The Nothingness of Kathleen Parker

I was very entertained today to read Kathleen Parker's assessment of the Democrats and in particular John Kerry.

She writes:

Democrats are consumed with angst, ennui and uncertainty.

WOW. Does she ever have a handle on the English language! I mean, I must be full of angst and ennui, let alone uncertainty, but I wasn't sure what those things were.
I mean who ever said the Republicans couldn't be intellectual. So I rushed to my Merriam Webster and started with "angst". Actually, the online version of the American Heritage dictionary reports:

A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.

Well that didn't sound like me! Was I anxious or apprehensive about the Ohio vote? Not me. I was ANGRY. Not very angst-like at all.

O.K., how about "ennui". Maybe THAT was more how I felt. Again the definition from the American Heritage Dictionary went something like this:

Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: “The servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters” (John Barth).

We were dissatisfied resulting from "lack of interest; boredom". Hey I was MAD AS HELL about the election, I wasn't exactly bored. I don't think the people in Ohio who waited hours in line were actually listless. Maybe they were VOTELESS....that is sort of like listless, isn't it?

And we were full of uncertainty? HUH? What has Ms. Parker been smoking?

O.K., so what was the reason then? As Kathleen Parker continues:

The answer to all of the above is, in a word, yes. It was the values thing; it was terrorism; and it was the way Kerry looked and talked -- all combined, but none singly.

Democrats won't be able to solve these riddles until they realize that the answer is implicit in the question. In a complex, diverse world, nothing's ever as simple as either-or, any more than America is strictly a red state-blue state nation. Or a metro-retro world.

Hey, I like that "metro-retro" line. It rhymes.

But she calls morality, "the values thing." Thing? And it was the Democrats who looked at the world as simple....no, it was Kerry who thought answers were complex. It was Bush who was the simpleton on the issues. He had concrete answers for Stem Cells, and concrete answers for Abortion, and Family Planning, and Gay Marriage. The Democrats have always believed that answers were complex. WHAT is Ms. Parker thinking?

O.K. Ms. Parker continues:

Yes, clearly, Americans are deeply concerned about terrorism and security. And, yes, Americans are deeply concerned about values, though those values are not necessarily measured in terms of specific issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. The search for values runs far deeper than the referendum du jour.

I beg your pardon Ms. Parker, but it was exactly these litmus tests of specific issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Democrats always believed that the search for values were deeper than the referendum du jour. (Is it ok with your Republican friends to be using all of that FRENCH???). The Republicans have been the single issue, black-and-white, voters. Give me a break will you?

But Kathleen, your WRITING....yikes. You follow this up with a statement ready to send me to the ground rolling around hysterically. You write:

They run to the core of who we are, the underlying principles that course through America's red, white and blue veins, the DNA of the USA -- honor, constancy and fealty, to name a few. They are the abstractions that undergird the concrete, the qualities we associate with adults, the coagulants of trust.

Clearly you don't have a ghost writer. I mean how CAN you write about the red, white, and blue veins. I am dying. And then you talk about the "coagulants of trust."...I mean, you don't need a ghost writer. You need a vascular surgeon, if not a hematologist. Is this writing for real?

But you have found the problem. John Kerry apparently is missing "it." (Wasn't "It" the hand from the Addams Family T.V. show???...oh bother). You write:

This is where Kerry's persona came into play. Was it the way he looked? The way he talked? Yes and yes, which poses its own little mystery. In nearly every way, John Kerry seemed born to the presidency. Straight out of central casting, he had the right looks, the right resume, the Purple Hearts.

Everything but "it." The je ne sais quoi of love and politics. We have a hard time defining "it," whateveritis -- warmth, humility, sincerity? -- but we know when it's absent.

How about a brain Ms. Parker. John Kerry was running against a man without a brain. Is that as important as "it"???

You conclude:

Meanwhile, nothing about Kerry engendered the kind of trust that would make a majority of Americans abandon the devil they knew for a man who didn't seem to grasp that values are more than a political strategy. By his attempts to please all -- to take "four sides of every issue," as one of his advisers put it -- Kerry convinced voters that he didn't even trust himself.

No Ms. Parker. We trusted Kerry and still do. We are not appreciating any ennui or angst. We are motivated and enthusiastic about a man worth of being President. We did not want to re-elect the devil to the White House as you suggest. But rather a man motivated for service, tested under combat, experienced in the Congress.

You helped smear John Kerry in 2004. And I will not stand by as you start to heave the mud on his reputation once more. Put away your dirt piles and go home to your Thesaurus. Maybe you can look us some nice long words for your next column that APPLY to what you are saying. Meanwhile, we shall continue the fight for 2008.

Bob