John Kerry Apologizes... Kinda

As a combat veteran, I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

It is clear the Republican Party would rather talk about anything but their failed security policy. I don’t want my verbal slip to be a diversion from the real issues. I will continue to fight for a change of course to provide real security for our country, and a winning strategy for our troops.

I wish Tony Snow hadn't more or less promised that if John Kerry just apologized, it would all go away.

More... Warren Bell asks, if it's a joke, where's the gag?

I feel a certain call to speak out on this, as a person at least titularly involved in the creation and delivery of jokes. If you say something to me, and I look hurt, and you say, "Just kidding," that does not make what you said a joke. It has to be a joke in the first place. And Kerry's line is very clearly, both in its wording and in its delivery, not a joke. It's a warning. He's talking to students. He says it with an even graver-than-usual, flatter-than-usual tone, and he's telling them what can happen to them if they don't study hard. Is he warning them that they might someday be President and make decisions leading to a quagmire in Iraq? Of course not. You can get stuck in Iraq. Personally.

Beyond that, if the line were, as claimed, a joke about the President, it would theoretically need to contain at least some tiny reference to the President. I could rewrite it a dozen ways to make it a joke, though never a good one — "You can stay in school and study hard and do well, or you can coast through school like our President and end up stuck in Iraq." But that's not even close to what Kerry said.

Arrayed against that is the comedic genius known as John Derbyshire, whose idea of humor is to pollute the Corner with idiotic "math humor" (sneer quotes definitely intended) generally along the lines of "Integer? Why I hardly even touched her!!"

Bleg; Someone noted that Kos had linked a blog calling the military uneducated, but now I can't find it. Can you remind me where that was?

And was it Kos, or just a "diarist"?

Thanks.

Unfinished.

Kind of need that Kos link to finish the thought.

And... If this idea -- soldiers are nothing but life's losers forced to fight because they ain't know no better -- we have another strange cross-pollination of the idea from the left blogs to John Kerry.

John Kerry's own blog approvingly linked The Daily Kos...

And the Daily Kos, in turn, now links...

posted by Ace at 05:25 PM

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