swiftboat Vets were NOT a republican group, although that is the lie that the Democrats keep trumpeting. In fact, there was a 2 year Federal Voting Commission investigation that ended up rulling that the Swiftboat Vets for Truth were organized by a group of veterans with no affiliation to the Republican Party.
Read the book “To Set The Record Straight” for the full story behind the creation of the Swiftboat Vets for Truth.
http://www.tosettherecordstraight.com/
“but show me where the INFORMATION is wrong.”
The whole point of ‘swiftboating’ (as used by the dems) is to conceal the INFORMATION.
> I didn’t think the Swiftboat Vets were a Republican group.
Absolutely correct, there are probably as many Democrats as Republicans in our ranks. It wasn’t about politics at all; it was about Kerry and righting an injustice he heaped on Veterans in the early 70s. This point was very clear to the Swifties and the MSM completely missed it and still doesn’t know it.
It usually involves a complex web of facts, many of which may even be true.
Actually, it is precisely that. Kerry's service in VietNam might have been something to be proud of if he hadn't come home and dishonored it, negotiating with the Viet Cong, slandering his brothers in arms. Not to mention lying about the details of his own service.
If the rest of us have longer memories than is convenient for Kerry's ambitions, if we have somehow been untouched by years of media spin, I can see how that would upset a Kinsley who lives and dies by media spin. Not to mention a Kerry who, again, lives and dies by media spin.
As for McCarthyism, he again gets that precisely wrong. McCarthy told the truth and was slandered for it, and has been slandered for fifty years for telling the truth. Guys like Kinsley can't stand it when you tell the truth about them. The one thing they have is their pen, and the ability to re-write history.
Orwell envisioned a government bureau that would re-write history as the political winds change. He didn't envision that it would be outsourced to private news agencies, or that private news agencies would be the core of a political party. We always complain that the news agencies are biased toward a particular political party but its beyond that: they are the party, they are its core.
That is a wrinkle that he didn't foresee.
Republican campaign strategy in 2004 that turned John Kerry’s honorable service in Vietnam into a negative factor
jon kerrie served in Viet Nam?
On March 27, 1986, the then-Senator Kerry on the floor of the U.S. Senate claimed he was on Navy duty in Cambodia in Christmas, 1968, at a time when President Nixon was lying to the public, saying there were no U.S. forces in Cambodia at that time. The Congressional Record reports Kerry as saying, “I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the President of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have the memory which is seared - seared - in me.”
08/19/2004
John Kerry was obliged last week to recant a number of statements he has made over the years—statements rich in detail and emotion—about his Christmas Eve, 1968 illegal mission into Cambodia. Turns out that despite his ringing oratory on the floor of the Senate, Kerry had invented that account.
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