Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] [POLITICS] Is everybody asleep?

[Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Phillip Kelchen wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 November 2006 21:43, Jonathan King wrote:
>
>  > Well, actually...who cares? This happened days ago, Kerry apologized
>
>  > for the appearance of offense, but said it was the result of him
>
>  > garbling up the telling of a (pretty cheesy, if you ask me) joke.
>
>  > Whether or not you like or agree with any of this, it's quite frankly
>
>  > not important.
>
> Well, if you watched him, it did not look like he was trying to tell a 
> joke. He delivered it all with a straight face and tone, leading a lot 
> of people to believe that's what he meant to say. When it didn't have 
> the effect he intended, then he said that it was a botched joke. I can't 
> tell if Kerry is telling the truth or not if it really was a bothched 
> joke, but he just dissed on every person in the armed forces whether he 
> meant to or not. I find it hard to believe that hundreds of thousands of 
> soldiers and their families shrug it off as "not important."
>
> Sometimes comments that are made that are not even botched but simply 
> misinterpreted can lead to people getting in lots of trouble. If you 
> remember Trent Lott being forced to resign over saying at Strom 
> Thurmond's 100th birthday party that his state was proud of having 
> Thurmond represent it and that Thurmond would have been a good 
> president. Lott meant that Thurmond was a good leader and his views on 
> national defense were right, but the media interpreted it as racism as 
> Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in the 1940s. Of course Lott offered a lot 
> of apologies and clarifications, but he lost his position and career 
> because of it in spite of the apologies and whatnot. If that was a big 
> deal, then I can't possibly see how Kerry's explicit comment isn't one 
> too. I'm not calling for Kerry's ouster, only to have people think about 
> how they react to comments like this and make it have some modicum of 
> logic as to how the people that say them are treated. To quote Spock, 
> the current system is just not logical.
>
> Phillip

OK, you have me convinced.  They shouldn't have strung up Lott on the 
basis of one remark either.



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