the truth hurts.

a lot of people are up in arms over this comment john kerry made at a dems rally in pasadena on monday: '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. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.'

the furor has forced kerry to backtrack; he now says that he effed up a joke his aides penned, which was supposed to be: 'Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.'

as per ewge, i have some thoughts.

odie. while it kinda sounds like kerry is making up a b.s. explanation to save himself after the fact, it's eminently believable that he could brutalize a phrase that much, as he has a nice track record of doing just that. in a debate during the notorious 2004 campaign, in reference to bush and iraq, kerry butchered the pottery barn rule, which refers to ill-advisedly conquering a country one must then squander incalculable resources on: You break it, you own it.

kerry, with the prime-time, national spotlight on him, conveyed this as, 'Secretary of State Colin Powell told this president the Pottery Barn rule: If you break it, you fix it. Now, if you break it, you made a mistake. It's the wrong thing to do. But you own it.'

i mean, the dude is just a clod, pure and true. he can snatch diced from the jaws of classy like no other.

nermal. but here's the thing; does it really matter if kerry botched the joke? isnt what he ended up saying - intentional or not - in essence quite true? isnt it, for the most part, the poor young men and women who either failed or were failed by our education system who are fighting this war? sure, there are many bright kids in the army who are there so that they CAN get a good, free education, and a salary, and conversely, there are many kids who do work hard and are still forced, because of socio-economic reasons, to serve. but fact remains that the majority of the rank and file members of the military are there because - for whatever reason - they did not succeed in the 'formal' education tract we have in this country (ok grades in high school, leading to college), and were thusly left without the option of college or a job, and so were pigeonholed into joining the armed forces. as i see it, kerry's quote amounted to: 'if you are born into disadvantaged circumstances, succeeding in your education is your best ticket out of being funneled into the army' - the implication or essence being 'it is our disadvantaged youths who are fighting this war.'

i mean, there's a reason army recruiters go into poor, disadvantaged neighborhoods to ply their deadly trade. they're looking for targets who do not have the option of college - again, for whatever reason - and they know where to find them. kerry wasn't saying 'if you're dumb, you join the military.' he was saying 'do what you can to avoid the military - namely, get to college.' those are two different concepts.

and so, i think this backlash against kerry is a gestalt case of 'thou dost protest too much.' we all KNOW, deep down, that we are all complicit in sending naive, poor kids far away to die for no earhtly reason, and inside, it's killing us. so when kerry said that aloud, he touched a nerve. not the nerve of 'we want to support our troops' mind you; it was the nerve of 'we know we're accomplices in killing our troops if we're doing anything but working to get them home immediately.' we want to repress this truth inside of us; we dont want to be reminded of it. we are depressed, not faithful citizens as a result of this war, and this uproar over kerry betrays that. we stand by while the president and his hawks lead lambs to the slaughter.

but no one wants to hear this truth. it cuts to the quick.

if only kerry had had these newfound stones two years ago. he prolly still would have lost, as that's his m.o., but at least people would have gotten a sense that he was genuine - something most people assuredly did not feel.

garfield. not for nuthin, but doesnt john kerry look like a tiki head? when i google-imaged tiki heads to prove this theory, i came up with tiki head tissue holders:


the best part about this is that it's fun to think of john kerry sobbing on election day '04, then grabbing tissues out of one of these, to cry into. i mean, THAT's a good joke!