Mitch Albom grows a pair, rips GOP (bad jokes vs evil jokesters) [View All]

[Bozita]

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061105/NEWS05/611050630/1082


Published: November 05. 2006 3:00AM

Metro Detroit
MITCH ALBOM: Politics of what is -- and is not -- a joke

November 5, 2006

BY MITCH ALBOM
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

With a week to go before a critical midterm election, the president, his supporters and most of the media acted as if the most important issue in America wasn't a costly war, failed international policies, failed domestic policies or the battle between religion and science. Instead, what apparently mattered most was a bad joke.

If you don't do well in school ... "you get stuck in Iraq." That was the punch line of an ill-advised, badly delivered attempt at humor by Sen. John Kerry, who has never been strong in that department.

He says he was trying to criticize the president, not the troops, and any careful reading of what he said supports that, as does common sense. Why would Kerry insult troops on foreign soil? For one thing, unlike George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Kerry actually was one. Besides, what would such a crack gain him politically?

But instead of recognizing that, instead of being bigger than that, the president himself joined right in with the chorus of bloggers, radio hosts and bee-buzzing media who happily glommed onto a tempest in a teapot, rather than face anything difficult, like where did all those guns we sent to Iraq disappear to?

more... (He's just warming up, folks!)