It’s a stupid joke either way, but if he was really talking about the troops, the joke only makes sense if there’s a draft on or under consideration. Otherwise, poor students don’t necessarily wind up in Iraq, but could just as easily be working at the local fast food joint or sanitation department.
My initial reaction was that he was talking about the troops. But I’m going to hesitantly call this one for Kerry and credit his explanation – while he might have been dumb enough to crack a joke at the troops’ expense, I can’t believe any senator would be dumb enough to simultaneously imply that a draft might be in the works.
Do you have a link to a transcript? If he indeed was talking about Bush a lot, and this was inserted in the midst of that discussion, then it would lend credence to the idea that he meant it as a joke about Bush.
He didn’t call Bush an idiot, he called him a poor student. Which, in fairness, Kerry was as well. Kerry might be judged as overall smarter or better educated, but his GPA was almost identical to Bush’s.
After listening to it several times, I think the key word was “homework.” Kerry was trying to make a joke about Bush not doing his homework on Iraq. He just didn’t tell it very well.
Jaws was played in the Bond movies by Richard Kiel.
The original Lurch from TV was Ted Cassidy. Carel Struycken played the Lurch character in the Addams Family movies.
From a casual reading of the OP, I thought Kerry was referring to Bush. But maybe it sounded different in context.
Here is the thread from Bill Frist saying we should surrender to the Taliban.
Kerry’s comment won’t have any effect on the election. It will make news on Fox and probably be talked about on the right wing talk shows. No effect on the election. I can’t imagine this having enough legs to make it more than one day
I can’t make it any clearer than I already have. Perhaps you should ask your wife to explain it to you. When you’re having dinner at grandma’s house, and you don’t like what she cooked, do you go out of your way to tell her that the food sucked, even if she didn’t ask you?
Okay, everybody, let’s take a deep breath and calm down for a minute.
Kerry’s comment was either a “Bush bash” or a “troop bash”. So which was it?
Arguments for a Bush bash:
It was in the middle of a speech trashing Bush, and thus from context was clearly directed at Bush.
Millions of people make jokes about how dumb Bush is every day. I can’t recall hearing any recent joke about soldiers being dumb. Thus when you make a dumb joke, people are automatically likely to associate it with Bush.
No big-time politician would ever insult the troops, but they insult each other constantly.
Kerry in particular would not insult folks in the Army because he was in the Army.
Arguments for a troop bash:
The only one suggested thus far is that Kerry may have assumed that his audience was entirely anti-war and thus anti-military. But that doesn’t hold water. If he made such an assumption (and there’s no reason to think he did), then he’d also be assuming that his audience was anti-Bush, so he might as well toss them a Bush joke.
I don’t, seeing as that one rationalizes decisions or opinions, not facts. You can’t rationalize that the sky is blue. Now if you’re asking me to explain why Kerry has that level of education, I really can’t say, not being an expert on the life of John Kerry. Perhaps he ignored basic grammar and punctuation. In any case, having a lower GPA in college doesn’t prove Kerry stupider; it may just prove that he challenged himself more.
It would be nice. Of course the Republican media has harped on an imaginary faux pas from Al Gore every day for the past seven years, so there’s no reason why they wouldn’t flog a real one equally hard. I doubt it’ll affect swing voters much, however.
Nope, he doesn’t say that. That was rjung’s distorted interpretation. At best, he’s saying we should accept their surrender by bringing them into the gov’t. He doesn’t say turn the government over to them.
“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if, *like President Bush, you don’t do your homework, you get stuck in Iraq.”
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You make the call.
Myself, I think he meant to say the second, but he flubbed it. Hehe. As a career politician, what a boob. Let’s make him an ambassador to some important country were precise meaning is critical.
Myself, I think he meant to say the second, but he flubbed it. Hehe. As a career politician, what a boob. Let’s make him an ambassador to some important country were precise meaning is critical.
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Bah! Flubbed my italics and bolding coding… sorry.
The implication of calling him a poor student is that he stupid, and that you would have to be stupid to lead this country into the mess in Iraq. As noted, Kerry wasn’t a good student either, so there’s more than just grade-critiquing going on.
It will make CNN. It is on their web page now. However, it won’t make it for more than a day unless the Pubbies can spin this one hard. Larry King is scheduled to have Steve Bridges on as a guest.
I’m sure O’Reilly and the other Fox blowhards will try to spin this as the insult of the century. I think it is far too little too late.
I think the key thing about this whole issue is that the MSM is covering what should be a footnote story with headlines and extensive coverage. I think that they realized that their liberal bias was going to backfire on the Democrats. Why else would they violate their liberal mandate and blanket the airwaves and pages with this thing?
My question: Will coverage of this gaffe by Kerry backfire on the Republicans? And will that backfire subsequently backfire on the Democrats? And will we end up with a cascading series of backfires, resulting in a GD thread questioning how the whole thing will render the Democrats completely irrelevant?
