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| John Kerry: A Top-Shelf Candidate? |
| 02.08.04 (7:40 pm) [edit] |
In one of the most banal and bizarre moments of the campaign coverage thus far, on the day of the New Hampshire Primary on “Crossfire”, Tucker Carlson and James Carville squared off over John Kerry's charity/fundraiser hockey game the previous Saturday. Senator Kerry put together a couple of squads of retired Boston Bruins and a few local kids, beginning with a stump speech by the Senator before the puck dropped, and featuring Kerry himself strapping on the pads to skate a few shifts. Tucker, of course, took offense at the two goals Kerry scored in the game. CNN brought up the tape of the first goal, with Kerry on a breakaway and the defense noticeably slowing down to let the Senator challenge the keeper.
"Look at that! They just let him skate in there! That's so phony!" crowed Carlson. And Tucker had a point--the D did back off Senator Kerry. Carlson got even more riled up: "They were instructed to let him score! That’s just plain pathetic!"
Then James Carville, the party's most feisty and reliable voice, came to the Senator's defense: (In Carville's Lou-sanna accent) “Now looky here Tucker! If yer tryin' to say that the Senator idn't an athlete, just look at that! (Cut to more footage of Kerry carrying the puck through the neutral zone.) This man is one of the most athletic men to ever run for the White House, and yer tearin' him up for gettin' after it!"
"But look at that! They just let him score! He can barely skate! Disgraceful!"
I've seen this tape a few times, and I think Tucker is about half-right. Yes, the defense did let up on Kerry--and, later, it was reported that no one was to touch the Senator, which I doubt anyone would say isn't the right thing to do. On the play in question, the only thing the defensemen could do is try to poke-check Kerry from behind to tie up his stick and risk hooking the Senator down, or sweep check the Senator and try to touch the puck before tripping Kerry with the stick--either option results in Senator John Kerry hitting the ice and probably crashing into the goaltender. So, yeah, the defense let Kerry go.
The truth about that first goal is that the goaltender completely misplayed the shot--he made a pick-up league keeper's error. Kerry came up the middle with the puck and skated to the forehand side. The goalie tried to be aggressive and cut off the angle, but since the defense didn't force Kerry to the backhand and right into the keeper's chest, the goalie overplayed the forehand and didn't cut off the backdoor--his glove-side angle. The result: Senator John Kerry had the whole glove-half of the net to shoot at, and Kerry buried it just above the keeper's right shoulder. Would Kerry have scored if the keeper would have played a better angle? Probably not. But in the Senator's defense, he did blast the forehander on net. It was a clean goal, but the better question is whether Kerry have scored if the defense would have forced him to the backhand--that's the difference between a really good rink player and your average hack. Let's go back to the Carlson/Carville exchange:
"Oh come on James! This is just a typical, bogus Democratic dog-and-pony show. I mean, come on! He can barely skate! This is just sad."
"Now I know a finely tuned athlete like yerself, Tucker, may not be able to recognize this, but look at that: (Cut to footage of Kerry in what I assume to be the second period, because he's skating the other way.) The Senator can skate like hell, Tucker! That's a real man's man right there! That man is macho! Looky at that!"
And then we see the footage leading up to Senator Kerry's second goal. At this point, I think Carville has made a little too much of Kerry's hockey prowess, but that's ok because they don't play a lot of hockey in Lou-sanna and he doesn't know the difference. But I also think Tucker Carlson was being a little rough on the Senator too. Hockey's a tough sport, and it takes a lot of work to develop skating ability. To his credit, from what I had seen, Senator Kerry has a decent skating stride and can build up a good bit of speed.
And then something happened that caught my attention: Kerry emerges from a scrum near the blue line, carrying the puck in on the forehand. This time, Kerry is coming in from the wing rather than the middle, so the keeper cuts off the near post. Kerry has some room to cut back to the center, so the Senator transfers the puck to his backhand, skates across just above the crease, and as the keeper dives back to the far post, the Senator flips the puck top shelf--on the backhand!
Now that was a good shot! Your average rink player usually just slides the puck along the ice on the backhand, or just barely lifts it off the ice. Most rink-rat goaltenders know that even if you over-commit to the near post, you usually have time to slide back to the far post with the right pad or the stick on the ice to stop the backhander. Had Kerry just scooted the backhander, the goaltender might have gotten to it. But the Senator got under the puck while skating full speed and--well, he didn't roof it, but he got some real good wood under it.
"Now looky here at that Tucker! You can't tell me that's not a man's play right there!"
"Oh come on James! They're babying him out there!"
This stupid little exchange strangely exemplifies the subtext of the Kerry candidacy. Remember last year when it came out that the Republicans said that Kerry "looked a little French"? (As a sidenote, one of my best friends is a French national, so I’ve grown to resent all this “The French are a Bunch of Surrender Monkeys” bullshit. Six in ten French men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight died or were permanently maimed during World War I. The French are not pussies.) Kerry frightens the Republicans because, as a decorated war hero who will be juxtaposed with a guy who has, at best, an "incomplete" record of service, he thwarts Karl Rove's usually strategy of testostorizing of the campaign. And here, you’ve got James Carville and Tucker Carlson crossfiring over whether or not John Kerry is a “man.” This dumb exchange is fascinating for how fired up they both got over something so small, and how quickly it degenerated into a referendum on the “machismo” of the candidate.
The subtext of Rove-engineered campaigns is that the Republican is the Alpha Male and the Democrat is the effete pussy. The construct is merely the extension of a long-standing insecurity on the political left, whose roots can be traced to the Vietnam War protests. All Rove has done is actively voiced this psycho-social construct in the conduct of Republican campaigns. Probably the most shameful campaign I've seen in my lifetime is the Ralph Reed-run (former executive director of the Christian Coalition, now a Republican strategist) campaign in which Saxby Chambliss ran ads depicting three-limb amputee Max Cleland side-by-side with Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein. Not that the Democrats are at all innocent of vicious campaigning, but these are the levels they're willing to stoop to prove that all "liberals" are pussies. Whoa boy, what about one from Massachusetts, where they’re such pussies they even allow gay people to get married!
And so it's already begun with Kerry. "He looks French." "He's the 'liberal' senator from Massachusetts." "He's not backing the troops by criticizing the war." "John Kerry sucks at hockey"--the Republicans are already showing their hand as to how they're going to play this campaign. That's why I think John Kerry can win: They don't know what to do if they can't call us pussies. John Kerry is already beating Bush by five points in some polls—yes, I know that all the focus is on the Democrats right now and that's inflated the poll numbers, but the Republicans clearly thought that opponent was going to be Dean, and they geared the beginnings of the re-election campaign incorrectly toward that. The result is that second-rate State of the Union address and the lame interview with Tim Russert. Right now, they’re having trouble adjusting the game plan. If you really want to understand the standard Republican game plan, just tune into any episode of “Hannity and Colmes”. Sean Hannity plays the loud, macho, “tough” conservative who tells it like it is, while puny little Alan Colmes just sort of whines his way through the show. The Republican strategy is to Colmesenize the opponent, paint him as weak on defense and doesn't have the intestinal fortitude to protect the country in these dangerous times. Throw in some God, guns, and gays, and you carry all of the rural vote and most of the suburban Nascar dad vote, and there's your election.
This is also why I think Democrats have been so eager to jump on the Kerry bandwagon. In Iowa, his big victory can be credited, in large part, to the humanizing and wrenching speech by the man Kerry saved in that river delta in Vietnam. Kerry's Purple Hearts are a big deal to us because we are sick and damn tired of having our manhood questioned. Hell, Wesley Clark was second in Democratic polling when he jumped into the race, and he hadn't even campaigned yet--because he's a four-star general, that very idea touched something deep in the Democratic psyche. We've spent the last twenty years having our manhood questioned, and now it's been extended to our patriotism. We Democrats are tired of this pseudo-macho suburban Nascar Dad, Hemi-In-My-SUV bullshit.
That’s the appeal of John Kerry. Howard Dean shot to the front because he was against the war, and he found a voice that seemed tough for liberals. Howard Dean is right: He stood up to the President when no one else would--from the safety of the distant campaign trail, sure, but Dean's anger that fueled his rise is an outgrowth of the sensitivity we Democrats feel about having our manhood questioned on the war issue. But Dean wasn't electable, and Kerry shot to the front mostly on the strength of the *perception* that he could win. Why? Mostly because he's a war hero, he doesn’t freak out on stage, and they won't be able to call him a pussy. Most registered Democrats have experienced this, I’m sure. That’s the subtext of Kerry campaign, and that is what’s steamrolling his campaign to the finish line.
That's how far American politics has degenerated--a schoolyard name-calling hissy fit. I feel bad because we’re as much at fault as the other side, but because Rove has been so successful in pussyfying and Colmesenizing candidates (even war heroes), this is what's happened. Not that Democrats don't call Republicans stupid every chance we get, but we aren't in charge right now. Personally, I think the substance of John Kerry is still very much in question: Can a Skull and Bones initiate who's the richest man in the Senate really run a populist campaign? I’m not sure Kerry can sell a campaign based on “rooting out the special interests” and appealing to “average Americans” when he’s taken more special interest money in the last fifteen years than anybody else in the Senate.
Despite my grave doubts about Kerry, I don't think his rise to the nomination is that hard to figure out. Democrats just have to convince that fifteen percent of Americans in the middle that John Kerry really is the macho man who can skate like hell and stick the puck top shelf on the backhand. I don't wish to say that my whole take on the election can be boiled down to who has the bigger penis, but in the current state of American politics, "manliness" has become the code word for character--the Republicans successfully argued that Michael Dukakis wasn't "man" enough to be President, and they would have about Howard Dean. The economy, health care, all these are issues that people are concerned about but don't really understand because they're so complex that I'm not sure they're entirely understandable. What people look for is character, and John Kerry's war hero status--on the surface, anyway--vouches for that. But please, John, stay off the motorcycle and get rid of the leather jacket.
----shimes
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posted by: Jill of Mixed Reviews Fame (reply)
post date: 02.10.04 (11:55 am)
The only way Kerry gets elected is if the corporatists behind ShrubCo switch their allegiance to the OTHER Skull and Bones guy. I predict that all those people who voted for Kerry because of some vague, unproven notion of "electability" are going to wake up the day after Erection Day with one hell of a hangover -- and 4 more years of Idiot McWhistleass to look forward to.
posted by: shimes (reply)
post date: 02.11.04 (7:27 am)
Jill, you shoulda been here Monday for ShrubCo's hayseed explanation of Trickle-Down Economics. "You see, what the tax relief does is put more change in your pocket, ya'see. And when you got more money, you're gonna buy more goods, and get more services. And somebody's gotta make them goods, somebody's gotta do them services. That's where we get jobs. People gotta understand how this economy works." It's like, jeez, if you don't understand this, you must be stupider than I am!
If I find you that Bush Liars Club photo outside of Pro Bass, I'll send it to you!
posted by: Wanda (reply)
post date: 03.27.06 (4:01 am)
You Gotcha one of the nicest blogs I have seen.
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