La Shawn, You’re Wrong.

La Shawn Barber, a conservative for whom I have a great deal of respect, disagrees with the assessment that John Kerry meant to insult the troops. Her defense of Kerry hangs on two points.

The first is that Kerry apparently meant to say something else entirely:

According to a “Kerry aide,” he was supposed to say this:

“I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.”

That’s a clear reference to Bush, who Kerry implies is dumb. But it came out like this:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

I’ll admit that it’s possible that Kerry meant to say exactly that. Except he didn’t. We cannot go on statements from anonymous staffers while Kerry himself has stood by his remarks as he spoke them. He’s made two statements on his insult and in neither one did he say “What I meant to say, and what was in my remarks was this [insert actual statement]…except that I got a bit tongue-tied and it came out badly. I apologize that I was not crystal clear about whom I intended to insult”.

No, what he has said is that it was a “botched joke” without telling us exactly what the joke was supposed to be. He’s been defensive, combative, and has steadfastly refused to apologize for even misspeaking. As I pointed out, his attempt at clarification only said that he would never insult the troops without insulting the President also.

Lashawn has a pretty weak argument here. Her second point isn’t much better.

Think about it, people. Do you really believe that John Kerry, a war veteran, thinks American troops are dumb or would say so publicly during a war in the midst of an election cycle? When I first heard about his remarks, I knew instinctively that he couldn’t have meant that. And I can’t stand the man!

Well, would John Kerry, a war veteran, accuse American troops of committing war crimes in the middle of a shooting war that was broadcast live on the nightly news every single evening? Why, it seems he would! Would John Kerry, a war veteran, accuse over 200 of his fellow Swift Boat veterans, a good number of whom actually served with him, of being liars and Republican shills? Yeah, he’d do that, too!

So what’s stopping him from calling the troops a bunch of uneducated rubes? Well, considering that his base – the base of his party – believes that very thing, I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t think it was a fine idea.

Remember, folks, John Kerry is the same guy who felt no shame about making a faux visit to Wendy’s to chat up some soldiers who obviously did not want him to interrupt their meal while his real and real expensive catered lunch was just outside in his campaign bus. What gives La Shawn or anyone else a reason to believe that John Kerry knows what the folks outside his own echo chamber really think? What makes them think he particularly cares?

For goodness sake. John Kerry sat in front of Congress and accused aleast three times as many American soldiers of committing war crimes. What’s the big deal, once you’ve done that, of calling 140,000 of them stupid?

Here’s what I got out of that speech. Kerry was attempting to be snide and snarky and he didn’t particularly care whether he insulted the President or the troops. He was in friendly territory where he knew that his flop sweat-intensive sense of humor would still get laughs. So he went for it and he got burned by it.

I don’t need anyone to tell me that I didn’t hear what I plainly heard. I’m certainly not going to take the word of some unnamed “Kerry aide” when the man himself has had two days to release what is claimed was the actual comments. It’s plain to me that John Kerry said exactly what he meant to say in exactly the way he meant to say it.

I find it unbelievable that La Shawn, whom I have met personally and know to be a woman of great intelligence and good sense, would get taken in my him. Clearly she is giving him the benefit of the doubt. So far as I am concerned, he used up that benefit 25 years ago and I have no doubt that he has no regard whatsoever for our soldiers. He has demonstrated that too many times for me to believe otherwise.

One last question from Lashawn:

Are there any voices of reason on the Right???

Yes, there are. But today, La Shawn Barber isn’t one of them.

(h/t: Instapundit)

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Category: Blogs and Blogging, Political Pontifications