Another excellent blog entry regarding the joke kurfufal.

[Island Blue]

This is great in and of itself, but the fact that it was posted on the blog of an associate editor at The Tuscaloosa News in Alabama makes it even better.

http://stevensonblog.tuscaloosanews.com/default.asp?item=268371

Kerry, media obscure real story of the week

The three days of foolishness over what John Kerry really meant when he botched a joke about George W. Bush, with one spurious interpretation being he was insulting "our troops," obscured the real story out of Iraq this week -- the those troops are now taking orders from Iraqis and militant militia leaders.

If you will recall, and I know it is difficult to do with the coordinated attacks against Kerry, who isn't even running for anything this year, one of our soldiers was taken hostage last week by militants loyal to militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, the virulently anti-American cleric whose Mehdi "army" controls the vast, two million-strong Sadr City slum adjoining Baghdad.

Our army wanted him back, of course, just as Kerry want -- and got -- his men back while under fire in Vietnam. So we cordoned off Sadr City, set up check-points and a curfew and began to search for our missing man. But on Tuesday, the American forces began to roll up the razor wire, drove away from the checkpoints and left the largest and pulled out of Sadr City. Why? Because we were told to by the Iraqis

...

As for the controversy over Kerry's botched joke and the way it was reported and interpreted by supposedly credible commentators, I, having covered such well-planned events as the campaign stop Kerry was making for a fellow Democrat, smelled a rat from the beginning. You see, the advance press people almost always hand out the politician's remarks in advance and it seemed to me, all anyone would have to do to determine what Kerry really meant was to check the advance transcript. And sure enough, a reporter who did just that said what Kerry meant to say, quoting his prepared text, is that if you don't work hard in school, "you end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

It would be great to have a collection of these opinion pieces, LTTEs and blog entries posted somewhere at JohnKerry.com. Or at least archived some how just in case anyone ever feels the need to drudge the incident up again. (Not that anyone is likely to do that. :sarcasm: )

[karynnj]

1. Your idea to put these blogs/editorials

The media is still trying to define this in the RW way. Brokaw was just on Imus with his "version" of how Kerry should have apologized on Imus - the problem was it included saying that he knew from when he wore the uniform how it felt when people at home didn't take what they did seriously. He agreed with Charles that some people didn't understand what Kerry was saying.

He also criticized the Kerry people for not getting the sentences before it out - yet this shows they had the entire prepared text.

[wisteria]

2. I saw that too. Another case of not really knowing what is going on

and bullsh*ting. Of course, he wasn't going to say it was a set up by the administration and the media, so he blamed Kerry's staff. :mad: