A "Botched
Joke" has occurred when progressives seek to forestall any opposition use of a
democrat quoted reciting a conceit held commonly among progressives, though not among the general voting public, by a campaign of obfuscation and phony outrage.
The most obnoxious display of this occurred when Sen. John Kerry expressed the typical progressive view that the ranks of our country'
s military enlistees are comprised of uneducated poors who couldn't know better and are therefor themselves properly understood to be additional victims of "Bush's wars", saying:
"You know,
education, if you make the most of it, you study
hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you
don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Kerry and his supporters claimed that this was a "botched
joke" which was intended to mock Pres. Bush. In service of this
silly claim, they offered up a half-dozen alternative, "original" versions which added and rearranged
words and punctuation. Progressives begged the question, "Why would Kerry commit political suicide by joking at the troops' expense?" when it is clear from the video of his comments that Kerry intended no humor whatsoever. As if to undermine their own false narrative, progressives simultaneously praised Kerry for displaying the political courage to tell the
truth about America's "poverty draft".
