NEW YORK -- The other day, while cruising the channels in an
attempt to avoid the spectacle of a mass love-in that had all the
sincerity of a hooker's kiss to her last customer of the night (in
other words, the Democratic Convention), as happens so often in
life, we stumbled upon the very thing we sought to avoid. What we
saw in the few minutes that were bearable seemed like a scene on
visiting day at a mental institution. There was the ketchup widow,
hands clasped together in the manner that Indians do when greeting
each other, addressing the gawkers, in what, in another time and
place, would be called "speaking in voices." Hands clasped, her
face devoid of expression, she spoke in a monotone that seemed to
be coming from some place, far on the other side of sanity, or
maybe she had seen The Manchurian Candidate one too may
times.
In fairness to her, if her husband were elected President, she
would fit right in with some of the other first ladies: Hillary
Clinton who communed with the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt and Nancy
Reagan who tried to control the president via her astrologer.
One thing about Ms. Heinz Kerry ("My legal name is still Teresa
Heinz. Teresa Heinz Kerry is my name...for politics."). She
announced, "Everybody has a prenup. You have to have a prenup." A
prenuptial agreement is an agreement in which a person who has
money demands that the lesser-monied person they are about to marry
sign on the dotted line because they do not trust that person to
not go after their money in a way that the law would allow.
So now, we have a most unusual situation. Ms. Heinz, or Ms.
Heinz Kerry, is basically saying, "I insisted upon a prenuptial
agreement because I don't trust him, but I want the rest
of the country to trust him. This is a variation of the Clinton
theme, where he did to the country what he was doing to Monica
Lewinsky, but was apparently not doing to Hillary.
Talking about the nomination, John Kerry (whose wife, we
suppose, lets him use the name Kerry "for politics" since she
apparently owns everything else in the family) is running, it would
appear, primarily on his war record. Now let's get real! Kerry was
in Vietnam for four months thirty-five years ago.
Now we would not want to have been in Vietnam for four days, but
something that happened so long ago over such a short period of
time is not going to persuade us to vote, or not vote, for a
person. If we are going to reach into the past for his military
experience, we could choose something in the more recent past that
dealt with the very same subject. In 1971, Kerry, before Congress,
called these very same soldiers in Vietnam, "war criminals," and as
Eric Fettmann, quoting historian Mackubin Owens, wrote, "[Kerry]
slandered an entire generation of American soldiers."
Kerry has had little to say about his undistinguished, almost
twenty-year record of "ying and yanging" in the Senate. He should
be more interested in engaging in a dialogue over this than talking
about driving a boat up a river three and a half decades ago. That
boat is not going to sail him into the presidency -- just ask Bob
Dole or John McCain, who were real heroes.
*****
Over two weeks ago, Jackie substituted for radio host Jim
Bohannan. On that show we discussed the religion of Islam and The
Koran. Our point was a simple one: obviously not all Muslims are
evil people, but the basis of the religion itself, fairly put, is
not one of love and charity, as are the basic tenets of our
Judeo-Christian religions. Simple put, there are Jews that eat ham
and shrimp, but the religion does not direct cutting their heads
off for doing so. There are Catholics who do not go to Mass every
day, but the Pope does not call them "Infidels." And we must make
the uncharitable observation that it is not a group of Norwegian
cub scouts that are slicing the heads off people around the world,
and blowing up women and children who happen to be in their way on
their trip to the 40 virgins waiting for them in terrorist
heaven.
On the radio show we referred to a previous article we had
written on the subject. On the show, time did not allow us to give
the specific citations, chapter and verse to each quotation, as we
did in the article itself. We received over 400 responses,
virtually all supportive, a bit more from Christians than Jews.
There were but a handful of negative ones and two that pointed out
that we dangled a participle. CAIR, an Islamic organization, filed
a complaint with the FCC and with the radio network. Apparently,
they believe that the First Amendment only applies to them and not
to us. The network had them on the air to present their side of the
story. We are not at all unhappy about this, in fact we applaud the
fact that they had an opportunity to make their case, such as it
is, over national radio. We guess, that is one of the differences
between us and them.
We received many interesting responses to our comments, amongst
which was an article written by Dr. Anis Shorrosh, a Palestinian
Muslim by birth. Dr. Shorrosh comments about the popularity of
Islam with African-Americans, "...Strange enough, no one tells the
African-Americans that it was the Arab Muslims who captured them
and sold them as slaves, nor the fact that in the Arabic the word
for black and slave is the same, 'Abed.'"
It would be a final, terrible and sad irony that if
African-Americans, who literally for hundreds of years have been
exploited, mistreated, and suffered, should, after all of these
tribulations, when they have fought for and gained their rightful
place in society, now fall for a con-job from these, often evil,
people, who, we believe, simply wish to exploit them once
again.
topics:
John McCain, Religion, Islam, Law, Military, Africa
