"I SERVED IN VIETNAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaam....."
Posted on 09/05/2004 8:46:21 AM PDT by Sarastro
YOU'D think John Kerry could be excused for wanting to spend a summer afternoon on the water.
Instead, David Letterman mocked him for windsurfing instead of campaigning. Jay Leno played the flip-flop card, quipping that even Mr. Kerry's hobby depends on which way the wind blows.
Zell Miller, who could himself be accused of being flip-flopper-in-chief, derided Mr. Kerry's swim trunks as "silly little bicycle pants."
Conservative blogs lumped the windsurfing in with Mr. Kerry's other elite hobbies - skiing, biking, flying between vacation homes. ("He married the all-inclusive package," sneered one posting on freerepublic.com. "EVERYTHING is included.")
Like the helmeted Michael Dukakis peeking out of the tank, or the first George Bush bewildered at the grocery scanner, the photo of Mr. Kerry windsurfing played into the negative stereotype his opponents are trying to play up - in this case, that of the out-of-touch, elitist Massachusetts liberal.
The stereotypes of the sport are unfair - there are lots of plumbers and construction workers windsurfing off Cape Cod and in the lakes of Iowa. (Better put: Who among us doesn't like windsurfing?) "I would have expected it to go over well, the stodgy, overserious guy trying to do something hipper," said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. "It's not like he was going out having a row with the Harvard crew team."
Still, there was the sense that no one would have mocked Mr. Bush photographed in the same position, even though the two men could have a Zell Miller duel over who has the deeper pedigree. But despite his legacy at Yale and the weekends in Kennebunkport, Me., Mr. Bush manages to pull off the common-man routine without question. Earlier this year when both he and Mr. Kerry were pictured riding top of the line bicycles, and both fell off, Mr. Kerry was the one ridiculed for the expensive bike.
"Often things that they both do still redound to Kerry's disadvantage - the Ivy League education, the biking," said Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America." Mr. Frank noted that he had just attended a Republican party at the New York Yacht Club, the varnished-wood redoubt of elitism. "But somehow the image of the yacht really clings to Kerry," he said. "Largely because Republicans have made the stereotype so natural. If a liberal drives an S.U.V., it's the car of the elite, if a Republican drives one it's instantly the car of the common man. They have a whole stereotype that they've spent years building."
Professor Thompson confesses that he does not think it has anything to do with windsurfing, or skiing, or even the mansions. After all, no one made fun of John F. Kennedy for all those yachting photos.
"The thing about windsurfing is, there's wind," he explains. "It blows through your hair. John Kerry looks like a guy who could ride in a convertible with the wind rushing through all that hair, but the truth is, his hair just looks goofy when he's out there on that windsurfer. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it just boils down to the hair." Quick, somebody warn Hillary.
Has no problem selling out current US troops...
Very Flexible Loyalties...
Now Character Impediments
For President
Allow me to don my tinfoil hat for a moment.
The photos of him in spandex are hard to find on the net anymore.
Almost as if someone went aroudn systematically removing them.
> Watery Tart, you made the NYT :-)
Good detective work, Tamsey.
I can't believe I just read in the NYT that the democrat party, the party of labor, immigrants and minorities, has transformed into the party of the elite, while the Republicans have changed themselves into the party of the common man! I mean...I almost fell off my windsurf board :-)
I have a neighbor with a bumper sticker "billionaires for Bush". It just makes me laugh when I think what a rich elitist snob this Kerry is, how many mansions he has, etc., etc. Also, what about George "Bush is a Nazi" Soros? And in any event, I thought this whole class warfare thing had ended with the collapse of Communism and Clinton's relative muting of the left's demonization of business proclivities. Marxism would appear to be back with a vengeance in a new and virulent mutation.
No matter how much time he spent up north, he still talks Texan.
Yep... that's her :-)
I have a cable connection... whoosh!
Kerry should immediately counter his elitist image by opening up a fire hydrant in Harlem and playing in the water with a bunch of black children.
It's the photo-op of the century, I tell you.
I am not going to ask why you were trying to find them.(just had to take that shot ;)
Me, too! Surprised me so much I dropped my caviar right into my lap!
Don't worry, I'm fine, I'm fine.....Jeeves rushed right over to make a new cracker for me.
I have DSL.
No explanations needed for prompt fast research :)
Charlie don't Windsurf!
"..Mr. Bush manages to pull off the common-man routine without question."
This is the same as how dogs pull off the whole canine routine better than cats do. Funny the lefties don't even consider the possibility that Kerry can't pull it off simply because it is a routine. Meanwhile Bush ain't acting.
Can a person "sneer" on the Internet?
Talk about NYT journalists spewing Democrat talking points... this line is almost word for word from Kerry.
As his plane was flying from Oregon to Idaho on Saturday, Kerry defended his taste in sports, saying, "The guys who do it are all local guys -- plumbers, construction workers."
http://theswap.com/BBS/DCForumID7/845.html
Kerry's ability to make himself look like a complete Doofus when atempting any athletic activity would embarras anyone with an honest staff or friend into forbidding press coverage.
So9
"Zell Miller, who could himself be accused of being flip-flopper-in-chief,"
This has become a talking point of late. It's absurd, of course, since Zell Miller is actually just sticking to what he's always believed.
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