another great catch by the Daily Howler

[Cocoa]

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh072904.shtml

SMILE-A-WHILE: How inept is your national press corps? The doctor was IN as Klein typed his personality profile of Kerry. Why is Kerry so weirdly aloof? It can all be explained, Klein says. Eureka! The doctor had figured it out. Kerry’s just “ a proper Bostonian:”

KLEIN: Eventually Kerry did mention Diana's situation in some speeches but only after his sister began to talk about it publicly. That confirmed something I had long suspected: Kerry is a very proper Bostonian. His apparent aloofness is actually an antique form of New England propriety. His reluctance to wear his religious faith on his sleeve is part of this ethos, as is his formal, hortatory Sunday-sermon speaking style. A strong sense of honor comes with the territory, a discomfort with swagger and braggadocio. “I once was with Kerry watching Bob Dole on television,” recalls David Wade, an aide who is usually found in Kerry's immediate proximity. “Someone was asking Dole about how he was wounded in World War II. Dole wouldn't do it. He said, 'You just don't talk about those things.’” Kerry, who was wounded three times in Vietnam, nodded his head vigorously, as Wade remembers, and said, “That's how it is.”


Did you follow the reasoning there? You can tell that Kerry is a “proper Bostonian” because he reacts to things in the same way as Dole—Dole, who grew up in Russell, Kansas! Yes, that is what this paragraph says, and no, you can’t parse the nonsense away. But so what? Klein typed it up, then handed it in. An editor thought it made good, solid sense. Then he and Klein went to a party.

[realFedUp]

1. Bob's got the goods

Daily Howler is the place to go
for facts on the fiction delivered
up by pundits at convention.

[soupkitchen]

2. Actually its the writer from the Howler who is inept, at least as a reader

Klien's main point is that Kerry is a proper Bostonian defined by a strong sense of honor and a discomfort with swagger and braggadocio.
He at no point says that only Bostonians have these qualities, Therefore, when he introduces the Dole story his intent is simply to show Kerry's aversion to swagger and braggodocio. I mean. if I say of a Jewish person I know that he is as honest as Jesus Christ, I'm not saying he's a Christian. If I say that as a Proper Bostonian Kerry is as reluctant as Bob Dole to discuss his war experiences,it doesn't detract from Kerry's modesty if Bob Dole is from Kansas.
And to read it any other way is to deliberately misread it.

[Cocoa]

3. it's questioning this type of analysis

it's dubious in the first place for journalists to throw around this kind of amateur psycho-geographical analysis, and then becomes downright absurd when Klein brings in Bob Dole.

At least he could have eased the transition with some claim about how "proper Bostonians" share this trait with "rural Kansans," maybe comment on the irony or whatever.

[stopbush]

4. Funny how coming from an area of the country (New England)

where the American revolution was launched, prosecuted and won makes you *out of the mainstream,* while coming from the South - which treasonously seceeded from the Union - gives you "heartland values."

Why is that?