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Thursday, August 05, 2004

What would Jarome Iginla do?

On the AP wire today, one more reason to consider John McCain an honorable man, and the boys in the White House as something else altogether:

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, called an ad criticizing John Kerry’s military service “dishonest and dishonorable” and urged the White House on Thursday to condemn it as well.

The White House declined.

I’m not going to go on about the Swift Boat Veterans for the Ministry of Truth, or the GOP camp followers who drudge up this stuff, or the Instawankers who endorse it (and who now claim that the Kerry campaign is “crushing dissent” by writing to station managers and advising them that the ad is libelous), or even the Hannity girlie-men who hawk it.  Not me.  I just want to know this.  How will Kerry respond?

If he tries to stay “above the fray” on this one, he might just as well make it official and change his name to Dukakis-- and start preparing now for a nice quiet life in academe or on the board of a nonprofit organization.  If he simply has his attorneys send letters to TV stations, he’s a wuss, and I don’t want him on my hockey team.  This is well beyond ordinary cheap-shot territory.  This is more in the range of career-ending, life-threatening attempts to injure.  This is why people drop the gloves and go at it.

Now, Kerry is rumored to play hockey.  (It’s one of the things I like about him, as many of you already know.) Hockey players know what happens if you don’t respond to goons and thugs-- they’ll haunt you, they’ll make you hear footsteps, and they may take you out permanently.  If Kerry really wants to be seen as a leader, especially among the groups this ad is targeting, he’ll hit this bunch of wingnuts and he’ll hit them hard.  And if the Democrats really want to be seen as “strong” (and yep, this is all about hypermasculinization), they have to show people that they’re willing to stand up for one of their own.  Or they could wind up looking like the 1974 New York Rangers, who stood around like a bunch of Bidens and Liebermen while Philadelphia Flyers thug Dave Schultz pounded lanky defenseman Dale Rolfe into a coma.  And even I wouldn’t entrust the U.S. national security apparatus to people who behave like the 1974 New York Rangers.

As for me, I am the most mild-mannered of men.  In the five years since I started playing again, I haven’t started a fight once.  But when someone takes a serious cheap shot at me-- usually with a hard slash to the back of my legs or a cross-check to the back of my head-- I pick them up and throw them to the ice and hold them there.  I don’t hit them, I don’t throw punches, I just pick them up and throw them to the ice.  That way, you see, they can’t hurt me, and next time around they won’t want to try.  Also, I had another four-goal game last night.  So I think I’m pretty well qualified to advise the Kerry campaign on matters of strategy.

Keep the pressure on the Bush-Cheney campaign, guys.  Force them to reply.  Keep Jim Rassmann out there.  Get David Alston ("If John Kerry came up to us and said we had one more swift boat mission and we were going to hell, he would have a full crew") on the ice.  Forecheck Bush and make him cough up the puck.  And as for John E. O’Neill and Roy Hoffman (whom even conservative activists and writers have called a “crazed extremist” and a “Kurtz-like psychopath,” respectively, as you can see here), well, I’m too mild-mannered to say anything, but surely one of these guys can make some suggestions.

UPDATE:  Oops, almost forgot about the assiduous forecheckers over at Media Matters.  Good work, folks.

Posted by Michael on 08/05 at 09:56 AM
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