We all know Lurch isn't the brightest bulb on the string, but over at Power Line, the Big Trunk tries to explain the sports fetish:
Rocket Man has periodically expressed interest here about John Kerry's exhibitionist approach to sports. Kerry snowboarding (with the classic daisy zipper pull), Kerry biking (with the fully color coordinated bike/shorts/gloves/helmet combo), Kerry playing catch on the tarmac of various airports -- what's the deal with the guy?I guess Lurch doesn't remember the old days:
...
Now comes ABC's Teddy Davis, who has posted a report that sheds some light on the situation, but that raises even more questions regarding the judgment involved here: "Kerry on a roll -- but risks remain."
It appears that Kerry's carefully wrought public sports poses are calculated to prove his manhood! I guess I must have been thrown off by the daisy zipper pull:Throughout his campaign, Kerry has made it clear that he is not ready to cede to President Bush what Steve Rosenthal, the former political director of the AFL-CIO, once called "the hang test."
So whether it's been shooting pheasant, playing hockey, tossing a football, or riding a Harley, Kerry has been presented to the public as fun-loving, athletic, outdoorsy, and, most importantly, the kind of Democrat who crosses the "testosterone threshold" needed to be commander-in-chief.
But the exotic nature of some of the sports he plays (say, kite-surfing in Nantucket) and the great lengths he goes in order to play them (say, flying from Idaho to Oregon to windsurf), can have the unintended effect of making him seem out of touch with the hard-pressed middle class whose cares he says have been his concern.
As his plane was flying from Oregon to Idaho on Saturday, Kerry defended his taste in sports, saying, "The guys who do it are all local guys -- plumbers, construction workers."
Asked if these regular folks fly from one state to another, the husband of the condiment heiress downplayed the cost, saying, "What? 250 bucks for a ticket?"
Of course, in 1993 he was between his first and second heiresses - a time he now calls "the wandering years," although an equally apt description might be "the freeloading years."Another Dork sports pic here and there's a further update at Power Line on the "250 buck ticket."
For some of the time, he was, for all practical purposes, homeless. His friends allowed him into a real-estate deal in which he flipped a condo for quick resale, netting a $21,000 profit on a cash investment of exactly nothing. For months he rode around in a new car supplied by a shady local Buick dealer. When the dealer's ties to a congressman who was later indicted for racketeering were exposed, Kerry quickly explained that the non-payment was a mere oversight, and wrote out a check.
