Posted on 03/31/2004 9:27:36 PM PST by MNJohnnie
JOHN KERRY reminds you of someone, but you can't put your finger on it, right?
Allow me to help.
Bookish people and television people generally carry different archetypes around in their heads, but neither group seems to able to quite put their finger on Kerry. They have seen this face, this style before. But where?
First, the small box people. John Kerry is M*A*S*H's Major Frank Burns, returned to bluster and badger and arrogantly attempt to command his betters. To those below him, Burns was a constant pain. To those above, he was obsequious in the extreme. Towards his tentmates--whom he could not believe were his equals--he was always condescending, the perfect combination of insecurity and inflated self-esteem.
Some might argue that Major Charles Emerson Winchester III is really a better match for Kerry, especially given Winchester's ponderous accent and attention to breeding.
But it's really Burns who captures the essence of the Kerry style, so recently displayed when, following his collision with a Secret Service agent charged with protecting his life, Kerry came up cursing the agent. We lack the information to make any comparisons between Theresa and Major Margaret "Hotlips" Houlihan, but both at least share a tendency toward outspokenness.
FOR THE LITERARY MINDED, the match is more obscure, but just as compelling. It requires a reach all the way back to the papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, as arranged by Washington Irving, specifically to the character Ichabod Crane, who was "tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served as shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together." Ichabod's voice--"the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or of command; or peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge." Ichabod was quick to deal out punishment to his school charges, always accompanied by a lecture.
Ichabod was "a huge feeder," possessed of the "dilating powers of an anaconda." We don't know about John Kerry's appetite, but this makes for a good guess. And there is the vanity parallel: "It was a matter of no little vanity to [Ichabod], on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the psalm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation. . . ." Recall that Kerry's been in front of both Catholics and a largely African-American congregation these past three weeks, cameras in tow.
"[Ichabod] was in fact," Irving tells us, "an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity." Which brings to mind Kerry's approach to many subjects, from the September 11 Commission hearings to gas prices to the $87 billion for Iraq, which he famously voted both for and against.
Ichabod and Kerry can both own being skittish, enamored of an heiress, and bedeviled by a rival. Ichabod's was Brom Bones, "famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock-fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tome admitting of no gainsay or appeal. He was always willing for a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his over-bearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom." Who does that remind you of?
I never could figure out why Eleanor would have married John Bold in the first place. (I don't think Mr. Trollope had fully thought out his characters when he wrote The Warden, and as the chronicles grew they probably surprised him a little bit.) At least she redeemed herself by marrying Dean Arabin.
Ya mean other than a cadaver ?
Why, Al Gore, of course. The desperate, say anything, do any ol foolish thing to be elected Al Gore. Every day or so Gore trotted out a new version. He tried everything from saying he and Tipper were the models for Love Story then he was the Alpha Male earth tone Gore, the preacherman Gore, the lockbox, Dingle-Norwood robotic Gore, the hanging chad Gore. Gag. Kerry is exactly the same kind of boring, supercilious, pontificating jackass.
ROTFLOL!
John Kerry...on the left.
Essentially, Rob Roy was head of the local protection racket, in which his entire family were key players. They earned their living extorting money from cattle owners and drovers, and spent their leisure hours ambushing their hereditary enemies, when they weren't pillaging and raping. (Rob Roy's son Robin Og was eventually hanged for kidnapping and raping an heiress.) He was "out" in the '15 for what he could get out of it. His oldest son James Mor was also a bit of a rogue. Read Stevenson's David Balfour for a very clever portrait of James, and also a thumbnail sketch of the Byzantine nature of Scottish politics after the '45. As Balfour says of politics in the book, "I had seen it from behind, where it was all bones and blackness."
- I'm descended from Rob Roy's cousin Thomas MacGregor, who headed for America in the early 1700s one jump ahead of the law. Changed his name when he got here too.
For more on Louis the Spider, read Scott's Quentin Durward
A born diplomat, Louis skillfully checked his foreign and domestic enemies and set up an efficient central administration. He used commissions (and the one States-General he convoked) to give his acts the appearance of popular approval. He diminished the prestige of the courts. Despite his revocation (1461) of his father's pragmatic sanction of Bourges, he intervened freely in church affairs. He imposed heavy taxes, using much of the revenue to purchase support. He also encouraged industry and expanded domestic and foreign trade. Louis preferred men of humble origin, and among his advisers were Olivier Le Daim , Louis Tristan L'Hermite, and Cardinal Balue , whom he rewarded liberally, though he was niggardly in his own expenses. Fearing assassination, he spent his last years in virtual self-imprisonment near Tours . He was succeeded by his son, Charles VIII .
Source: http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/section/Louis11Fr_CharacteristicsofLouis'sReign.asp
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