hey kerry, heard any good jokes lately?
- QB
The worst joke to come out of Washington this week was not Kerry’s gaffe, but the
indignant facade adopted by the right wing in response. President Bush called
Kerry’s remarks “insulting” and “shameful”. The Republican National Committee e-
mailed reporters that it had posted an Internet advertisement that calls on Kerry to
apologize to U.S. Military personnel. The ad ends with “Our soldiers are waiting.”
Even middle of the road Senator John McCain and the increasingly apathetic
Hillary Clinton are demanding an apology from Kerry.
The weak-in-news-but-heavy-in-pot-stirring media is having a ratings feast
pushing their sound bites and giving little insight into the background story of Kerry’
s speech. The president even agreed to appear on Rush Limbaugh’s show to
skewer Kerry for his botched joke calling it, “an insult to our troops,” taking
Rush away from his own standup routine based on Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s
disease. Major news outlets NBC, CBS, The Washington Post, and USA Today, to
name a few, have all reported only the familiar sound bite: “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 stuck in a war in Iraq.”
The Kerry camp claims the quote a simple mishap, in actuality the text of the
speech read “…You end up getting [us} stuck in a war in Iraq, just ask President
Bush,” and that Kerry simply botched the joke. In a game of he said/she said, the
Republican Party is decrying this explanation as simply damage control by the
Kerry camp. And it could be. However, if you take the joke in the context in which it
was told, prefaced by a string of one-liners aimed at the White House and
President Bush; calling Bush’s true state, “a state of denial” and the like, it is
plausible that this was simply an amateur night attempt at comedy.
Perhaps we will never know the truth, and that is a shame, but not nearly as
shameful as our news media’s continual choosing of sensationalism over
investigative reporting. NBC’s Today show had co-hosts Matt Lauer and Meredith
Vieira doing little more than wondering out loud if Kerry meant to insult the
troops or not, replaying the same old sound bite and bringing no more insight to
the debate than two hillbillies sitting on a back porch with a jug and some chewin’
tobaccy. CBS’ The Early Show, did no more than the Today Show to get the full
story, instead relying on sound bites of Kerry’s joke and Bush’s bite “…the United
States military are plenty smart, and they are plenty brave...”
Whether Kerry’s speech was truly a botched joke, or a point badly made, the
media - to the joy of their advertising departments - choose to take the role of
rumor mill instead of turning this into an opportunity to see if there is something to
be said for the fact that a majority of enlisted men and women cite educational
opportunities as their primary reason for joining the military. Is there a problem
here, when in a country as rich as the United States of America, our youth from
lower economic levels must gamble their lives to receive a college education? Is it
time we joined a majority of industrialized countries and included Higher Education
in our national education system? But I don’t think you’ll see that debated
anytime soon on the Today Show or The Early Show, and probably not in USA
today either; at least not until Anna Nichole's life settles down a little.