Theatre Isn't Dead (It Just Smells Funny)

''The Gaffe' and the Gaffer

( "Opposition is true friendship." )

So... the character called John Kerry made a 'gaffe'. And the character called George W. Bush, dressed (by his costume designer) in a green open-necked shirt, immediately shot back with an 'angry' riposte on a stage set consisting of ranks of applauding uniformed heroes:

"The members of the United States military are plenny smart and they are plenny brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology."

In a later scene, that plain-talking God-fearing Texan (played by a Harvard- & Yale- educated scion of the East Coast elite) appeared in the Oval Office in his usual suit & tie to say "nookular". Some people on the left side of the theatre found this funny. Others felt the joke was wearing a bit thin.

Jeff Wells on John Kerry in November 2005.

Jeff Wells on John Kerry in November 2006:

"While uselessly stumping in California for designated sap Phil Angelides, Kerry horks a virtual gob in the eye of America's volunteer army, as if to scream "Over here!" to the Republicans' sputtering Noise Machine. It's enough to make even the relentlessly conventional Wonkette suggest, if only for rhetoric's sake, that "it’s like the White House is paying Kerry to be out in public screwing things up."

Kerry says he's earned another chance to run for President. Doing his bit to scuttle the Democrat's "Big Mo" in the final week so the right's talking heads can talk up a comeback scenario enabled by voting machines playing the margins could be his way of proving again his value. And since this is theatre, the significance of the outcome lies chiefly in the personal fortune of the players. Do well with your part, and you may get a juicier role.

Like I wrote a couple of years ago, watching an earlier Kerry flame-out, "Skull and Bones remains to some a silly issue, but an issue it will remain so long as the question 'Do you know General Russell?' can send an old boy into a trance faster than 'Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?'

We can't say that Kerry took the call. We can only judge his actions, which appear to be those of a man who knows his part well."

(From Rigorous Intuition.)

But let's presume for the sake of argument that the elections will not be rigged and that the Democratic leadership really wants to win. What are they offering an electorate that's sick of the Bush Gang and sick to death of the War on Terror? Here are the last two lines of Kerry's 'fiery' response to criticisms of his 'gaffe':

"No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq."

So the fiery oppositional Democrats' plan is quite clearly stated: a) to 'stay the course' in Afghanistan; b) to get moving and win in Iraq.

I wonder how many antiwar voters will vote Democrat and then wonder why the War still hasn't stopped. And I wonder if the curtain will ever go down on this bloody show.