The John Kerry Foot-In-Mouth Award
I love John Kerry. Like so many of us - I fought very hard to try and get him elected in 2004. Despite his best endeavors to cock it all up.
Point of record. I saw the massive danger of the Swift Boat attack the moment that Drudge flashed word of the forthcoming book on his loathsome front page. Mid-afternoon on Thursday August 5th 2004. And -- with help from Doug Brinkley -- I wrote and rushed out "A Swift Lie" -- a counter-attack on John O'Neill that appeared on Salon.com a few hours later. (Kerry rushed out his own defense - and got it out there it a mere TWENTY ONE DAYS later. I guess John Kerry thought that Bob "Zero-For-Eight" Shrum knew better than the vast majority of us...)
I fought very hard for Kerry. So I think I've earned the right to say this.
JOHN KERRY -- WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?! (Or not)
If you want to join Oprah Winfrey in endorsing Barack Obama - you might want to think of a better turn of phrase than:
"Barack Obama isn't gonna just break the mold, together we are going to shatter it into A MILLION PIECES"
Ouch! A lovely reminder of one of Oprah's NOT-SO prudent endorsements to the American people.
"A Million Little Pieces" - the fabricated memoir by James Frey.
A reminder that Oprah's often astute judgment ("The Great Debaters" -- which she produced -- is a SUPERB film) can sometimes be a little off-base. That she can sometimes be taken in by an effective smooth-talker and become careless and effusive in her endorsements. And that it is therefore prudent for us to think very carefully about Oprah's endorsements and do our own due diligence about her recommendations.
Oprah Winfrey giving the American public one of her famous endorsements
So I wouldn't use that "Million Pieces" wording when Oprah is around.
Not so much WIN-Frey as LOSE-Frey.
Indeed -- given John Kerry's recurrent Foot-In-Mouth habit - Barack Obama may wish to be sparing in rolling Kerry out at future events...
Incidentally - on that incident in October 2006 when Kerry made a joke that misfired -- my complaint with Kerry was not WHAT he said. I could see that Kerry had clumsily mis-spoken and that Bush & Rove pretended to misconstrue it for electoral gain.
My beef with Kerry was that -- yet again -- he was so freaking SLOW in realizing the danger of his stupid gaffe. And even slower in effectively dousing the flames. His first action was to release A WRITTEN PRESS STATEMENT instead of getting in front of the TV cameras and killing the story stone-dead! Apparently Kerry had learned NOTHING about how the modern world works in the two years since he allowed himself to be Swift-Boated.
For this stupidity and its danger to ALL Democratic candidates in the November 2006 mid-terms -- he was rightly chided by Senator Hillary Clinton -- who had the judgment to see how damaging that gaffe could be to our election efforts.
Senator Barack Obama apparently did NOT have the judgment to call for Kerry to remedy this mistake. There is no statement I can find from Obama on the topic. (If anyone can find one -- please post it and I will stand corrected.)
Perhaps he was just "present" and didn't have an opinion.
Perhaps he didn't want to offend John Kerry. Just in case...
But Kerry has NOT forgiven Hillary Clinton for putting the Democratic Party in front of John Kerry's pride.
And perhaps there was a little of THAT on display today.
A Million Little Pieces of it...
Endorsed by Oprah Winfrey