Kerry and Bush: The Joke's on Us
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by Dave Lindorff
There are so many things to say about the John Kerry gaffe, it's hard to know where to start.
Just the idea of President Bush’s scolding Kerry and telling him that "words are important" is beyond belief. This, after
all, is the guy who for five years has been warning Americans about various "nookular" threats facing us. A guy who has his
every utterance scripted for him and yet still manages to screw up his lines with regularity. A guy who had to have a cueing
device hidden in his ear canal during his debates with that selfsame Kerry, so he'd avoid just standing at the lectern and
saying "duh" in response to questions.
But let's not stop there. Kerry himself was right in character. He clearly didn't write his own joke, and was too slow-witted
to get the joke he was supposed to deliver, which reportedly was that if students didn't work and study hard might end up
someday being ignorant incurious leaders like President Bush, and getting the country into another mess like Iraq. It wasn't
much of a joke, but by bunging it up, Kerry revealed his Boston Brahman snobbishness, saying instead that if students didn't
study hard, they'd end up in Iraq--the clear implication being that he thinks that the US troops fighting and dying in Iraq
are there because they’re uneducated.
Kerry, the candidate who voted for the war but opposes the war, who voted for funding for the war and voted against it,
is now trying to say that the joke he told is not the joke that was written for him, but that's not going to work. He certainly
should have understood instantly what he was saying when he said it, and realized how smarmy it was. What we're left with
is the unavoidable conclusion that Kerry doesn't know anything about what he's saying when he says it. Like Bush, he's just
reading a script, and like Bush, he's bungling it badly.
That said, Republicans should be taking no pleasure in this. While it's always fun to see a stuffed-shirt like Kerry get exposed and humiliated, the president is in no position to mock.
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Besides,
there is the reality that most of the men and women fighting and dying
for the US in the deserts and urban jungles of Iraq and Afghanistan are
there, not because they are stupid or intellectually lazy, as Kerry
said, but because they were too poor to pay for their college or to
have their parents pay for their college the way Bush's and Kerry's
parents did for them. They're there because Bush and his Republican
Congress have for six years slashed federal aid for higher education,
driving students into ROTC programs, where they became easy pickings
for Bush's wars upon graduation. They're also there because people like
Bush and Kerry have conspired to encourage American firms to ship
well-paying jobs overseas, leaving students with little but retail
clerical work and waitering to help them pay their bills.
As
for the active duty troops fighting alongside them, while some may just
be patriotic kids from military families who wanted a little
excitement, and some may be sadists with a passion for killing, torture
and fancy weaponry, most are there because there were no other jobs
available. They're not stupid, John. But neither are they happy to be
there, George. They're there because both of you have betrayed them in
the name of "globalization."
In
the end, the joke's really on us, because ever since the presidency of
Ronald Reagan, we Americans have accepted uncritically the idea that
our political leaders will be simply animated noisemakers for
transmitting the carefully scripted "talking points," sound bites,
polemics and yes, even jokes written for them by a backroom group of
political strategists--all presented as though they were coming from
the brains of the people doing the talking.
We get the government, and the politicians, we deserve.
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Let’s at least be thankful for the laughs they give us, inadvertently.
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