Author Topic: Kerry Apologizes for 'A Botched Joke'  (Read 13766 times)

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Amianthus

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Re: Kerry Apologizes for 'A Botched Joke'
« Reply #60 on: November 03, 2006, 03:47:47 PM »
Who's in uniform?
U.S. armed forces are fairly representative of nation they serve

Sen. John Kerry told a Pasadena City College audience Monday, "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard and do your homework and you make an effort to be smart you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Was he saying our troops in Iraq are dumb?

No, no, ten thousand times no, he later explained. He meant that President Bush didn't work hard, do his homework, etc., so he got the nation stuck in Iraq. He was insulting the president, not the troops. Get it?

Since Sen. Kerry's speeches often sound like a bad translation from some obscure Middle European dialect, it's not hard to believe he tried to tell a joke and botched it. Nevertheless, Democrats cringed and Republicans rose in mock indignation to claim he'd insulted the nation's military and should apologize.

The stubborn Sen. Kerry didn't immediately say what was surely true: "I made a stupid misstatement and I apologize to our brave men and women in uniform if I made anyone think I don't have the deepest respect for them." So he left his critics free to whack him like a skinny piñata.

On Tuesday he explained himself and went on the attack. "I'm sick and tired," he said, "of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did. I'm not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium."

On Wednesday, at last, he apologized.

The moral to this story: If you're going to criticize someone for being dumb, don't do it in a way that suggests you are dumber.

But what of the issue Sen. Kerry seemed to raise: Are military recruits more poorly educated than their civilian peers?

The answer, in a word: No.

A recent study by Dr. Tim Kane, a labor policy specialist at the Heritage Foundation, found:

  • 98 percent of the military recruits since the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq are high school graduates, compared to just over 75 percent of their peer group in the U.S. population.
  • Whites make up 77.4 percent of the population and 75.8 percent of all recruits.
  • The South's military tradition endures: About 38 percent of the U.S. population resides in Southern states, but Southern representation among recruits was 43.8 percent in 2005.
  • The armed forces don't gather income data on recruits, but judging by the ZIP codes they come from, the distribution for recruit household incomes is very similar to that of the overall youth population. Proportionally, both poorer and richer areas provide slightly fewer recruits, and middle-income areas provide slightly more.

The bottom line, according to Dr. Kane: The men and women now joining our armed forces are mostly white, middle class and better educated than their peers. For every two recruits coming from the nation's poorest neighborhoods, there are three from the richest neighborhoods. It is by no means a poor, dumb fighting force.



© 2006 Charlotte Observer and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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The_Professor

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Re: Kerry Apologizes for 'A Botched Joke'
« Reply #61 on: November 03, 2006, 05:52:31 PM »
Way to go, Ami. Good research!

sirs

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Re: Kerry Apologizes for 'A Botched Joke'
« Reply #62 on: November 04, 2006, 12:29:10 AM »
Who's in uniform?
U.S. armed forces are fairly representative of nation they serve....The moral to this story: If you're going to criticize someone for being dumb, don't do it in a way that suggests you are dumber.

But what of the issue Sen. Kerry seemed to raise: Are military recruits more poorly educated than their civilian peers?
The answer, in a word: No.
A recent study by Dr. Tim Kane, a labor policy specialist at the Heritage Foundation....The bottom line, according to Dr. Kane: The men and women now joining our armed forces are mostly white, middle class and better educated than their peers. For every two recruits coming from the nation's poorest neighborhoods, there are three from the richest neighborhoods. It is by no means a poor, dumb fighting force.

Ouch.  That's gotta hurt.  Nice post, Ami    8)
"The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle