WASHINGTON — Most informed Americans have heard about “anger
management counseling.” It is a widely prescribed therapy for those
who lose their temper uncontrollably in public or in private or
while watching the Hon. Henry Waxman pretend to be the late Andrei
Vyshinsky, prosecutor at the Moscow Show Trials. Well, during the
past few days I have been following the Hon. Jean-Francois Kerry’s
(D-Mass.) controversy with Boone Pickens, and I believe I am in
need of “laughter management counseling.” Every time I think of
this ponderous stone-headed senator bellowing phony pieties, I
suffer a dreadful agitation in the funny bone. I only hope that my
health insurance is applicable.
As reported late last week, billionaire investor and
environmentalist Boone Pickens, during an address at The
American Spectator’s 40th Anniversary Gala, promised to pay $1
million to anyone who could find error in the Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth ads, which he helped bankroll in 2004. The ads were
produced to expose the braggart Kerry’s incautious claims about his
service during the Vietnam War — that would be the war Kerry
participated in briefly before coming home and traducing his fellow
comrades in arms with vicious lies and distortions before the
Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Remember his more recent claim
that he supported our war in Iraq before he opposed it? Inconstancy
is in his DNA.
Pickens is perplexed that the majority of Kerry’s fellow Swift
Boat pilots from Vietnam, who considered Lt. Kerry a ham and a
fraud while serving with them and a louse when he maligned them,
have been made out to be liars. In our political culture, polluted
as it is by liberal bugaboos and shibboleths (we call it the
Kultursmog), “Swift Boat” has become a hate term not
unlike “McCarthyism.” In the Kultursmog it has come to
mean destroying a person by misrepresenting the person’s record.
But the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did not misrepresent Kerry’s
hoked up record, not in their ads, one of which presented a tape of
Kerry’s lurid testimony before the Senate. Pickens knows the ads
were accurate, and he wants to demonstrate to the American people
that they were. Send him the errors in the ads, and he will send
you a cool million.
His challenge was not out in the media for more than a few hours
than the Great Massachusetts Braggart responded with a letter to
Pickens. Typically it is rude, beginning brusquely with “Mr.
Pickens,” no Dear Mr. Pickens for Kerry. The letter is also
delusional. Kerry writes as though by acknowledging Pickens’s
challenge he is entitled to the $1 million. “While I am prepared to
show they,” Kerry writes of the Swift Boat Veterans, “lied on
allegation after allegation, you have generously offered to pay one
million dollars for just one thing that can be proven false. I am
prepared to prove the lie beyond any reasonable doubt.” In Kerry’s
next sentence he tells Pickens where to send the check. I kid thee
not.
Kerry’s presumptuous letter has gotten plenty of attention in
the media, but nowhere have I seen it pointed out that Kerry has
offered absolutely no evidence that his Swift Boat critics lied. In
fact, he has yet to state what the critics’ errors might have been
in their ads. Pickens responded immediately, politely asking to see
the journal allegedly maintained by Kerry in Vietnam and “Your
military record, specifically your service records for the years
1971-1978, and copies of all movies and tapes made during your
service.”
As I said earlier, Kerry was a shameless ham in Vietnam and he
remains one. At this writing Kerry has failed even to reply to
Pickens, perhaps with good reason, Pickens ended his letter by
asking Kerry to make a “commitment. If you cannot prove anything in
the Swift Boat ads to be untrue…make a $1 million gift to the
charity I am choosing — the Medal of Honor Foundation.” Both men
are very rich. Pickens made his fortune by years of brilliant
investments. He is one of the world’s leading authorities on oil.
Kerry made his fortune by marrying it, twice — most recently to a
woman who made her fortune similarly, through marriage.
Kerry has been whining about the rough treatment he received
from his former comrades ever since they exposed him in the 2004
election. All the guff in his letter is typical of him: boastful,
presumptuous, sophistical. Henceforth, I think I shall forego
teasing him about his Francophile pretensions by calling him
Jean-Francois. Rather, I shall call him Crybaby Kerry. Moreover, I
shall start a clock on The American Spectator’s website
(www.spectator.org) and let it tick until Crybaby Kerry supplies
Pickens with his Vietnam journal, his military records, and proof
that the Swift Boat Veterans lied in their ads. Oh, and let us keep
the Crybaby Kerry clock ticking until he comes up with his $1
million for the Medal of Honor Foundation. Upon filing this column
my Crybaby Clock will begin ticking at Spectator.org. Now if only I
could get my laughter under control.
