The hypocrisy of John Kerry: Mr. Smallweed goes to Washington
By John Burtis
Monday, April 24, 2006
John Kerry has been really pretty doggone busy lately, out there on the hustings in his native, or is it naïve, Beantown, dragging himself from one declamation to the next.
Formerly known as "Live Shot," he regularly stuck his hirsute and finely coiffed snoot in front of every local camera he could locate--gathered to cover the collapse of a set of bleachers in an itinerant circus, the escape of an insatiate pet constrictor, the opening of the latest E-Z pass tollbooth on the Pike, a dumpster fire in the Back Bay, the mauling of an errant penguin by a tiger in the Stone Zoo, a protest over the increase of wholesale lobster prices at the dock, the lack of adequate fire extinguishers on the airport ferry, or the grave neighborhood concerns levied over the location of certain fire hydrants in Louisburg Square--to render piteously long and wearisome pronouncements on the tragedies associated with the situations being uncovered.
"I find it unconscionable today…" he’d intone, or, "It is altogether too horrifying to contemplate that…," and, "I am ashamed to state that in America today," he’d gamely stultify about these manifold sins visited on the citizens of the City on the Hill.
You’d swear the man had a police and fire scanner in all of his enormous SUVs, including the Range Rover, he’d materialize so quickly at the every scene of every misadventure.
"Don’t you know who I am?" he’d blather as he’d shove--cups of coffee flying--with his best St. Paul’s School stiff arm, his way through the growing throng of onlookers, firefighters, cops and media mavens, before pulling the camera man and the lens towards his care worn visage for a somber soliloquy on the unfolding events.
With five channels of local Boston news on the air covering the capture of a missing cayman, you could enjoy a like number of angles of John Kerry pontificating on the cornering and apprehension, a la Curt Gowdy, while nursing an ale at the Brown Derby, then realizing that the senate must be in recess by this unbridled coverage.
This past week found Mr. Kerry in extremely fine fettle, celebrating the 35th anniversary of his great congressional Winter Soldiers fabrication and laying the groundwork for his fabulous return to Congress after the Easter, or as some wag just put it, the kindergarten break.
He began it all by distressingly denouncing the coddling of a convicted child rapist in federal custody in Devens because the man was receiving…counseling, described in every yellow dog paper as a Democratic birthright.
"I want to ensure … counseling will never serve as a get out of jail free card," the junior senator scribbled gravely in the course of a series of missives traded with the federal bureau of prisons, overlooking the fact that the 47-year-old man in question is looking at a total 50 years in the can, between the feds and Pennsylvania, virtually insuring that his days on the street, and further live shots for Mr. Kerry in this incident, are over.
Having wrung the cramps from his hands after these torpid ideographic exertions, Mr. Kerry got down to brass tacks and began a series of heavy liftings for his favorites--mutinous armchair generals, Pinch Sulzberger, John Murtha and the anti-war crowd.
Having e-mailed his op-ed piece to the Boston Herald Friday, setting the stage, before he delivered his anti-war speech at Faneuil Hall on Saturday on what he called "an assault on the right to dissent", the anniversary of his original assault on Congress, Mr. Kerry charged the Bush administration with a dreadful smear campaign against the generals in his Saturday speech, saying that criticism of them, "is cheap, and that is shameful," called for a total withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, and is mirroring his own early activities.
Mr. Kerry remains anchored in the past, an anti-war candidate at heart, wedded to its rhetoric of hate, wearing a tattered field jacket, listening for the applause from the masses of the disaffected, hoping for the destruction of another president, for another claim of progressive victory, for one more war lost, one more raised fist.
Unlike Jimmy Stewart’s Mr. Smith, who went to Washington representing the Boy Rangers, stood for something grand and brought down the powers of evil through his own perseverance and the use of a filibuster, Mr. Kerry spoke for the highly inventive Winter Soldiers and whet his appetite for national publicity, peddled lies and the stories of totally fabricated atrocities before a befuddled Democratic Congress and heaped a level of opprobrium on millions of Vietnam vets, marking many men with the mark of Caine, which dogs them today.
Yes, Mr. Kerry, unlike most veterans he has damaged with his invented tales of barbarity, of arms and legs held aloft, of heads, can afford to go to Washington in style, in a caravan of six upscale SUVs, unlike the vast majority of his military brothers, who must walk or take the bus. His riches ease his conscience.
But in the end, all of his live shots, cheap shots, smears, and perjuries of the past mean just one thing–Mr. Smallweed is going to Washington, not Mr. Smith.
Without the wealth and the Winter Soldiers, his is a life writ small.
canadafreepress.com |
