Doesn't He Remind You Of .. Finding John Kerry's archetype on television and in books -Hugh Hewitt

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/933ledjc.asp | 04/01/04 | by Hugh Hewitt

[AmericanVictory]

We say again, he seems like a living embodiment of Melville's send-up of Emerson in "The Confidence Man," as his party tries to take us down the river in a showboat full of show biz charlatans.

[Brian Allen]

LURCH
[Mutated]

[Mr.Atos]

Hee,Hee! Rathbone is perfect. Or why not just go straight to the prototypical Kerry figure himself...

...Mr. Karloff.

[Mr.Atos]

Oops!... got ahead of my thinking this morning. That's Massey doing a Karloff characterization.

[Charles Martel]

Kerry reminds me of NIEDERMEYER (Animal House). "Give it to NIEDERMEYER, he's a sneaky sh*t"...Dean WORMER.

Yep, great comparison. As the "where-they-are-now" at the end of the film explains:

"Douglas Neidermeyer - Killed by his own troops in Vietnam."

I have speculated that the only thing that saved Kerry from being fragged was the fact that he was in the Navy rather than the infantry. Others have speculated that JF'nK might've ended his tour early because he was afraid that something like that would happen.

[blackie]

Hugh Hewitt ~ Bump!

We are winning ~ the bad guys are losing ~ trolls, terrorists, democrats and the mainstream media are sad ~ very sad!

~~ Bush/Cheney 2004 ~~

[Barset]

"The Way We Live Now" is one of my husbands favorite Trollope novels outside the Pallisers and the church novels,
perhaps because of the BCCI scandal. We re-read the novels and I can't think of any he dislikes to the point of not speaking of the characters with fondness, or of being disinclined to meet them again, even those whose sufferings from their own monomania are distressingly poignant, as in "He Knew He Was Right."

I have never heard of "The Fixed Period" but if it comes to hand I shall certainly read it. Thank you for mentioning it.

I worry that in our enthusiasm for Trollope we may have contributed to the thread losing its focus and discouraging more interesting posts. I hope not.

[AnAmericanMother]

Since the topic of the thread is literary comparisons to John Obadiah/LouisXI/Blackadder Kerry, I think we're pretty safe.

Trevelyan in "He Knew He Was Right" is crazy as hell, but your husband is correct, in a strange way he IS sympathetic. That's the way I feel about Mr. Crawley. The scene where he - in the midst of abject poverty and actual starvation - is teaching his younger daughter Greek verbs . . . "poor but proud" to the nth degree.

[Barset]

That Prufrock segment is perfect. I am a real primitive about modern poetry so overlooked it when you first posted it. Kerry-Prufrock:

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
...

Politic cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous.

Kerry is Mac the Knife playing Prufrock.

Actually, I should follow my first instinct and stay away from this stuff. But yours was a winning choice. b.

[don-o]

Eddie Haskell; Wally's friend on Leaxe it to Beaver.

Always ultra polite, correct and smarmy to Ward and June; but when the adults were absent, he transforms into a schemer who delights in playing the angles and downing the Beaver.

And bottomn line, a self obsessed, delusional loser.

[don-o]

My brother sent me an e-mail with SKerry's picture next to Gomer Pyle and I'd say they could definately be related.

Nope. That won't stand.

Gomer is a dope, but he has a heart of gold and no guile.