THE WAY WE ARE: Romney rescues the drowning dog!

SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2012

Epilogue—Disfavored stories: We liberals have been drawn to the story of Mitt Romney’s dog on the roof of the car.

We liberals enjoy this story so much that we have even invented a set of bogus facts about it. Just last week, Gail Collins wrote that Seamus, the mistreated Irish setter, was stuck “in a cage” on the roof of that speeding car!

Collins knows no “cage” was involved—but her claim made the story work better! Liberal commenters thanked her, as always, for pleasuring them in such ways. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 5/18/02.)

For reasons she has never quite explained, Collins is drawn to Romney’s dog as Ahab was once drawn to that whale. She has been retelling this tale since 2007, when Hector was a pup.

Needless to say, we liberals aren't alone in the practice Collins has perfected. Conservatives love reciting embellished tales about Democrats’ troubling character problems. That said, few writers have told an embellished tale as many times as Collins.

This brings us to a stirring story Collins’ readers will never be asked to read. We refer to the time Mitt Romney rescued a dog! Along with six adult humans!

It happened in 2003. A Scottish terrier was drowning, in a very large, very deep lake. The facts of the case were widely reported, but the sociopathic Boston Globe tended to overlook the rescue of the dog.

The Boston Herald’s Elisabeth Beardsley told that part of the story best:
BEARDSLEY (7/6/03): Gov. Mitt Romney rode to the rescue over the weekend during a vacation trip—using his Jet Ski to help pluck a New Jersey family and their dog out of Lake Winnipesaukee after their boat sank.

The drama began at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, as Romney and his family were relaxing at their lakeside summer home in Wolfeboro, N.H.

Gubernatorial son Josh Romney told the Herald yesterday that he and brother Craig were cleaning the beach while their father puttered in the garage when the quiet night air was pierced with screams.

"We heard a whole bunch of screaming," said Josh Romney, who immediately hopped onto his Jet Ski. "We tore out of there and my dad hopped on the other Jet Ski and came out right after us."

Roughly 300 yards out onto the lake, six adult family members and their dog were floundering in the water, after their boat suddenly sprung a huge leak—sinking in less than 90 seconds, Josh said.
A Scottish terrier was in the water, along with six humans. As she continued, Beardsley described the rescue of McKenzie, the "waterlogged pooch:"
BEARDSLEY (continuing directly): While water temperatures were a balmy 75 degrees, the deepening darkness obscured other boaters' vision—prompting the victims' terrified howls as they were buzzed by other vessels cruising in the entrance to Wolfeboro Bay.

Chasing fleeting glimpses of "bobbling heads" in the water, the Romney trio arrived on their two Jet Skis to find three women and three men, wearing lifejackets they hadn't even had time to buckle.

The governor pulled the two younger women aboard his three-seater jet ski and zoomed back to shore, while his sons helped the mother of the family onto their vehicle.

In the middle of the rescue, the governor actually took a dunking himself—thrown off the Jet Ski as one anxious boater scrambled aboard and tipped the craft off-balance.

The rescuing Romneys also managed to snatch the family dog, McKenzie, from a watery grave—grabbing the Scottish terrier first because it was the only passenger without a lifejacket.

"It looked like it wasn't going to last much longer," said Josh, who held the waterlogged pooch on the ride back to shore.

With Josh and Craig hovering nearby, the three men treaded water until the governor returned and made two more trips to ferry them back.
You’re right—it was one of his sons, not Romney himself, who went to the trouble of saving McKenzie. As such, we liberals get to retain our belief in Romney’s sociopathic attitudes toward dogs.

But here’s the good news! Over the years, many of Collins’ suggestible readers have wondered if the treatment of Seamus scarred the Romney sons for life. Good news! Dad is a socio, but at least one son isn’t, this overlooked story suggests.

That said, you will never read this story in Collins’ waste-of-time column. Yes, it would be a good way to kill time. But lazy tribal pundits aren’t like that.

Also this! President Kennedy scores with the teen: Then too, there's the recent story about the president we liberals tend to adore.

A few weeks ago, we finally read Mimi Alford’s account of the way she was procured, then “deflowered,” by our much-beloved liberal president. The story is told in Alford’s recent book, Once Upon A Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath.

We strongly recommend Alford’s book. For our money, her account of the events in question is one of the most interesting narrations we’ve ever read. No, she isn’t especially accusatory in what she writes. The emotional balance of her narration is what makes her story so novel.

But make no mistake. According to Alford, she was scoped, then procured by Kennedy’s top aide. After a noon-time audition in the pool, she was racked up that night by the president. The conduct described is truly astounding—and no one really doubts that it happened.

For the record, it was Alford’s fourth day on the job! Also: Kennedy wasn’t in high school at the time, though Alford was just 19. She had been kissed by only one boy by the end of high school, she says.

In the past week, we liberals have enjoyed ourselves, wondering if Romney’s a sociopath based on some unpleasant things he did when he was in high school.

Is Romney a sociopath? He certainly could be! But even as we go after Mitt, we tend to venerate our own liberal president. Go ahead! We would suggest that you read Alford’s account of something he did at age 45!

We liberals like to mock The Others for the ridiculous ways they reason. But this is the way our tribe sometimes reasons:

Despite his conduct at age 45, Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents. But because of his conduct at age 18, Romney’s unfit for the office!

Final point: Despite her love for this sort of tale, Collins hasn’t mentioned Alford’s book. She may have forgotten to read it.

And there's more!

Despite her long-running journalistic amour tour, Maureen Dowd hasn’t mentioned Alford either! And she lives in one of Dear Jack’s former homes!

Even among our brightest leaders, the ways of the world can be strange.

47 comments:

  1. Never heard that Romney dog rescue story. Pretty cool.

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  2. So sharing sex with a willing adult partner is automatically abusive (or do you mean something else by "astounding")? What an odd, or dare I say, conservative thing to say.

    I see nothing astounding, and certainly nothing wrong, with competent adults of any age enjoying consensual sex. If you disagree, please explain how and why.

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    1. Yes, only a wingnut could find the story of a 19 year old poked by the president of the US on her first day anything other than a happy story about sharing sex with a willing adult partner.

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    2. I'd say "only a prude", not necessarily a "wingnut", although of course there's a substantial overlap. Again, what's the problem here? A 19 year old woman is not a child.

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    3. I'm not going to excuse the affair. According to Alford's account, JFK used all his good looks, charm and star power to woo and bed her on her fourth day at the White House. Although I consider myself very liberal, I still take the vows to my wife very seriously.

      Now that said, unless JFK is running posthumously for president in 2012, excuse me if I am not that interested using this affair to judge his character and ability in the same way I am judging Mitt Romney's "I don't remember" excuse for an incident everyone else involved clearly remembers in detail, and further wondering, given his record as a CEO, whether he possesses any degree of compassion or empathy.

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  3. It's curious that some will defend someone with "a 15 year old could be very mature for her age" but will never say "a 19 year old could be very immature for her age."

    But I'm sure in this case our beloved Kennedy spoke extensively with the young lady to ascertain whether he was behaving defensibly.

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  4. Americans, in general, tend to think morality begins--and ends--below the belt. What a bunch of phony blowhards. Two consenting adults. What was the world like in those days? Oh, the humanity, the horror of all. And she had "only been kissed once", my god. You can't make this stuff up.

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  5. "We liberals have been drawn to the story of Mitt Romney’s dog on the roof of the car."

    I should have stopped reading there, but the rest of the post was like a train wreck that I couldn't take my eyes off of.

    Exactly how does Somerby know what "we liberals" are drawn to? Because Gail Collins keeps writing about it? Somebody elected her the spokesperson for all liberals?

    To me, the story kinda shows what a doofus the guy was back then, but a major factor in my vote this November? Hardly, I'm much more concerned with his policy proposals (if he'll ever stick to any), his past record in office, and yes, even his character -- as defined by the way he behaves NOW.

    And now, Somerby reaches right into the false moral equivalency grab bag to let us know that what Romney did when he was 18 really wasn't bad because JFK did worse while he was president.

    Not to defend the affair, but you only have a parallel story if four of Kennedy's buddies held Alford down while he raped her.

    And even then, I'd have given Romney a pass on his gang assault of a fellow preppie if only he could say, "Yeah, I remember it. I deeply regret it, and it has haunted me ever since." You know, like each and every other person involved in the assault said.

    Instead, we got NOW: "Don't remember. I did so many dumb things when I was a kid. Boys will be boys. But if I did remember it, I didn't do it because the kid was gay. I guess I'm sorta sorry that he took being pinned down screaming and crying while I hacked off his hair the wrong way. If only I could remember, I would be certain I meant no harm."

    For the umpteenth time, dear Bob, THAT is what troubles me TODAY about that story -- Romney thinking he can still get away with it by invoking the "high school hijinx" excuse.

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  6. Psssttt... Somebody get the dribble cup, The Daily Howler is babbling.

    At absolute worst, the Dog on the roof of the car story was a joke that made the rounds for a couple of days. Yes, it is to The New York Times's great discredit that, if they want to publish a political humorist, they can't find someone more talented than Gail Collins. Very, very few progressive or liberal people have any direct impact on this poor hiring decision.

    There now seem to be exactly two American citizens with the slightest interest in the Shamus story: Gail Collins and Bob Somerby.

    Rachel Maddow put a book on the best seller list that deals with the critical issue of Military spending and the privatization of said. Bob Somerby ignores the book, but has plenty of time for a book revealing the now earth shattering news that JFK screwed around. Despite the fact that some of the most damning condemnations of JFK have always come from the left, he insists that all liberals love JFK. He then makes
    a highly dubious comparison of JFK's sex life to Romney's vicious high school pranks and the left's examination of the latter, as if conservatives have always been "mums the word" on the sex life of liberals!
    All comparisons may be odious. Some may be more odious than others. And sometimes the Daily Howler is really lame.

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    1. "There now seem to be exactly two American citizens with the slightest interest in the Shamus story: Gail Collins and Bob Somerby."

      And the hundreds of people who comment approvingly on Collins' columns.

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    2. Yeah! HUNDREDS of them! Out of a population over over 300 million!

      Let's not forget the Bob's lesson from yesterday: The Gail Collins combox offers perfect and precise evidence of the way ALL "liberals" think.

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    3. wow, i fell away from this blog about 4 months ago (just busy with multiple family issues that took me away from most of my reading time) but i/ve been reading backwards a bit now and DAMN! why are these Maddow trolls so obessed with Bob? there are so many "Maddow book" comments (seem to be from two or three separate writers) that I'm starting to worry if some publishing house's computer has become Skynet...

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    4. Welcome back paramedix. I can't figure out the Maddow trolls either. They are persistent. I'll give them that.

      (By the way, even if Maddow's book is the greatest thing since sliced bread, how does that excuse the on-air conduct that Somerby criticizes? If anything it makes it even more egregious because she is obviously capable of better work.)

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    5. cacambo, i was just thinking the same thing. he has written for many moons on her on-air antics. as for JFK, the late great Patrice O'Neal had a bit about the difference between old and new pussy...19 is, just simply, 19 ;)

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    6. Actually, cacambo, if Somerby spent as much time on the good and bad of Rachel Maddow as he does on the good and bad of Mitt Romney, he'd also find a lot of good, solid, original reporting.

      But instead, he parses every second of the five hours a week she is on live for anything he can turn into more evidence that she is the greatest criminal in history to the "american discourse" and ignore all the rest.

      And when he can't find anything to fit his pre-scripted narrative about Maddow, he'll just make something up. Like how she got her clocked cleaned in a debate with Imhofe, when it was evident to all who witnessed that she was the only person in that discussion who had actually read Imhofe's book.

      Not long after that, Maddow devoted an entire hour to the proliferation of nuclear materials that began with Ike's "Atoms for Peace" program.

      The response from the Howler? Crickets chirping.

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    7. And the point is, in case you can't see it, is that Somerby -- like many a wannabe demagogue before him, has morphed into exactly that which he condemns the loudest and longest.

      His own "War on Maddow" eerily resembles the "War on Gore."

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    8. Somerby has spent almost exactly "as much time on the good and bad of Rachel Maddow as on the good and bad of Mitt Romney."

      Which is to say, he's said almost nothing good about Romney, and has very occasionally praised Maddow.

      Not good enough for the whiners here. Cry on, babies.

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    9. Did you read the post upon which you comment? Not to mention Somerby's utterly ignoring Romney's "can't remember" in his rush to paint the incident of which the Washington Post wrote as high school hijinx and ancient, irrelevant history? As well as his parsing that story for the one weakest point -- motive -- then attacking the entire piece as poorly sourced, only grudging admitting much later that, yeah, Horowitz did have a lot of evidence to back up the story?

      And now we get the "Mitt the Hero" story.

      If Romney paid Somerby do defend him, Somerby couldn't have done a better job of defending the indefensible. I sure thought I was reading romney.com.

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  7. "Then too, there's the recent story about the president we liberals tend to adore."

    Recent? The Alford story broke in February. You're just now getting around to it?

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  8. That Boston Herald story, frankly, reads like something from the National Enquirer. What mainstream reporter uses the word "pooch"?

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  9. moby dick and sheamusMay 19, 2012 at 4:55 PM

    moby dick: oooooooooooo eeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaa eeeeeeeeeee uuuuuuuuuu... whoops! sorry sheams, forgot where I was! ...anyway whats shakin dog?

    sheamus the irish setter: ruf ruf mobes!!! ... hey, not bad, all things considered... lol.

    Moby: listen sheaman, just hollering to get the 411 on this somerby cat. hes misusing me in his blog. collins is nothing like that ahab lunatic. old ahab thought i, a mere animal, was the personification of all evil...like that would even be possible if I did stand on two legs. damn...

    sheamus: brother did you ever call the right guy. that blog is projection central, ok? so he says collins is obsessed with me which is kinda true i guess but not in a bad way. shes on my side, right? but i dont want to quibble too much, so heres my 10,000 foot on the sitch:

    sheamus: so u know im irish, right?...i mean im an american dog with an irish heritage...um... i mean im relegating myself to a second class citizenship if i dont say it that way.

    moby: i hear ya, i hear ya dog, now spill. whats his deal?

    Sheamus: ironically, hes the one with the ahab complex and get this, his moby dick is any american with an irish heritage. thats the american way to maintain order for centuries, dig . . . ? we know it, everybody knows and we cant do anything about it. but this guy just keeps rubbing it in like na, na na, na na, na kinda thing. everybody has gotten the message reinforced by now, but hes not just a good patriotic bigot. hes like a sadist as well.

    moby: wow, sounds messed up.

    sheamus: to an outsider I guess it does but "weve" kind of adapted by dispersing to a very large extant to where we not even close to being a coherent group anymore.

    moby: so youre hardly even a group and they still attack you all as though u still are one?

    sheamus: nice scam, huh? everybody pretends we are this big tough gang and so they get to feel like they are tough guys by jumping on us – but without the risk of retaliation cuz we dont cohere socially.

    Moby: how do they do it exactly?

    Sheamus: these days most will just knock famous guys who have or appear to have some irish ancestry. multiple different ones are publically shamed if they do something wrong or they just make something up about them. after a while everybody gets the message that irish=bad without ever having to say the word irish. . . . somerby though also still occasionally uses the older technique of just saying outright that americans with an irish heritage have this or that bad characteristic.

    Moby: makes me glad to be out here swimming around on my own!

    sheamus: well anywho, thats the deal mobes. listen, dont be a stranger. shout any time dude.

    Moby: will do shames. uuuuuu! eeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuee! uuuuuuweeeeee!!!

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    Replies
    1. tl, dr: Somerby hates the Irish!

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  10. An even more telling story is how Romney shut down Bain in order to find and rescue Melissa Gay, the missing 14-year old daughter of a Bain partner.

    ...Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York and asked them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. Romney’s accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone.

    "That day, their hunt made the evening news, which featured photos of the girl and the Bain employees searching for her. As a result, a teenage boy phoned in, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose.


    Romney showed his humanity by shutting down his profitable firm in order to do everything possible to find Melissa. Furthermore, his search was well-planned, thorough and effective. Every possible avenue was rapidly utilized. And, it worked. Thanks to Romney's efforts, Melissa was found.

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    Replies
    1. Romney's an admirable man in some ways, no doubt.

      At the same time, however, Romney's Bain Capital made a profit out of a Kansas City steel mill while its workers got denied the severance pay and pensions owed to them. Oh, and "big government" had to bail out Bain to the tune of $44 million in taxpayer money. "Welfare queen" eat your heart out!

      As is the case with many people (like JFK), in some circumstances, he's a stand-up guy. In other situations, he's a total jerk.

      http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106

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    2. Like most of us

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    3. Unlike most of us, Romney will be the GOP nominee for president.

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  11. Dave in Cal, Have you seen this account of the Romney shut down Bain, Rescue story?

    http://www.thedaily.com/page/2012/04/16/041612-news-romney-missing-teen-gay-nestel-1-4

    " . . . Melissa’s story began on a Saturday night in July 1996, when the 14-year-old told her parents she was playing tennis at a country club near their home in affluent Ridgefield, Conn.

    Instead, Melissa ditched the racquet to meet up with a group of older teens she knew. They headed to the big city to party and attend a rave called Fantasia II on New York’s Randalls Island.

    Becker said he and his group befriended the Connecticut stray, spent the week with her in Montville Township, N.J., and even helped line up a job for her at a telemarketing call center in nearby Pinebrook, N.J., just in case she wanted to stay. By all accounts, the teen won a large number of friends in Montville in a short time.

    A few days later, Becker said he and friend Caroline Mok caught wind of the unusual search party looking for a missing teenage girl.

    “We were eating at Subway, and we heard about it and Missy hadn’t,” Becker said. “Caroline was like, ‘You tell her,’ and Missy said, ‘Tell me what?’ and Caroline said, ‘You’re in the news.’”

    Reality set in. “I kind of remember the look on Missy’s face and it was almost like, ‘This figures.’ ”

    The teens decided Becker would drive Gay home the next morning. “I was elected as the one to do that,” he said. “I was closest to her and we wanted to be together one last day.”

    But later that night, as Gay and 17-year-old Becker sneaked into an upstairs room at his parents’ house in Towaco, N.J., to listen to music, the police arrived. A youth from the area had called a tip line inquiring about a reward, then quickly hung up; police had traced the call back to New Jersey.

    Becker’s mom was stunned as Doug admitted Melissa was there.

    Gay’s parents sent her away for a month to be reformed, Becker said. “She was sent to some kind of camp for troubled youth,” he said.

    Becker said he and Gay maintained a “fairly close relationship for at least a year,” but eventually lost touch.

    The Daily went to the home of Melissa Gay Lewis in Danbury, Conn., where she is a fourth-grade teacher and lives with her husband and young children just a couple miles from the Ridgefield house she once ran away from. She refused to comment.

    In 2008, Lewis and her husband each donated $2,300 to Romney’s presidential run. So far, they haven’t donated to Romney’s second White House bid."

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  12. Really Bob, as revolting as JFK's conduct was, it was consensual with the girl, and nothing like leading a pack of thugs to chase down to assault and humiliate an innocent kid.

    Are you not aware that brutal conduct as young as early teens has put youthful citizens away for decades? Are you aware that young men in Ohio right now are facing years in prison for attacking Amish men and cutting their beards? Is there any significant difference from what Romney did?

    Your comparison of the two incidents just shows how perverse your obsession with attacking liberals has become. It is unfortunate to see your attempt to carve out a "news niche" that is so rarely relevant.

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    Replies
    1. I believe Bob's attack on "liberals" is limited to those journalists who make fast and loose with the facts. All he is asking is that journalists get the story right and leave out the psychobabble.

      "Is there any significant difference from what Romney did?"

      Yes, Romney was still a minor. His attack on that kid, awful as it was, doesn't mean he should have been punished with years of imprisonment. We need a sense of proportion here.

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    2. Your perceptions are flawed...The damage to a victim are the same whether the assailant is old or young. The writer suggested equivalence of beards and "head" hair. Your point (perhaps unknowingly) suggests non-equivalence of victims' injuries depending on the age of the assailant

      And your own "sense of proportion" stinks when you pretend the writer said Romney "should have been punished with years of imprisonment"...He simply pointed out that the justice system does take seriously teens who attack people.

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    3. "Your point (perhaps unknowingly) suggests non-equivalence of victims' injuries depending on the age of the assailant"

      Not really. The victims' injuries are equally horrible regardless of the age of the assailant. My point suggests that juveniles and adults perpetrators are not equally responsible for their actions. This is widely recognized and not all that controversial.

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    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    5. Sorry Anon 9:05 (or is it you Bob?), but the original point you contested compared only hair cutting and beard cutting assaults, both of which involved teenagers. So your age "point" was just a diversion.

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  13. Shorter Comments:

    It's not Somerby who insists that the JKF and Romney incidents must be equivalent, it's his readers.

    If the incidents are not *exactly* equivalent, we refuse to let them tell us anything about press/tribe behavior.

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    1. "Despite his conduct at age 45, Kennedy was one of our greatest presidents. But because of his conduct at age 18, Romney’s unfit for the office!"

      Those are your guru's own words. Now before you completely cede to him whatever remains of your ability to think for yourself, please at least read what he has written before you continue to make yourself look like a fool defending him.

      Somberby CLEARLY is drawing a parallel between the two incidents and proclaiming as hypocrites any one who would "revere" JFK while proclaiming Romney "unfit for office."

      But I then again, I understand your need to deny what is there before you. It is a very slow process to emerge from a cult, because there is a flood of pent-up and long-denied truth that will hit you all at once, causing your head to explode.

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    2. You're right, Anon@1:49PM, Somerby is drawing a parallel between the two incidents. In particular, they're both examples of private behavior that should have little bearing our evaluation of their fitness to govern as president.

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    3. Au contraire. Because of Somerby's startling revelation of a story about a guy whose been dead for 49 years that first made the rounds four months ago, I promise I won't vote for JFK this November.

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  14. I always thought JFK handed the Cuban Missile Crisis very well. Guess not, given that he had an affair with a 19-year-old. At least, that's what Somerby says.

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    1. Wow. That's the opposite of what he's saying.

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    2. Really? What I was told by Somerby is that you can't "venerate" JFK if you think what Mitt did was wrong.

      It's the old Rovian tactic that goes like this: When your guy is revealed to do something wrong, never admit that your guy did wrong. Instead, reach for one of their guys who did something wrong, focus all attention on that, and claim that what your guy did wasn't nearly as bad.

      And in this case, Somerby reaches for a guy whose been dead nearly 49 years.

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  15. If Mr. Somerby had more direct contact with actual liberals, as opposed to the imaginary ones he cultivates in mind, he'd know that not all of us revere JFK, any more than every liberal reveres Clinton, Gore or Obama. As such, there may be far less eagerness to defend the personal conduct of these figures than Mr. Somerby supposes.

    Note that some of us look at actual policy; we may not worship Al Gore, for example, because we took the trouble to see what he actually did as a politician. However, the examination of the press' theatrical coverage of national campaigns is the absolute limit of inquiry at The Daily Howler, so it's understood that lack of reverence for JFK among liberals will a foreign notion here.

    While the usefulness of the comparison escapes me, it might be helpful to view the two incidents from the perspective of current law. Kennedy would likely be facing a multi-million dollar harassment suit, but without a charge of rape or claimed physical coercion, the matter would likely be settled out of court as a civil action.

    Romney, by contrast, would almost certainly be facing criminal assault charges, and since his co-conspirators have conceded that the attack was motivated by hatred of homosexuals, the hate crimes law would assuredly come into play. The ring leader's denial of such bias, even assuming he finally conceded the incident actually took place, would be dismissed out of hand, as pro forma and self-serving.

    Again, am not sure what relevance the comparison has, but the law does not treat the two as equivalent.

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  16. IMHO Kennedy is one of the most overhyped, overrated presidents there ever has been, who ran to the right of Nixon on the Cold War, and if not for Boomer youth he'd be about as fondly remembered as George H.W. Bush.

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    1. Good grief, flip. The guy had two years and 10 months in office. What was he supposed to accomplish?

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  17. Shorter Somerby Haters:

    Nobody really likes JFK anyway, so what are you going on about?

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    1. As a JFK admirer, more previously than currently, I was bothered most by the fact it was not an affair, but a "servicing". This was made clear by the fact the young woman acknowledged JFK never once kissed her...and the request that she give sex to others in the inner circle, even Ted Kennedy. It was a sordid affair to say the least, though difficult for the girl to see because of her link to "greatness". But no one could think quite the same about JFK and his brothers given this account.

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  18. Shorter Idiots:

    Yes, It *is* a very good idea to focus on incidents of youth to understand adults.

    Incidents of adulthood may not be relevant, especially if they're not equivalent to the other boy's bad acts -- Hey, since he didn't *rape* her, how could it say anything bad about the man?

    Besides, that guy's dead now. The past doesn't matter.

    Well, only the past that I care about does, I mean. Romney's boyhood.

    And yes, fine, the boyhood of any "liberal" "leftie" or "progressive" is also extremely relevant.

    Because I am an idiot, I affirm this.

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  19. Usually I am not regular to read article on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very pressured me to check out and do it! Your writing taste has been surprised me. Thank you, quite nice article.

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    ReplyDelete