Then that is even more convuluted than I thought. I am not surprised so many people are skeptical that this is what he meant.
If there’s one thing we all ought to be able to agree on: If Kerry’s gaffe warranted five pages of discussion, in a world of more worthy issues, the United States is going straight to Hell, on the high speed express train.
In it’s context it was pretty easy to understand.
And no one is really skeptical about who he was talking about. They’re only pretending to be. All of the outrage over this is transparently phoney and grasping.
This released just 4 days before Kerry’s “joke”.
Huh? “Studying” and “doing your homework” are a big part of your education-- it doesn’t get force fed to you. Of course he was taking a swipe at Bush’s education-- what he got out of his college years.
In a way, I think the whole flap might end up being a net gain for the Democrats. Kerry is not on any of the ballots and it allows those who are to suck up to the military by pretending to be disturbed by the flubbed joke about Bush. If Ford says that Kerry should apologize then where are the Pubs going to go with that? The issue is over right there and Ford probably gains a few more votes. There really isn’t anyway for the Pubs to translate this into gaining votes in individual elections.
Agreed. The Republicans are sure milking this for as much as humanly possible- I guess it keeps their mistakes out of the public eye for a bit. Any other time, this’d be a minor blip in the news.
No, he was taking a swipe at Bush’s failure to “study” and “do his homework” and “be smart” before invading Iraq. That should be blindingly obvious to anyone who gives it a moment’s thought.
It’s a week before the elections and the GOP is getting hammered in the polls – you bet they’ll clutch at anything available to deflect the heat away from them.
I like Peter David’s dissection of the issue: “…let’s see what makes more sense: The notion that Kerry, who served in the armed forces, would be dissing the troops, or that Kerry, who despises Bush and Co., would be dissing the administration.”
As I have mentioned earlier, it’s just the chuckle factor for me.
Kerry botched it, and both sides are spinning it to favor their “side”.
I still don’t think Kerry was targeting the Military Educational average, but because of his botch, that is how the sentence is read. He should have paid closer attention to his speach writers flash cards.
I do not believe this will significantly effect the outcome (whatever it may be) of the election next week. (The core constituents have already decided. The voters who are in the middle, and undecided, will probably think that it’s not much of an issue, as Kerry is not running for anything…)
But I will tell you what… if the Democrats don’t sweep into power by a landslide like they have been predicting, then this will be seen by pundits as the incident that stopped them.
Not fair, but there you go. Comes with the job. 
I think it’s been established beyond any credible doubt that Kerry wasn’t talking about the military so any continued discussion of the relative educational levels of the troops is just a red herring and a waste of time.
A reasonable explanation, maybe. Blindingly obvious, not so much.
Even Cnn framed the story that way. The “Kerry says it meant X” was part of the he said, she said later in the piece, but the actual description of the story was “Kerry’s remarks about the education level of the troops” and so forth.
To their credit, subsequent stories seem to have been more nuanced.
I’m talking about the the media sources here too: people like drudge, of course, framed it as being incapable of being interpreted any other way right from the start.
A lot of the conservative pundits even seem to imply that they don’t believe Kerry really implied what the headline him as implying: but hey, let’s kick the guy where it hurts!
What we have is a classic case of Amphibology. There is clearly a way to interpret it either way. Insisting that Kerry definitely MEANT it the bad way, it seems to me, is essentially fallacious and dishonest. It can be interpreted either way, and it isn’t up to anyone’s judgement which way he meant it: it’s up to HIS judgement which way he meant it. His sin is not being clear about what he meant… but it’s still unfair to insist that you know better than he which meaning he meant.
Fox News has not only been reporting it as Kerry’s remarks’ about “the educational level of the troops,” as though that were a fact but has also (from what I’ve seen) completely ignored any other interpretation or explanation.
No, it’s not. This whole thing was so mangled, I can’t say for sure what he meant other than it was a swipe at Bush. It sounded like a swipe at his education to me-- homework and study are things we usually associate with school. You could be right, but it’s anything other than “blindingly obvious”.
Kerry has now apologized to the troops (even though he had nothong to apologize for).
Is there any reason to keep beating this horse?
As long as it’s a news story, it’s going to keep getting beaten. Maybe that will finally quash it, but l doubt it. This’ll be more fodder for the wingnuts-- See, the fact that he apologzed to the troops proves he was talking about them!
I believe it is considered good form to apologize for insulting someone, even if the insult was not intended, or was phrased in some way that was misunderstood.
Hmm. Are all of the people who say they are upset conservative?
Some Dem’s didnt like it much… Hillary Clinton and Harold ford say so:
From : http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N01412334&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-2
Bolding mine in both quotes.
Are all the folks registered as Republican, who say they are upset, lying? Are only the Dems telling the truth?
Is the incident being played for all it’s worth? You betcha. But Kerry only has himself to blame. Karl Rove didn’t make Kerry flub his lines. 