The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum Presidential candidate:

It would be so easy to stand back and just pick and choose from stupid comments that are almost a fait accompli from the DNC this week. But then, we'd be ignoring the candidate himself, and we're out to make sure he gets to know as many people as possible, what with that award-winning personality of his.

Jokes aside, Kerry's committed his most serious campaign gaffe to date. One of the great blunders, if you will. And not the one about land wars in Asia.

No, he's decided to venture into the world of sports. And that's a world (some would say the only world) where I'm an expert.

Hey, Kerry can go windsurfing and skiing all he wants, and I hear he was a pretty fair hockey player. But if he's going to talk about sports, he needs to figure out that he can't fake his way through it, unlike the rest of his campaign. Instead, he did an interview with ESPN the Magazine.

I can't link to it, but feel free to buy the Mag if you like, or contact me for a password to access the site and find the article. It's beyond funny, it's borderline blasphemy.

First, Kerry gets asked if Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame. This is a personal issue for the Philly sports fan in me, but it's also one of the great sports debates of the century. Kerry's response is "doubtful." He can't even give a yes or no on this one?

Next, we have his complaint that the BCS performed like "Florida in 2000." Um, Florida gave us a clear-cut winner. Give the state some credit.

Later, he names his greatest sports movies of all time. He gets credit for mentioning Slapshot, and Chariots of Fire is definitely worthy, if a tad high-brow. Somehow, no mention of Rocky. Fine, he's a Boston guy, probably forgot about it. No mention of Caddyshack, either. But I won't even dignify his inclusion of Waterboy while omitting The Natural and Field of Dreams.

And let's not forget -- he doesn't want to pay college athletes. Why? It "would ruin it" and these are "better sports" without the athletes being paid. That's nice. Glad to see he can turn off the empathy for college athletes being led around by the nose by the NCAA.

But my favorite response is when Kerry gets asked whom he would have named as the Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century. No Jordan, or Ali, or Ruth or even the God of Hockey, Wayne Gretzky. No, Kerry has to be different. He picks an American cyclist who won the Tour de France. No, not Lance Armstrong -- remember, Lance had only won one of these things before the last century ended. Besides, as Kerry points out, he's from Texas. No, Kerry picks Greg LeMond. Yup, that's right -- the guy with the French surname.

Oh, one other thing. The author, Peter Keating, notes that "even the most casual sports question can trigger answers from Kerry about his combat experience." Get out! Kerry has combat experience? Where and when? Wait -- here's the answer, from Kerry himself: "When I went to Vietnam, I'd learned as much on the playing fields about how to fight as I did in any other way." Kerry served in Vietnam? Why doesn't he mention this more?