The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ah, The Ted Kennedy Criteria

Posted on | May 19, 2010 | 17 Comments

by Smitty (h/t Terry Cowgill at Big Media)

Giving Dick Blumenthal the benefit of the doubt, he probably didn’t wake up one morning and say to himself “I wonder if I could score some favor with the Veteran crowd by having them on about my service record. . .” while he was shaving.

In general, these kinds of mis-statements creep in over time, like fibs over how much you enjoy the mother-in-law’s recipe for pig’s feet. After enough embellishment and time, the effort level of saying “Hey, I’ve got to clear the air on a point about my service record” seems too expensive.

Until the whole pile goes from innocuous to noxious.

How to fix this mess? Terry shows how:

How could he, in his own words at yesterday’s press conference, “misspeak” about his service “on a few occasions” and the news media let him get away with it? Most of those “occasions,” by the way, were gatherings of veterans’ groups.

Part of the answer can be found on a segment on Morning Joe on MSNBC. Co-host Mika Brzezinski, who worked as a TV journalist in Connecticut for six years in the 1990s, let slip an admission many skeptical media observers in this state have suspected ever since Blumenthal replaced Joe Lieberman in the AG’s office: she likes Blumenthal. Indeed, Brzezinski made it sound as if she and her husband, fellow TV reporter James Hoffer, were friends of Dick.

“After I read the [New York Times] article, I felt crushed for him,” Brzezinski confessed. “Because my husband and I had known him as reporters in Connecticut for years and years.” Brzezinski added that Blumenthal “has done a lot of really good work.”

Why would Brzezinski feel “crushed” and not something more — such as “shocked” or “outraged?” Because it’s pretty clear that Brzezinski, like dozens of other reporters in the Nutmeg State, thought Blumenthal was a man of integrity, a latter-day judicial saint dedicated to the betterment of his fellow Nutmeggers.

A friend of mine, and Ted Kennedy fan, personally focused on all of Ted’s “good” statesmanship, as though it were some form of public penance for “that unfortunate submarine adventure”.

When you have an older, liberal friend like that, you don’t ask them how it feels to have just rationalized their way through capital punishment. But let’s not go all Lefty-no-proportionality here: I’m not arguing that deceitful speech about past military service is tantamount to murder. What I am arguing is that, rather than note how a demonstrated looseness with facts might be merely the tip of a noteworthy iceberg of deceit, we’re going to hear a stream of exclusively positive accomplishments.

The narrative becomes that Blumenthal is a victim of excessive, cruel nitpicking. The Vietnam fibs were a victimless crime, no more heinous than reporting his weight from that time period, instead of confessing the additional stone that crept up on him. Oh, those pedantic Conservatives!

While the current Administration has raised application of the Ted Kennedy Criteria to an art form, Conservatives should not fall into this moral relativism game. It’s one thing to forgive indiscretions on an individual basis. It’s quite another to tolerate and tacitly approve of various forms of lying, cheating, and stealing. Of talent there is plenty, but integrity is precious.

Update: Jules Crittenden is trying to come up with a catchy verb for the Blumenthal treatment, since Swiftboating is somehow not working. If we can go with a noun, how about a Viet Prong?

Update II: Fred Thompson plays the ‘weasel’ card.

Update III: The ever-verbose Alan Colmes manages to enumerate a variety of things which Rand Paul is against. An equally meaningful, simpler statement would have been: “Rand Paul is for limited government.”

Category: Democrats, Republicans, Rule 1

Comments

17 Responses to “Ah, The Ted Kennedy Criteria”

  1. Joe
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:06 am

    A catchy phrase? How about Semper fibus or Semper lyius. Or both.

    I can understand the human dimention of this and how it creeps in. And while not good, what Blumenthal did is nothing compared to the depravity and hypocrisy of Ted Kennedy.

    No verb is needed for calling Blumenthal on the truth, other than saying it is impeaching him (a term he should recognize from being a prosecutor). While understandable, he deserves to be embarassed and lose this race.

    Kerry’s situation was a bit different. Kerry did serve in Vietnam (I think he told us about 10,000 times). Arguably Kerry did see a few combat zones in person and may have have sustained a few relatively minor injuries (the degree of which is questioned). But Kerry also betrayed his fellow veterans at the Winter Solider hearings (remember that Kerry’s testimony of alleged war crimes was later shown to be made up on his part–he lied to promote himself) and that has never been forgotten. Had Kerry not given that false testimony, I doubt any veterans would have stepped forward to attack him even if he was showboating when he ran for president. Swiftboating by fellow veterans was pay back for that earlier betrayal.

  2. Joe
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:06 pm

    A catchy phrase? How about Semper fibus or Semper lyius. Or both.

    I can understand the human dimention of this and how it creeps in. And while not good, what Blumenthal did is nothing compared to the depravity and hypocrisy of Ted Kennedy.

    No verb is needed for calling Blumenthal on the truth, other than saying it is impeaching him (a term he should recognize from being a prosecutor). While understandable, he deserves to be embarassed and lose this race.

    Kerry’s situation was a bit different. Kerry did serve in Vietnam (I think he told us about 10,000 times). Arguably Kerry did see a few combat zones in person and may have have sustained a few relatively minor injuries (the degree of which is questioned). But Kerry also betrayed his fellow veterans at the Winter Solider hearings (remember that Kerry’s testimony of alleged war crimes was later shown to be made up on his part–he lied to promote himself) and that has never been forgotten. Had Kerry not given that false testimony, I doubt any veterans would have stepped forward to attack him even if he was showboating when he ran for president. Swiftboating by fellow veterans was pay back for that earlier betrayal.

  3. Dell
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:07 am

    You can lie about your age, lie about your weight, lie about the size of the fish you caught, but — FOR GOD’S SAKE — don’t lie about serving in a combat zone. It ranks up there with a crime of moral turpitude.

  4. Dell
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:07 pm

    You can lie about your age, lie about your weight, lie about the size of the fish you caught, but — FOR GOD’S SAKE — don’t lie about serving in a combat zone. It ranks up there with a crime of moral turpitude.

  5. Joe
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:14 am

    Dell, agreed. You just can’t fake that without facing moral rebuke.

    BTW–Kerry used to let people guess he was Irish (and was caught not correcting them), which is a big deal in Massachusetts (he is not) and also loved to use the initials JFK. That is foolish vanity.

    Letting people think you served in combat when you did not, that is just terribly wrong. Not as wrong as killing your staffer, but still wrong.

  6. Joe
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:14 pm

    Dell, agreed. You just can’t fake that without facing moral rebuke.

    BTW–Kerry used to let people guess he was Irish (and was caught not correcting them), which is a big deal in Massachusetts (he is not) and also loved to use the initials JFK. That is foolish vanity.

    Letting people think you served in combat when you did not, that is just terribly wrong. Not as wrong as killing your staffer, but still wrong.

  7. proof
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:17 am

    How about: “Not too Swift” boating?

  8. proof
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:17 pm

    How about: “Not too Swift” boating?

  9. Joe
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:25 am

    How about Blumenthal climbing in the swiftboat and running it off of Niagra Falls? Fred Thomspon rightly calls him a weasel for claiming full responsiblity and then crying like a little girl on how he is being taken out of context.

    Rick Blumenthal, you screwed up. Own it.

  10. Joe
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:25 pm

    How about Blumenthal climbing in the swiftboat and running it off of Niagra Falls? Fred Thomspon rightly calls him a weasel for claiming full responsiblity and then crying like a little girl on how he is being taken out of context.

    Rick Blumenthal, you screwed up. Own it.

  11. proof
    May 20th, 2010 @ 1:27 am

    Or the ever popular “REMF”.

  12. proof
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:27 pm

    Or the ever popular “REMF”.

  13. Right-Wing Links (May 19, 2010)
    May 19th, 2010 @ 8:59 pm

    […] Ah, The Ted Kennedy Criteria […]

  14. just a conservative girl
    May 20th, 2010 @ 2:13 am

    I grew up in CT. Don’t be a bit surprised if they elect him anyway. I won’t be.

  15. just a conservative girl
    May 19th, 2010 @ 9:13 pm

    I grew up in CT. Don’t be a bit surprised if they elect him anyway. I won’t be.

  16. Estragon
    May 20th, 2010 @ 8:56 am

    Maybe I’m mixing him up with another Northeast lefty, but isn’t Blumenthal also the guy who bragged about being captain of the Harvard swim team, when if fact he was never even ON the Harvard swim team?

    Do we have a pattern forming here?

    Never mind – to the Left, including the legacy media, the ability to lie sincerely at the drop of a hat is considered a feature, not a bug. Ethics are for reactionaries, long live the Revolution! This guy has a bright future in Democratic politics . . .

  17. Estragon
    May 20th, 2010 @ 3:56 am

    Maybe I’m mixing him up with another Northeast lefty, but isn’t Blumenthal also the guy who bragged about being captain of the Harvard swim team, when if fact he was never even ON the Harvard swim team?

    Do we have a pattern forming here?

    Never mind – to the Left, including the legacy media, the ability to lie sincerely at the drop of a hat is considered a feature, not a bug. Ethics are for reactionaries, long live the Revolution! This guy has a bright future in Democratic politics . . .