Posted on 10/14/2004 1:22:48 PM PDT by David M. Brooks
— Many readers know me only as a conservative and are surprised to learn that I haven’t always been one. Seeing and hearing John Kerry several times a day is an almost constant reminder that I used to think quite differently when I worked for him back in 1972. I was more liberal then and Kerry was staging an unsuccessful run for congress in the fifth district of Massachusetts. Prior to that, he had been involved with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and I had been fighting city hall in Lowell, the district’s biggest city. His campaign people contacted me and I went to work for them. Some friends and relatives came into the campaign as well, including two of my sisters, Jane and Elaine. When my daughter, Annie, got married last August, they came up for the wedding and we reminisced about those days.
After Kerry lost the election, I had no more contact with him. I had sensed a lack of passion in him and had come to see him as an empty suit. But Elaine and Jane had become friendly with Kerry’s first wife, Julia, and their association with Kerry went on for a few years. Both got to know his family fairly well when they babysat his daughters. Elaine watched them sometimes at the three-unit apartment house we had purchased together and they played with my daughters there. Jane was younger and still lived with our parents in nearby Tewksbury. In the summer, she would sometimes accompany the Kerrys to Naushon Island, the private, seven-mile-long summer retreat of the Forbes family, and help with the children.
My family has always been politically active. We were born Boston-Irish-Catholic-Democrats and politics is innate. During the 1960s and ‘70s, though, the Democrat Party veered left while the McLaughlin family veered right. Not one of the nine of us still living belongs to the party any more, and I’m sure even my father would have resigned if he had lived to see what’s happened to that once-venerable party.
The day after the wedding last August, we were all sipping wine and talking politics on the porch of my mother’s house in Lovell when Jane told a Kerry story I hadn’t heard before. We had been taking turns relating just when it was that each of us had come to dislike the man the Democrats have since nominated for president. Jane described how she was spending a week on Naushon. Unaware that she was on a nearby porch and within earshot, Kerry was telling Julia that he didn’t want Jane to eat dinner with the family that evening. When Julia asked why, Kerry explained that some dinner guests he had invited didn’t approve of the help eating with the family.
As Jane was telling the story 30 years later, she was still angry and it showed clearly on her face. She’s fully as much of a spitfire now as she was at 15 when the incident occurred, and it had been years since I’d seen that I angry look only she can display. She has a way of pursing her lips and knitting her brow when she’s mad that is unique to her and I had to laugh. “It wasn’t funny,” she said—again with the angry expression. “I was mortified.”
“So what happened?” I asked, trying to be serious. Jane went on to explain that Julia had put her foot down and told her husband she refused to explain that Kerry wanted her to eat in another room. With that, our would-be president backed off and Jane ate with the family as she usually did. I could picture her sitting at the dinner table, looking at Kerry and doing the slow burn as only Jane can.
“John Kerry—courageous man of the people,” I said.
“That’s when I came to hate him,” said Jane.
“Understandable,” I answered.
Eventually, the Kerrys sold their house in Lowell when he went to law school at Boston College. Then he served as Assistant District Attorney in Middlesex County, Mass. I finished school and moved north to the mountains to teach. Elaine and Jane married and moved to the suburbs. Kerry then ran for Lieutenant Governor under Michael Dukakis, then U.S. Senator. Reading snippets of what he was up to in the Boston papers, I was gradually moving from left to right on the political spectrum. Kerry, obviously, remains on the left—the most liberal member of the Senate. Seeing and hearing him every day is a continuous affirmation that I moved in the right direction.
Tom McLaughlin is a history teacher who lives in Lovell, Maine. He can be reached at tommclaughlin@pivot.net.
David, I wonder how Teresa would have responded to the same request.
Terayzaa, would have made her eat out back with the dogs.
Not surprising in the least bit. I would have suspected Effin' of being one of those who disapproved of the "help" eating at the same table.
Just further confirmation of my instinctive Southern Lady radar . . . Kerry is a pig.
bump
David you have confirmed what I believe about this man - and I don't even know him. He is, perhaps, transparent?
I shudder to think what John Kerry really thinks of much of his constituency -- the black Americans he recently met at the dog-and-pony shows masquerading as "worship services" at their churches.
Thanks for your account of this despicable elitist.
Thanks for posting -- Howie Carr read it on his show, but I missed the beginning.
But Algore would have snuck out some table scraps...
Great post. It speaks volumes about who Kerry really is.
Despicable elitist traitor.
That is Kerry.
Just trash with cash.
I've said that an elitist (your sister's story supports that label), arrogant Boston Brahmin would have gone to Harvard Law School as a matter of birthright.
There must be meaning to the fact that Kerry DIDN'T go to HLS and had to settle for BC. One person commented that he had a BS from Yale but didn't have the LSATs/credentials to get into HLS and, probably, Kerry didn't either. I don't buy that because a well connected Forbes could have gotten no matter what his LSATs were.
There must be another reason why Kerry didn't go to Harvard Law! Any suggestions?
David, you have confirmed what I believe about this man
and I don't even know him. He is, perhaps, tranparent?
There are buttloads of these stories just being sat on the liberal northeastern press. The one story I hear alot is the story where an airmen on an overseas junket with Kerry started talking about his boat and Kerry said something to the effect that he would not go on his pissant little boat and that he would not be caught dead on anything less than 130 footer.
It's not as if we didn't know, but....
Sounds Verry Kerry.
Tom Mclaughlin called in to Howie Carr (I think he said he had some more to add). Howie told him to e-mail it (to his personal e-mail address), and he'll try to get the whole thing in the New York Post, which occasionally runs a Howie Carr column.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.