The Presidential Aspirations of John Forbes Kerry, RIP

Naturally, dear reader, strollers around Al Gore’s Internet are dying to know what we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” think about the latest political brouhaha—John Kerry’s recent call for American students to educate themselves, lest they wind up soldiers in Iraq. As one might imagine, such a sentiment has quickly catapulted the junior Senator from Massachusetts into the media limelight.

Now, we don’t mean to alienate our conservative friends, but we’re entirely willing to believe that John Kerry didn’t mean what he said. That is to say, he made a—horrible and entertaining—gaffe. It’s highly unlikely that Senator Kerry, a man who served in Vietnam himself, would ridicule the intellectual capabilities of American servicemen.

But, that said, we find it simply enraging that Senator Kerry resolutely refused to apologize for his wretched mistake. Instead, he launched a nonsensical partisan attack on those—reasonably—demanding contrition. This is not the action of a gentleman; rather, it positively stinks of “desperate loon.”

We mean, come on: His potshots at the Bush administration in the aftermath of his remarks make absolutely no sense. On the one hand, Kerry admits that he bungled a joke, which was aimed at excoriating President Bush, not the American military. (Why he would take aim at the education of the president, who attended the same schools as Kerry and had roughly the same grades, is another matter, but we’ll let that pass.) On the other hand, however, he blasts his critics for “distorting” his words.

But, as Senator Kerry’s first contention makes clear, his attackers aren’t “distorting” his words. They’re merely taking issue with his actual delivered statement, which he claims not to have meant. So, Mr. Kerry appears to be complaining that the Bush administration criticized his exact words. How dare they take his statements at face value!

This simply has to be the most asinine moment in recent American political history. All Senator Kerry has to do is apologize. But, seemingly stirred up by the MoveOn.org types on the “weblogosphere,” he has chosen to offer a bizarre retort instead.

It’s rather funny, of course. For years now, our friends on the political Left have yammered on about the festival of malapropisms that George W. Bush offers in his speeches. We’ve endured countless hoots and howls from our liberal friends at the rhetorical blunders of the Commander-in-Chief.

Yet now, the supposedly cosmopolitan John Kerry has offered perhaps the most unfortunate gaffe a politician can utter, and our buddies on the Left are positively leaping all over themselves to rush to Senator Kerry’s defense. Our current president may not be a genius at subject-verb agreement, but has he ever delivered a blunder this juicy, this mammoth? And at this crucial juncture in the political calendar?

Gee: Who’s stupid now?