The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

Let's start with the Tall Guy, and work our way down. Sen. John Kerry, a towering figure in his own imaginings, and perhaps his wife's, has been caught in another lie, a big lie, or in his case, a tall one. Would that it were only a tall tale. But it raises disturbing questions about a disturbed character. Let us proceed.

The short of it is that in recent campaign remarks Senator Long John told Iowa women that his very first speech on the Senate floor was about a woman's right to choose. The Boston Globe now reports otherwise, namely that the young Sen. Kerry's initial Senate remarks were an attack on President Reagan's MX missile plans. Boy John's reaction? He must have been misled by staff, those forgetful no good incompentniks. Which, if memory serves, or at least based on what our staffers tell us, is the same excuse little Kerry offered about how it was that remarks attributed to him erroneously claiming to be Irish made their way into the Congressional Record. Those demon staffers are marvelous ventriloquists, incidentally, since several other times they had clueless Kerry mouthing off before a live audience about his sham Irish ancestry.

Kerry's generation made much about the Vietnam practice of fragging, though this seems to be the first case in which an officer has been caught shooting his own men in the back. And we do know how proud Kerry remains of his military trials. At one point as an angry young man he said he'd thrown away all his war medals. But that was a lie too, and thank goodness for that. Otherwise his adviser Chris Lehane, who earned his own medals fronting for Al Gore, would not have the goods in hand to depict his new guy as a war hero. "John Kerry was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts for his service to his country," he claimed the other day, fighting off the latest charge from attack chihuahua Howie Dean. See how quickly we've come from tallest to smallest?!

To be fair to Too Tall Kerry, in passing the buck he may all along have been displaying his redistributionist fiscal policies.

Are we beating up on a pygmy? Tomorrow will tell, as Kerry, Dean and seven in-betweeners get together in the biggest spectacle the world has seen since opening night for Aida. The debate agenda seems exciting. One sure topic will be museum reconstruction in Baghdad. Another: War-related environmental damage to desert areas of western Iraq. A related concern: pollution in the Pacific stemming from the double-parked Abraham Lincoln's presidential stop over. The biggest concern: the show will sound like: "Live From New York, It's Saturday Night Dead." Sorry, wrong Columbia. But there's hope anyway, assuming former McCainiac Mike Murphy wasn't going negative when he questioned ABC News's "allowing the lunatic under-card of Kucinich, Sharpton and Braun to clog up the debate." What's the difference between a lunatic under-card and a lunatic over-card? We're about to find out.

The real problem with tomorrow's format is that the debate won't include Daschle, Gore, and Ms. Hillary. If you're going to be cheap, might as well make it cheaper by the dozen.

It will, however, make sense for the Democrats to demand equal time to respond to President Bush's big day on the Lincoln off San Diego. In one scenario, one of the nine would fly onto the stage on a hand-glider, which he could claim he piloted himself. The major Democratic response could then be delivered from the deck of a river raft. Who ever did the honors would be chosen by lot. The rest could then circle the winner's raft in vacation kayaks and canoes. Afterward, the entire collection could lead an assault on Bob Jones U., just to show Democrats are ready to apply force in causes they believe in.

Since it's too early to declare a debate winner, we're forced, in a gesture those Dems would appreciate, to meet our quota regardless, without having to squander our extra 20-point reserves. For a moment we thought we should single out someone named Ashley Banfield, who apparently was vying to become the next Peter Arnett or Geraldo Rivera. But now if even NBC doesn't care for her, is there any reason to get upset by her recent denunciations of media war coverage as insufficiently disloyal? We do think, though, it would be a good career move if she and Christiane Amanpour were to star in the next series of "Tastes great, less filling" beer commercials. The NBA playoffs are still in their infancy, and the current Bud ads are already old.

But there's nothing like an old standby, an immense cauldron of bloviating talent still bubbling at 80 in pursuit of a Nobel literary prize. Now he thinks vanity will clinch it for him. No less embarrassed in London than a Dixie Chick, he penned a glorious op-ed for the U.K. Times. "We went to war just to boost the white male ego," it reads. Still the fox, he guessed correctly that most readers would assume he was blasting America for Iraq, especially after calling the U.S. president "more of a white male by at least an order of magnitude than any other boyo in America." Sure had them fooled, but not us. Just ask yourself: Has American writing ever produced a greater white male ego than Normal Mailer himself? Advertisements for Myself he titled one of his manifestos. He gloried in martial confrontations, exploiting boxing for his own white reasons, and more famously, turning a bayonet on one of his wives.

It's not a Nobel, but an EOW, and it goes to NM for the petty bitterness and jealousy he's displayed for missing out on the charge into Baghdad. Now he'll never get any chick to return his calls.

topics:
Environment, Military, Iraq, NATO