John Kerry as Margaret Dumont

Would you like to have been a fly on the wall … or a bug in the satellite … listening in on all the conversations John Kerry had in the last 24 or so hours.? (“John, you really have to apologize, John… I know they’re SOBs but… hey, swallow your pride, there’s an election going on… You want to be responsible for what happens Tuesday… You already lost once… etc, etc.) Any bets on who finally got Kerry to cave and “apologize”? Howard Dean? Nancy Pelosi? James Carville ? (who has the laugher of the day, calling Kerry “one of the great war heroes to ever serve in the Congress.” – Did he say that with a straight face? I guess that’s why Carville gets the big bucks.) After Kerry floated the possibility that this was all a “botched joke”, all I could think of was this is the man with less sense of humor than a rotten turnip. Can you imagine Kerry telling jokes?
Well, I can imagine him being the butt of jokes, rather like Margaret Dumont in all those Marx Brothers classics. I remember reading Groucho saying she just never got the jokes and that was what made her funny. That’s kind of like Kerry. I never believed him as “nuanced,” but, rather, clueless. I think that’s the reason for all his legendary flip-flopping. He doesn’t really change his mind – just doesn’t get the joke.