"Did You Know He Was In...?"

Or, How a Cliché comes full circle



When my friend Jon Gibbons used to write for our University Newspaper, he promised every week to write about a particular subject, and begin every week's column with "I know last week I said I would write about ________, but..."


I open with this because I'm beginning to feel that way myself. I wanted to do a week of film reviews last week, and wrote one. It's getting to the point where I can't bother apologizing about it, because you've heard it all before. Like Jon's gimmick, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy: whatever I say I'm going to write about this week stands the least likelihood of actually being published on this blog. The difference is Jon was making a joke out of it, and I'm just being inconsistent.


I also open with this because it seems a fit analogy for the fun Kerry's been having with the Swiftboat Vets of late. I mind a time when it all America, democrat and republican, could have a good laugh when anyone said, in perfect mimicry of a debating TV pundit "Did you know John Kerry was in Vietnam?" Of course, this time was the primaries, when the donkeys hadn't married Kerry and the elephants weren't all that worried about whoever got nominated. Now only the Bush crowd still makes this joke, to fading laughter, and the anti-Bush crowd (what, you think anyone's actually voting for Kerry?) either sniffs disdainfully or launches into a tirade about Bush's National Guard service.


Frankly, I'm undecided on the Swift Boats issue. I wasn't "in-country" in '69 (my father wasn't even old enough), so I really can't say with any degree of certainty whether Kerry earned his medals or not. My guts tell me the events have been dramatized, but I could be wrong.


But frankly, that's not the issue, and this post by new-linksheet-member Adiemantus tells why:

If we believe Kerry's statement from thirty years ago that the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with the preservation of freedom, much less with the defense of America itself, then how can we possibly take him at his word now when he brags constantly that he "defended this country" by fighting in that war? Isn't that exactly the kind of assertion that young John Kerry called "criminal hypocrisy." But old John Kerry has never retracted young John Kerry's claim that the war in Vietnam had nothing to do with the defense of America's freedom. To the contrary, when given the opportunity to explain what he meant back then, old John Kerry contends that young John Kerry's claims were "honest":

When you try to have it both ways, you must admit to the tension and speak bluntly about each side, or you will provoke one or both sides trying to nail you down. That's what's happening here. The banality of Kerry's Veteran stance is turning to a hunt for the true John Kerry. And, like this humble blog, whatever he says the story is, that's the least likely to be the story.