Will Media Hold Kerry to Same Standard:
No Vietnam in TV Ads?
So, given the news media’s standard that any fleeting scenes of a day when 3,000 Americans were killed is inappropriate exploitation, can we expect the media to apply the same standard to John Kerry in the future about Vietnam where more than 50,000 Americans were killed? Kerry’s primary campaign has already showcased video of him in Vietnam, video a 1996 Boston Globe revelation suggests may have been from a staged re-enactment conducted by Kerry.
On FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume on Thursday, the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes mockingly quipped about any Kerry use of Vietnam: “‘57,000 Americans died there. How could he be so hypocritical to demean them by using them in an ad?’ That’s what you could argue. Of course it’s preposterous just as it’s preposterous these claims that are made by critics of Bush.”
Back on February 27, OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” column by James Taranto picked up on how in a column The Hill newspaper, a paper which covers Capitol Hill, National Review’s Byron York reported that “there is a movie about Kerry's Vietnam experience, produced and directed by John Kerry.” York described a 1996 report in the Boston Globe:
“Kerry told reporter Charles Sennott the oft-repeated story of the February 1969 firefight in which Kerry attacked the Viet Cong who ambushed his Swift boat....
“The future senator was so 'focused on his future ambitions,’ Sennott reported, that he bought a Super-8 movie camera, returned to the scene, and re-enacted the skirmish on film.
“It was that film, transferred to videotape, that Kerry played for Sennott.
"'I'll show you where they shot from. See? That's the hole covered up with reeds,’ Kerry said as he ran the tape in slow motion...
“Through hours of watching the films in the den of his newly renovated Beacon Hill mansion, it becomes apparent that these are memories and footage he returns to often,’ Sennott wrote.”
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