J _ R K - Pat, I'd like to buy an "E"

[Occhidiangela]

Pat Sajak says...

This is really about the Iraqi election.  [right][snapback]66871[/snapback][/right]

Right! So Mr Sajak decides to take this time to make "it" about his sentiments regarding Senator Kerry. Pot calls kettle black.

Senator Kerry has political obligations to fill in his daily duties, to include public rhetoric. Whether or not political rhetoric ever contains "value added" is a moot point. It's part of the Great Game. Mr Sajak's blog leaves him free to make any comment he wants to. So far, so good, but his rant evokes a word I have deep affection for, one that starts with a "t," and ends with a "t." Lovely Vanna, of course, figures in this discussion. More on that later.

But first, the salient points:

Why all the media response and comment? I could care less what Tim Robbins says about politics, likewise Mr Sajak. I heard Sean Hanady commenting on this yesterday, on the car radio, and I switched the channel in frustration. (I am down to once a week, maybe, on Hanady from about three times a week three years ago. PBS is looking better every day, warts and all.)

Let's look at selected Mr Sajak and Senator Kerry comments through the Rogue's lens.

On the very day Iraqis were voting, most of them for the first time in their lives, here’s some of what Kerry had to say on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: "It is significant that there is a vote in Iraq, but ... no one in the United States should try to overhype this election.

Hmm, an expected internal, American political theme that is not news to anyone literate, or who has a TV or radio.

This election is a sort of demarcation point, and what really counts now is the effort to have a legitimate political reconciliation, and it's going to take a massive diplomatic effort and a much more significant outreach to the international community

Absolutely correct.

than this administration has been willing to engage in

.

A paid political announcement.

Note: My observation is that significant outreach was made, and has been made, and has been rebuffed. It was not for lack of trying, it was a matter of

Rejection.
(possibly due to packaging, or as the chef is me would say, poor presentation.)

It took active political choices to reject the outreach, for reasons that no longer matter since the rejection is the result that leaves the playing field in its current condition.

Absent that, we will not be successful in Iraq,"

A belaboring of the obvious, but nonetheless TRUE.

More Senator Kerry: "It's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote." (Sound familiar?)<= Mr Sajak.

The can't is a different case than the doesn't, and Senator Kerry knows that, from our own country. More people did not vote at all than voted for either him, or Pres Bush. This in a stable democracy. Do we apply a higher standard to "burgeoning" democracies? Should we? Is that fair?

The rhetoric is empty. An election does not a democracy make. Iraq is at present a nation engaged in a civil war. It is an occupied nation. It is, at best, a nascent "democracy in progress." Iraq may, like Kenya did, as Haiti has done, fail as a democracy. It may go the way of Yugoslavia and become three countries within the next decade.

Back to the carping:

Every voter in those lines was, in ways big and small, a hero, and should be admired and supported. How could anyone look at voters dancing in the streets and proudly holding up their blue fingers to indicate what they had so bravely done, and not be moved? It seems to me that Sunday was not the time to attempt to minimize or trivialize what millions of Iraqis did that day. That could wait at least 24 hours, couldn’t it?

Dear Pat: I find your connection tenuous, as the rocks thrown were at Pres Bush, not the folks who braved the car bombs to vote.

On these and other various grounds, Mr Sajak finally concludes that Senator Kerry is a jerk. I think he went looking for jerkness; he thinks he found it.


Dear Mr Sajak:

I watched your show, when I ever did, for two reasons: 1) because Vanna is hot in anything she wears 2) to help my kids solve the word puzzles. (I am a crossword veteran.) Your utterances were and are a reason to turn off the set.

As to your epithet slinging, I respectfully remind you that Senator Kerry is a career politician. That job description demands rhetoric and hyperbole, belaboring of the obvious, and the periodic outpouring of ponderous rhetoric. Ever heard of "shock and awe?" "Tax cuts solve everything?" Bombast crosses all party lines.

Perhaps you, Mr Sajak, were looking for a reason to find fault with Senator Kerry. A winner are you: you found one! Of course, you are possibly being redundant, considering the profession of your target, or you may even be using the wrong epithet!

"Senator Kerry, you are a politician!" Is this not insult enough, sir?

I leave you to ponder that conundrum at your leisure. While you are at your pondering, Mr Sajak, I'd like to buy an "i" . . . you self _mportant tw_t.

Occhi