The Right Coast

August 20, 2004
 
Let's get to the bottom of this
By Tom Smith

Call me idiosyncratic, but to me the most troubling accusation that John O'Neill has made is, well, to quote his interview on the Lehrer News Hour:

JOHN O'NEILL: No. What we've said is his first and third Purple Hearts, which he used to leave Vietnam very early after about four months, we've said that there is almost conclusive evidence that those were fraudulent, that is that they resulted from self-inflicted wounds.
JIM LEHRER: Self-inflicted? He intentionally wounded himself?
JOHN O'NEILL: Oh, no, he didn't intentionally wound himself. He threw grenades, in one case fired and in another case threw a grenade.
They were very close to him and he wounded himself with his own grenade. He didn't mean to.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's stop here --

Let's stop, indeed, before this gets out of hand. From earlier in the interview, we learn said grenade accident caused Kerry to be wounded in his nether regions. Now, this is my point. In politics, love and life, there is such a thing as luck. It is a cruel fact, but there are people who throw grenades not far enough, and get shrapnel in their butts, and those who don't. I am not trying to be funny here. I avoid grenades partly for this very reason. I look at them, and just intuitively think, there's something that could harm my bottom. Hence, I don't even own a grenade. But I don't want to be president. To be President, you need to be the sort of person who is mysteriously blessed, whom God loves for peculiar reasons of his own. Now marrying a billionaireness might count in Kerry's favor on his score, but that is cancelled out by her personality. We are back to those offending fragments. They are evidence, damning evidence in my view, that Kerry's karma is way out of whack. If half the stories of his cutting to the front of the line, abusing subordinates, calling Secret Service agents names, etc., etc, are true, the guy is a walking karma black hole, with shrapnel wounds in his butt to prove it. We knew beyond doubt this was the case with Carter when he was attacked by the crazed rabbit. Can you imagine Reagan being attacked by a rabbit? You cannot. I don't care about Cambodia. I want to know, did Kerry, or did he not, blow up his butt with his own grenade? If the answer is yes, then, I'm sorry, but he cannot be our Chief. Irrational prejudice still counts for something in this country.

ON THE OTHER HAND, this is not so funny.