John Kerry’s statement about education and military service may be a political liability to the power-lusting Dems, but journalists (most of whom vote Democratic) aren’t politicians, they’re the busy bees of the information age, and they should perform their jobs now: Is Kerry’s statement true?
I bet it is. I am sure (without data; I see this feelingly) that the kids who are serving in Iraq are not nearly as well educated as, say, the kids who are getting internships at media companies that served the Koolaid on WMD, or serving as pages to closeted gay Republican congressmen.
It’s an economic draft, stupid.
Bravo John Kerry, for exposing the terrible hypocrisy of the Iraq war: the journos and thinktankers and pols who banged the drum were never at risk, and neither are their kids. Because they didn’t fall off the back of the meritocracy bus. Do I hear some resentment? Yes. Jim Fallows established his reputation with a famous piece called Where Were You In the Class War, Daddy? about the class divide between those who served in Vietnam and those who protested the war in the safe streets of America. The piece appeared in the Washington Monthly, published by Charlie Peters, the former Peace Corps exec who has long called for mandatory national service. The class divide is (I bet) even wider today; including in the officer corps, where Ivy grads are (another wild wager on my part) far less likely to be found on the Tigris than their predecessors were to be found on the banks of the Mekong. E.g., John Kerry and Donald E. Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, who for whatever stupid, noble, democratic, or ambitious reason, served in that disastrous war.
Maybe we can’t have the conversation for another week, while John Kerry is held in a safe house inside the green zone in D.C., but let’s have it out. What’s Charlie Rangel saying? Help my man out!
