John Kerry on Iraq? Soldiers are stupid, Vote Democrat or die, or Bush is stupid?

This is not a polital blog, but I am missing something here and maybe you all can help me. I hear a lot of talk about how the Kerry statement was just a joke, but I don’t understand how Kerry could not have expected this not to be taken as anything but a direct insult.

I started thinking on this more when a good friend of mine, from Florida, sent me this picture last night in an email:

This is in response to a recent Kerry speech in which he said:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

Obviously, people in the military were quite insensed by this. Thus the above pic. I guess I can see why. You can draw from Kerry’s remarks:
* America is a good place to be only if you are smart and succesful
* The military is a place you go when you can’t do anything else
* If you are stupid or lazy, the only home you’ll find in the US in in military
* If your smart you’ll stay out of the military.
* If aren’t and you are in the Military, Bush will send you to Iraq.

John Kerry refused to apologise for this statement, only adding that he meant to add “Just ask President Bush”. Fine, let’s assume that is the case and take the quote for what it was meant to be:

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq; just ask President Bush.”

Now, that is the entire quote restored to it’s original context as intended by the speech writers and reviewed, presumably, by Kerry prior to its deliverence.

So what does that mean now? According at least one person on our gaming forum, all it means is “President Bush is stupid”. How can it mean that? Is it saying he’s stupid because he once served in the military? That’s again implying that if you knew the person served in the military, you can assume they are stupid.

What it seems to me to be saying is:
It sounds like your saying, “Under Bush, America is only safe for smart, successful people. For the rest of you, republicans will send you off to die.” Or shortened, “Vote Democrat or Be Killed” and that’s pretty awful even as a joke… Still everyone is saying he is somehow being taken out of context…

This reminds me of Bill Bennett discussing the chapter in Steve Levitt’s book Freakonomics that devoted a chapter to the effects of abortion on society and crime rates. And yes I’ve read the entire book and it is a book that EVERYONE should read. It’s been most of a year since I read it, so please forgive any inaccuracies. I’ll probably read it again soon and if/when I do, I’ll come back correct any inaccurcies.

The point of the whole book was to analyze statistics and how they are used (or misused) in today’s society. It broached many unpopular topics such as “Which would save the lives of more children, forcing children, already buckled into the back seat of a car to also be in a car seat, or to outlawing back yard swimming pools?”. Surprisingly the answer is swimming pools.

An early chapter covered the why’s and wherefores of crime being high in low income neighborhoods and touched upon low incomes neighborhoods being predominently minority based and a significant portion of those minorities being black. It confronted myths by going on to say that while that had a large affect on the percentage of crime in the black community, if you adjusted for the contributing factors, such as income, the crime rates equalized. Boiled down, the lean toward a higher percentage of black criminals is not due to race, but to poverty and other social conditions. Roles reversed, an impoverished white community would have a high crime rate due to their circumstances not their race.

A chapter or two chapter after that, if memory serves, was the chapter on the affects of abortion, disproportionally slanted to low income and black citizens, on the crime rate. When a caller asked about a related topic: “I’ve read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn’t — never touches this at all.” the conversation worked its way to Bennett’s statement:
BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don’t know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don’t know. I mean, it cuts both — you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well —
CALLER: Well, I don’t think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don’t think it is either, I don’t think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don’t know. But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could — if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.”

Dr. Levitt also confirms this in his respose to the media storm:
“If we lived in a world in which the government chose who gets to reproduce, then Bennett would be correct in saying that “you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” Of course, it would also be true that if we aborted every white, Asian, male, Republican, and Democratic baby in that world, crime would also fall. Immediately after he made the statement about blacks, he followed it up by saying, “That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.” He made a factual statement (if you prohibit any group from reproducing, then the crime rate will go down), and then he noted that just because a statement is true, it doesn’t mean that it is desirable or moral. That is, of course, an incredibly important distinction and one that we make over and over in Freakonomics.”
(A lot of what Levitt discussed in Freakonimics is discussed here in the University of Chicago’s Quartely Journal of Economics )

This is indeed taken out of context as sites like The American Chronicle with catchy titles like “William Bennett: Abort Black Babies To Reduce Crime” and other sites like Color of Change that claim that he was said blacks were a race of criminals. (The change in language from “baby” and “fetus” there is just a humorous side note…). But, if you read the book, as Bennett obviosly did, this statement fits and makes sense in the context of the conversation.

I don’t see how “You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq; just ask President Bush.” can be taken out of context, especially when you consider one is in a live format and the other is in a prepared speech.

Am I missing something here? What is it that Kerry meant to say?

Related Blog Posts:
Fly At Night
Worshiping Christian
Stop The ACLU
California Conservative
Thoughts By Seawitch
esoterically.net/weblog
Lone Star Times
Texas Rainmaker
Freedom Defended
at The Premise
Tail over Tea Kettle
netwmd
Blue Crab Boulevard
Viva La Blog
DPRK Studies
Mark Levin Fan
FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog
Talk Radio-Radio Talk Show-ZTLK Radio
Polipindit
Y.A.C.R.W.B – Yet Another Conservative, Right Wing Blog
The Redhawk Review
Minnesota Democrats Exposed
ArtLindsey.com
Toys in the Attic
chez Diva
Leaning Straight Up
def Sparse(Matrix)
Webloggin
Sister Toldjah
Gun Toting Liberal
Annie Mayhem
dangerousmeta!
Decision ‘08
Outside The Beltway | OTB