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Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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March 09, 2004
John Kerry's potty mouth: Stupidity or childishness?
Apologies in advance for the bad language
John Kerry is too stupid to be president. The meme has of course been that Dubya is dumb. President Bush, however, at least knows better than cursing in public.
Specifically, John Kerry has a potty mouth, and apparently has no sense how this will play. He famously was using the word "fuck" in a formal interview with Rolling Stone last year.
Worse yet, Drudge points out that Kerry has the words "fuck" and "shit" all over his official campaign website. The internal search engine on his site currently reveals seven pages with the F word, and five with the S word.
Now, I'm hardly in a position to criticize someone for cursing, nor would I necessarily care. I've certainly used my share of "bad" words.
However, I'm not running for president. If I were, I wouldn't be talking like that in my campaign. It's totally unprofessional and un-statesmanlike. Plus, he's talking in the broadest possible public forum, addressing and seeking to represent every man, woman and child in the US.
More significantly and specifically, how does this look to voters that Kerry's going to need? He's already starting out with the image of being a liberal from Massachusetts, and all of that type of baggage. Does he not realize that this type of petty thing will tend to alienate personally conservative voters even of a generally moderate to liberal political persuasion?
There are a lot of usually Democratic voters who are good church going Christians. How about some of those "older churchgoing black women" down South that get talked about so much, for example? Is this going to motivate them to get out and campaign for Kerry? Should it?
"Stupid" springs to mind as the first word to describe this potty mouth issue, but further reflection brings me to the word "childish." Surely he's smart enough to see something this simple an basic, but apparently he chooses not to.
Indeed, my first guess at the likely response of Kerry supporters would be that anyone who finds his cursing questionable should "grow up" or something of the like. There are serious issues facing the country, and you're worried about curse words, etc. If you think that Kerry's locker room language sounds like, well, a teenager in gym class rather than a serious contender to be leader of the free world, then YOU are immature. Grow up.
This strikes me as petulant, just refusing to acknowledge that other people have different perspectives on things that have to be considered if you intend to convince them to do what you want. If you want to be president, curbing the potty mouth seems like a VERY small concession to conservative voters that you would automatically do without prompting.
At the very least, saying "fuck" and "shit" in formal campaign materials demonstrates in a small but tell-tale way that you can't trust the guy's judgment on a basic level, before you even get to any ideology or policy issues.
posted by Al at 3/09/2004 06:52:00 PM
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