49 things to know about me

1. I grew up overseas, which may account for my infatuation with America.
2. My first memory is of driving through a bombed out city in Germany, spring of 1948, in a taxi cab held together with wire. 
3. We moved into a house formerly occupied by a Nazi cameraman. The attic was filled with films of Nazis marching and heiling.
4. Looking for buried treasure, I discovered an oilcloth package just lying around under the front porch. 
5. Inside were three Nazi daggers.
6. When I was six years old I routinely rode my bike a couple of miles from home.
7. Frequently carrying one of my Nazi daggers.
8. When I was eleven I went to an international school in Belgrade where classrooms were heated by coal-burning stoves and I fell in love for the first time. Vittoria Vittelli. Daughter of the Italian Ambassador.
9. When I was twelve I went to school in Singapore where it was so hot school let out every day at one o'clock so everyone could go swimming. That same year I discovered that I had a third ball and thought it might have something to do with thinking about Barbara York being naked.
10. It turned out I didn’t have a third ball. It was a hernia. That meant I could think about Barbara York as much as I wanted.
11. When I was thirteen I went to a French school for retarded kids, where I got into a fight defending America, and came away with a crushed vertebrae, so I didn't have to go back.
12. When I was fourteen my family dragged me to Versailles and I felt like I had been there before, only I hadn’t.
13. When I was fifteen we came back to America, where we lived in an American house with a lawn and a breezeway and woods out back.
14. And a TV to get addicted to. And other things as well.
15. For example. I found an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes on a restaurant table. I took them and smoked one a day for 15 days, and on the 16th day I smoked five.
16. By the twentieth day I was smoking twenty. 
17. I am a sports freak. College basketball and professional football in particular.
18. The first time I saw a major league baseball stadium in person I had trouble breathing.
19. I believe Edward de Vere,17th Earl of Oxford, really wrote Shakespeare.
20. I think there’s a good chance that de Vere was Queen Elizabeth’s bastard son, which might help explain why he wrote under a pseudonym.
21. I believe I have a special relationship with the I Ching.
22. My political heroes are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Winston Churchill.
23. Doctors and hospitals give me the creeps.
24. I don’t remember the first time I had sex.
25. I was in Vienna, Austria, getting drunk, when JFK was shot.
26. My favorite poetic form is the sonnet.
27. My second favorite is the sestina.
28. The first time I tried to buy marijuana, in 1965, on 14th Street in Washington DC, a black guy sold me a Lipton’s tea bag for $8.50.
29. When I was a teenager I played basketball 20 hours a week.
30. I didn’t know what I wanted to be until I was 35.
31. My daughter was born in New York City, delivered by a midwife with amazing blue eyes.
32. My son was born at home on a commune in the Blue Ridge mountains. When he emerged I thought his brain was on the outside of his skull.
33. My first wife (and the mother of my children) is now a Buddhist and doesn’t believe in killing flies or anything that’s alive.
34. My second wife is a dance teacher and a poet.
35. For a while we lived in a ritzy apartment building that had a ballroom.
36. We drank Manhattans and went dancing almost every weekend.
37. It strikes me that love is the driving force in the universe.
38. My favorite female singer is Laura Nyro.
39. My favorite male singer is Frank Sinatra.
40. My working hours are from 10-2 and 10-2.
41. I suspect something very strange is going on in the universe.
42. I own a hi-def TV and a Tivo but no cell phone.
43. I think whoever invented butter deserves the Nobel Prize.
44. The first few times I went to Europe with my family, we went on a ship.
45. I once gave Adlai Stevenson a ride in an elevator in Belgrade Yugoslavia.
46. I peed next to Michael J. Fox at the Academy Awards.
47. My twelve year old daughter starred in a PBS series for kids called Powerhouse, and appeared on the Merv Griffin Show to answer questions about nuclear war.
48. I made a tango movie in Buenos Aires with Robert Duvall.
49. I think name droppers are pathetic.

john kerry's diary - october

Dear Diary,

I did GREAT in the debates. Woo hah! Everyone agreed I ripped W’s little snotface Texas fratboy ass to shreds. Especially on STYLE. I looked Presidential. I sounded Presidential. I even acted kind of Presidential.

If I ever had any doubt what kind of President I’d be (and I’m not saying I did) it was dispelled when I watched the tapes of me and W. going up against each other a few times. And I’ve got to say, if I don’t look like a President, I don’t know who does. (Tall, like Lincoln. Stylish, in a Chester Arthur kind of way. And, of course, the hair and the hand gestures -- pure Kennedy.)

(I hope I get to be President. I hope I hope I hope.)

The only thing I’d do differently is, I wouldn’t have brought up the fact that DC’s daughter is a muff-diver. My handlers assured me it would help to keep some of the fundamental Christians at home, and maybe it still will. But mostly it evidently caused a lot of regular voters to conclude I’m a mean guy… though I’m not sure why that would hurt me on Nov. 2. It could even help. Because everyone says W. is a tough guy, and now they’ll be able to say I’m a mean guy. Mean, tough, what’s the difference?

Now it’s the sprint towards the finish. All that remains is to shore up my base, and talk gravely about W’s plans to institute a draft, throw seniors out on their ear, and use fire hoses on African-Americans trying to vote. Sure, they’re exaggerations or, if you prefer, little white lies. But so what? Everybody lies in politics. That’s the way the game is played, and I’d be stupid if I didn’t play it too. (Note to W: I have no idea why you didn’t make more out of the fact that you have three African-Americans in high positions in your cabinet; I sure would have.)

As someone once said (I forget who): “The end justifies the means.”

So true. So true.

I have to go now. To Ohio. It’s time to pretend I’m a life-long hunter, and blast away at a few ducks or whatever’s in season. I hope I don’t accidentally shoot anyone. That would be harder to explain than my position on Iraq.

john kerry's diary - september

Dear Diary,

Christ, what a mess. This Swift boat thing. And over what? Something that happened over 30 years ago, in a weird time in a weird place, in the jungle for godsake, which take it from me feels spooky and dangerous even when you’re on a Swift boat with 50. caliber machine guns and a bunch of your buddies with you. Because you’re always on these little streams where you never know where you are or who’s waiting around the next bend in the river waiting to kill your ass.

I mean, it’s not like I wasn’t there.

I was there, godammit. I was over there in that shithole serving my country. And what was Dubya doing? Getting drunk at frat parties and skipping out on his duty in the air fucking reserves, for Chrissake, in Alabama. I was in that shithole putting my life on the line, because say what you want about the inconsistencies in the record about what actually happened, my life and the lives of my fellow crewmen were on the line. Over 56,000 of us gave the last measure in that crapheap, and while I didn’t want to be one of them, and I damn well didn’t plan to be one of them, and took every conceivable measure I could to protect myself (and of course, my men) I could have gotten killed. That’s a fact.

I wish people knew what it was like over there. Then maybe they’d understand. When I came back I said that we were the victims of a mistaken war. I still believe that. It wasn’t the war I’d hoped to find there. I wanted something more along the lines of WW II, where a man could do something brave and be a hero, and not feel like a piece of shit for shooting some poor kid in a loincloth in the back.

In Vietnam (I mean, the Nam) you didn’t know who the good guys were. There wasn’t any black and white, no noble purpose whatsoever except maybe saving people from Communism. Vietnam was just a lot of little rivers going off into nowhere, where teenagers fired at you from the goddam jungle. Who would want to risk their life for that?

Not me. Not George Bush either.

But that’s what people need to understand. I went and he didn’t. And if I became a little unbalanced over there, if I was always getting lost and putting my men at risk and slaughtering farmyard animals and burning those nasty hootches with my Zippo, if I found myself wondering how I was going to get out of there without getting my ass killed, and just happened to know that three purple hearts gets you out of there, well, anyone in their right mind would have thought about it.

Here’s what I wish I could tell the American people. I did what I did for my country. Not only my country back then, but my country today. Because I knew that one day I’d be President. A good President. Kind and fair. Wise. Troubled by the burdens of responsibility but stoically bearing them. It’s what I’ve always wanted for myself. I’ve never doubted for a moment I would achieve my goal… except on those foul-smelling backwater rivers drifting, possibly, into an ambush.

Ambush. I hate the word.

It’s what all of us dreaded. Fire out of nowhere, bullets whizzing around us, mortar rounds exploding. A future President could get himself killed in a place like that. And then what good would it do the country?

Another needless sacrifice?

That’s not the Boston Strangler’s way.

That's what I called myself back then. I chose the name as my "handle" over in Nam because I thought it made me seem tough, just like saying Nam makes me feel like a real genuine veteran. I wanted to be tough. I wanted to be brave too. But there’s a fine line between being brave and being stupid, and it’s all relative anyway. There are nuances. There’s physical bravery and there’s moral courage. I chose the latter.

The problem with moral courage, from a PR standpoint, is that it’s so much harder to see. I stand up to Big Business and so on, but there’s a so-whatness about it I’ve always felt. On the other hand, run up a hill and get killed wiping out a machine gun emplacement, you’re a hero, no questions asked.

But you’re also a dead hero.

And that’s not the Boston Strangler had in mind.

The Boston strangler wanted to get out of that shithole. And he wanted to get out of it having seen a little action (but not too much) so he could get back to the states and say he’d been there, he’d seen the naked dead bodies and the burning napalm kids running around like torches and all the other rotten things everyone said was going on, and he’d change things. He’d talk some sense into the country. He’d tell them how fucked up it was and they’d believe him. Especially if he had some medals.

Medals would be very important. If he just manipulated his way home without at least couple of medals that established his bona fides, a real live soldier who'd seen action and performed heroically, the New York Times might simply dismiss him as just another sour vet with an ax to grind. And you wanted the Times on your side.

But that presents a problem, doesn’t it? Put yourself in his shoes. How do you get the damn medals without doing something that might get your ass killed?

Well, you report wounds that might only need a band-aid, that’s how. And you write up some after-action reports that make you look heroic. And you get out of the Nam as fast as you can.

It’s not the brave thing to do, maybe (it depends what your definition of bravery is) but it IS the smart thing to do. And that’s something you want in a President. A guy who does the smart thing. A guy who makes the move that everyone applauds. When I’m elected President, that’s what I plan to do.

For instance, I don’t plan to do something stupid and invade a foreign country like some people I know. Even if it is the so-called “right” thing to do. Because sometimes the right thing to do isn’t the smart thing to do. If Dubya hadn’t invaded Iraq, no Democrat could’ve touched him in this election. Sure, he and his consigliores (god, how I love that word!) got rid of a tyrant and probably made the world a lot safer… in the long term. Long term! That’s the key. In the short term, it’s a mess, just like all wars are. And politics is all about the short term. So I have to say I’m really surprised that he missed seeing the short term consequences of his little Iraq misadventure. Since he’s supposed to be so politically shrewd and all.

I won’t make that same mistake. If I ever have to invade anyone, I’ll make sure the short term political benefits outweigh the long term “visionary” kinds of things that can get a President in a whole lot of trouble.

That’s it for now. I have to go and prep for the debates and figure out what in God’s name I’ll do if I’m elected.

sex & drugs, money & power

One of the great things about being a liberal is that you get to have fun with sex & drugs without feeling the least bit guilty about it.

That's because liberals get sex & drugs. They have fun with sex & drugs. They're comfortable with them. They don't see them as a big deal. So it strikes them as ludicrous for people to get worked up because the President gets a blow job in the Oval Office.

Conservatives, for the most part, don’t see it that way. There’s something about sex & drugs that conservatives don’t trust. They know they’re an important part of the human experience, but in the conservative mind the fear always lurks that too much sex & drugs will lead to something bad – public licentiousness, social chaos, collapse.

That’s why conservatives are almost always on the wrong side of any legislative issue that has to do with sex and drugs. They feel, almost instinctively, that whatever it is in the human psyche that loves sex and drugs has to be kept under control – probably because they are secretly worried that their own urges for wantonness might bust out if they’re not constantly being tamped down. (Think of Jimmy Swaggart in his motel room masturbating in front of a stripper or Bill Bennett sitting alone in his Las Vegas hotel pulling the handle on a slot machine.)

What conservatives don’t seem to realize is that the vast majority of liberals who are enjoying the pleasures of sex and drugs are doing so in a thoughtful, self-regulated way (though people who confine their love-making to the missionary position and their drug use to an eggnog at Christmas may not see it like that). Their behavior isn’t likely to lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.

On the other hand, one of the great things about being a conservative is that you get to enjoy the pleasures of money & power without feeling guilty about it.

Conservatives get money & power. Liberals, for the most part, don’t.

That’s why liberals are almost always on the wrong side of every legislative issue involving money & power. There’s something about money & power that they don’t trust… and don’t understand.

Liberals know that money's important, just like conservatives know sex is important. But having fun with it? That’s another thing entirely. Money is a guilty pleasure for most liberals, just as sex is a guilty pleasure for most conservatives. If you go to a party in New York or Washington, people will talk about their sexcapades with no inhibition whatsoever. But they won’t talk about how much money they make or all the fun things they want to do with it. (If you go to a party in Des Moines, I suspect the reverse is true).

The Democrats I know seem to have a stake in projecting the impression that they don’t really care about money that much. They haven’t spent much time or thought trying to figure out how money works in the big picture, and don’t think it’s strange that they couldn’t possibly tell you what a yield curve is, much less a Laffer curve. It’s something they’re almost proud of. That skews the way they reflexively think about things like poverty and taxes. To someone ignorant about how money really works, it seems positively Dickensian not to have a minimum wage and vaguely immoral to let rich people keep so much of their money so long as there’s poverty and homelessness.

(Note to my liberal friends: (1) raising the minimum wage ALWAYS causes wage earners at the lowest level to lose jobs; the only question is, how many. (2) you can’t hurt the superrich, EVER, by taxing them more; they’ll just put more of their money in tax free municipal bonds or some other shelter).

(Note to my conservative friends: Liberals, in my experience, really feel bad at some level that they have things that poorer people don’t. They honestly care about the poor and down-trodden. They wish life were fairer. It’s a very endearing quality).

Then there's Power.

Power is an even a trickier thing for liberals to wrap their minds around. They feel in their guts that it’s a corrupting thing to have too much of, which is why they’re so uncomfortable with the new world reality of one superpower (us) and a bunch of also-rans (everybody else, including France). That’s why they want to go to the U.N. and entertain ideas like a “global test” before the U.S. takes any military action of any consequence. It diffuses our power and makes us seem more like one of the guys. It’s more comfortable. Plus it’s the generous thing to do… a little good old-fashioned noblesse oblige that shows how fair we really are here in America. I suppose the reasoning is that if we do enough pandering and condescending, maybe the little countries will stop noticing that we’re the ones with all the nuclear bombs and a military that could crush them like a bug.

I keep getting the sense that liberals want America to act like they act with their maids – paying them more than the market demands and inquiring after their parents back in Guatemala – as if such small generosities can somehow obscure the awkward reality of the situation.

Which is that they have more money and more power and more sex and more drugs than the maid.