Posted on 08/16/2005 11:02:24 AM PDT by Mia T
"If we get a crippled Nam Vet and take him down and chain him to the White House fence, will you cover it?"
JOHN KERRY to desk editor in DC (1971)
(Response: "Oh yeah!") |
ax Cleland is remarkable.
What a pity he allowed delusory left-wing flights of fancy and lust for power rob him of his nobility.
The irony and the tragedy of Max Cleland overwhelms.
Remarkably, Cleland did not become an embittered man when John Kerry's self-inflicted, bacitracin + bandaid-treated, tickets-out-of-Vietnam-and-onto-the-JFK-career-path scratches were deemed worthy of three purple hearts while his three missing limbs were deemed worthy of none; this, even after insult was added to injury when he was dispatched to Texas to lend his phantom limbs to Kerry's self-serving cause.
Cleland became embittered, rather, because he actually began to believe the principal neo-neoliberal premise--the neo-neoliberal premise that undergirds all other neo-neoliberal premises--which is, that he was entitled to his Senate seat not because of his abilities but because of his disabilities, not because of his policies but because of our pity...or even our shame.
Cleland lost the election because he supported his party's union quid-pro-quo policy at the expense of America's national security. That his patriotism was challenged is a leftist canard. What was challenged was his judgment and ability to protect the people of Georgia and America against the post-9/11 realities. (NOTE: I would add this caveat: Cleland and the Left conflating the two charges, (i.e., equating lack of judgment with lack of patriotism), suggests their own guilty knowledge of same.)
If Max Cleland lost nobility last week, John Kerry lost any semblance of decency. Harnessing and fomenting Max Cleland's denial and bitterness, Kerry sought finally to bring to fruition his cynical 1971 scheme that would shamelessly exploit a crippled vet for his own self-aggrandizing purposes.
Today, with the following throwaway line, Brit Hume, Kerry's childhood pal, perhaps not so unwittingly revealed the core of Kerry's unfitness--the constancy over time of John Kerry's overweening opportunism.
Delivering the Kerry coup de grâce with the uptown refinement and politesse we've come to expect from him, Hume slyly observed: "John Kerry gave his 1971 testimony with a [Kennedy-esque] accent I didn't hear when I knew him as a little boy and an accent I haven't heard since."
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2004, 2005
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Are you James Taranto?
Thank you Mia, I missed Rush this morning and I couldn't put all the pieces together. Aloha
You're very welcome.:)
BY JAMES TARANTO
Tuesday, August 16, 2005 3:08 p.m.
The Crippled-Vet Ploy
There's plenty of blame to go around for the appalling spectacle of Sheehanoia, but one name that hasn't been mentioned is that of John Kerry. Kerry might have invented, and he certainly pioneered, the tactic being employed by those who are exploiting Cindy Sheehan to further their political agenda. As he explained to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1971:
"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "
Do you remember the media spectacle in Crawford, Texas, a year ago? It was precisely the crippled-vet ploy. Kerry sent triple amputee Max Cleland, who had been defeated in his 2002 Senate re-election bid, to deliver a letter to President Bush demanding that the president denounce the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This move was stunning in its audacity, though not its effectiveness: Here was Kerry, staking his campaign on his authority as a Vietnam veteran, appealing to the authority of another Vietnam veteran in an effort to silence Vietnam veterans who opposed him.
The media love this sort of story because of its man-bites-dog nature: Vietnam veteran says fellow vets are war criminals! Sept. 11 widows blame Bush for their husbands' deaths! Gold Star Mother says son died in vain! But isn't the shtick getting a little old by now?
In any case, because of this man-bites-dog quality the stories are ultimately meaningless. John Kerry did not actually speak for Vietnam veterans, most of whom thought their service was honorable. The "Jersey girls" do not actually speak for Sept. 11 widows, most of whom understand that Islamist terrorists, not the president, murdered their husbands. And Cindy Sheehan does not actually speak for Gold Star Mothers, most of whom remember their children as heroes, not dupes; and hardly any of whom agree with Sheehan that "this country is not worth dying for."
Sheehanoia is a sign of the desperation, not the strength, of the left in America. Publicity stunts are no substitute for an actual political program. Joan Walsh writes in Salon:
Even as Sheehan's public relations victories give people reason to be optimistic about the administration's unraveling in Iraq, liberals and war opponents have to be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Rooting for "the administration's unraveling in Iraq"--that is, for America's defeat in the central antiterror battleground--is not what we'd call a political program.
CBS to Bush: Ugh!
Here's a telling quote that appeared earlier today in a CBSNews.com story on Sheehan:
Sheehan has vowed to continue her Texas vigil through the rest of President Bush's vacation ugh Bush's August vacation, unless he meets with her. She began her protest 10 days ago and has since been joined by more than 100 anti-war activists.
The network later corrected its mistake, but it still shows up in a Google search. (And we saved a copy on our hard drive.) Anyway, it kind of proves what we wrote yesterday about the media's motivation in perpetuating Sheehanoia: "Members of the White House press corps find the annual sojourn to Crawford deathly dull." Ugh indeed!
Sheehan vs. Sheehan
Patrick Sheehan has filed for divorce from his wife, Cindy; The Smoking Gun has a copy of his petition. There's nothing much to say about this, except that our heart goes out to Mr. Sheehan, who has lost both a son and his wife of 28 years.
No
Are you James Taranto?
No
...but neither of these facts would preclude me from being "splendid".
One is inevitably reminded of the quite unbelievable image of the president of the United States on the phone with a congressman discussing Bosnia while being simultaneously serviced by Monica Lewinsky. -- Charles Krauthammer, History Will Not be Kind to Clinton
What was always staggering to me about this scene was not what it says about Clinton's sexual practices -- I couldn't care less one way or another -- but about his unseriousness. -- Charles Krauthammer, History Will Not be Kind to Clinton
Mia T, 8.01.05 |
The following is a letter to ex-President Clinton from James Smith, a former Ranger whose son Corporal James E Smith was killed in Somalia. Mr. Smith, a decorated Vietnam-era Ranger himself, rejected the traditonal letter of condolence written by the White House, and returned this in reply: 10 Mallard Lane thanx to snowrip for letter
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