look at this Kerry crybaby:great prez material
Kerry has a bad case of the sulks
By Scot Lehigh, 3/12/2003
OHN KERRY and his staff have got their . . . um . . . Austrian up.
Senator and staff are steamed at The Boston Globe because of a story exploring a couple of incidents where Kerry could be interpreted as donning a mock shamrock, wielding a sham shillelagh. Pretending to be Irish, in other words.
As we now know, Kerry is Austrian on his father's side and Scottish on his mother's, though deep in the murky shadows of antiquity the first Forbes, laboring under an ancient tongue-twisting monster of a moniker, may have been in Ireland to quaff a Guinness or two.
Anyway, according to the Globe story, a St. Patrick's Day statement introduced in Kerry's name into the Congressional Record in 1986 alluded to his supposed Irish heritage. Meanwhile, a draft Kerry speech, seemingly from 1984, mentions that he is part English and part Irish, then jokes that when his Kerry ancestors first came to America, his English ancestors wouldn't hire them.
Kerry's current staff blames his past staff for those errors. Now, staffs are regular scapegoats, but it's certainly true that Kerry has, at various points, hired some odd and underwhelming aides.
I like the new, improved presidential campaign-era team. But my oh my, are they tetchy. After the Globe story came out, campaign manager Jim Jordan called it ''all at once distorted, insignificant, irrelevant, and vindictive.'' Certainly, it's the rare Jim Thorpe of a story that can qualify as that kind of quadruple threat.
So intense did Kerry's anger burn that he canceled a scheduled interview with our Washington bureau and dispatched Jordan to Boston to present his complaints in person. And if you hoped for an interview with Kerry? Ha! The very idea! One could take his place in a very long line, and apparently only have that request considered after a suitable cooling off period.
Now, you could argue that all this is pretty trivial stuff unless you work for the Globe. And you'd be right. But since this columnist does, let's mush on.
For the record, Jordan denies that an insidious case of the sulks has settled over John Kerry for President. ''There is no sulkiness or sense of resentment whatsoever,'' he maintains, his Southern graciousness mostly restored by a weekend's remove.
Perhaps, but given the strong earlier readings on my sulkometer, I remain suspicious. Certainly there have been other tantrums over the years. For example, when, some years ago, Jim Kerasiotes, then the Big Dig czar, slighted Kerry's efforts on the project in a Globe story, the junior senator called to complain. When Kerasiotes wouldn't retreat, Kerry grew annoyed.
''Well, eat (expletive) and stew in it,'' the senator instructed. And, having expressed his displeasure in that polished St. Paul's manner, he slammed down the phone.
As it happens, I've been on the receiving end of a Kerry semisulk a time or two myself.
Believe me, it is not a pretty thing. So long and weary come the lamentations that one can be forgiven for thinking the senator is channeling Jeremiah.
Still, let's give Kerry his due. As stories go, the Case of the Half-Hinted but Hollow Hibernian Heritage fell well short of being damning. Some 1982 campaign T-shirts that appropriated a slogan from an Irish political campaign, plus two slender, and plausibly explained, statements in a career that spans three decades do not an Irish political masquerade make.
Nor do I think Kerry can be properly taken to task, as some commentators have done, for failing to correct reporters when they have erroneously described him as Irish. That's a sin of omission, not commission: He's being accused not of gilding the shamrock but of not working actively to degild it.
Perhaps that's an example of Kerry playing things a tad too cute. But it's hardly a window into a major character flaw. Nor was it as though Kerry's roots were a complete mystery. Certainly his correct, non-Irish pedigree has been mentioned locally over the years, though usually in, ahem, other publications.
Bottom line: This is the kind of story that a paper publishes when one of its own is running for president to ensure that its scrub of the hometown candidate has been vigorous and complete. It certainly shouldn't be read as a sweeping indictment of Kerry's character, however.
But the sulking, while pretending not to? Now, that's another matter altogether.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 3/12/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
[ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version | Search archives ] |
