The John Kerry Post of the Day

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

I finally watched the TiVo of John Kerry's appearance on The Daily Show last night. What's amazing is that John Kerry took someone that's usually hysterical -- Jon Stewart -- and made him unfunny. Many politicians lack a sense of comic timing, but Kerry's turned it into an art form. Bravo.

Lest people think it's only conservatives who feel this way, check out this review from Dana Stevens at Slate, who's a Kerry supporter...

From the moment the senator appeared and sat down on the gray sofa where, just last week, Bill Clinton basked in the audience's applause like a cat lapping up cream, Kerry's charisma was less than zero: It was negative. He was a charm vacuum, forced to actually borrow mojo from audience members. He was a dessicated husk, a tin man who really didn't have a heart. His lack of vibrancy, his utter dearth of sex appeal made Al Gore look like Charo.

... Watching Kerry strike out was especially heartbreaking given that Stewart was pitching not just softballs but marshmallows. Puffy interview marshmallows with rainbow sprinkles on them, and Kerry was letting them sail by as if he planned to get to first base on a walk. That may be how he hopes to win the presidency as well, but before he gets there, he'll have to jump through hoops a lot tougher than this exchange:

Stewart: […] As any good fake journalist should do, I watch only the 24-hour cable news. This is what I learned about you—

Kerry: All right.

Stewart: Through the cable news. Please refute if you will. Are you the number one most liberal senator in the Senate?

Kerry: No.

Stewart: Okay.

Kerry: You happy with that? (LAUGHTER)

Um, no, Senator. Should we be? Kerry seemed unclear on the concept that he was there precisely to poke fun at the recirculated sound bites of the talking-head circuit, that this was his chance to take terms like "liberal" and "flip-flop" and split them wide open. All he had to do was shoulder his rocket launcher (he's good at that, right?) and take aim at the received wisdom that has kept the focus of this campaign exactly where the Bush camp wants it to be: on who did what in a war we lost 30 years ago, rather than what to do next in the war we're losing right now. Instead, Kerry ignored every opening Stewart gave him, preferring to dust off rhetoric that's become familiar even to casual followers of his campaign: "You don't go to war because you want to. You go to war because you have to." That was a good line at the convention, but baby, the convention was a month ago! This is Jon Stewart, the king of politically savvy late-night television. You need new A-list material. Get someone on it.

The current controversy about Kerry's war service got only a glancing mention, when Stewart leaned in to murmur, "So I understand that apparently you were never in Vietnam." But Kerry's repeated vows to stay "laser-beam focused" on the "real issues" didn't keep him from milking his war record at every possible opportunity. Asked whether the Swift boat ads had affected him personally, Kerry replied pointedly, "Yeah, it's a little bit disappointing. But believe it or not, I've been through worse." And then, when the interview was over and Kerry rose to leave, he caused audible groans in my household by saluting the audience (just as he did at the opening of his convention speech: "John Kerry reporting for duty." Lieutenant Kerry, your first order is to stop saluting the audience. It makes you look like a total tool).

Maybe the Democrats are just a humor-challenged group, but that's unfair, since there's Bill Clinton and Joe Lieberman and.... well.... Al Sharpton. Maybe Barack Obama has one, too, but I'm sure they'll try to turn him into a humorless drone, too. It's hysterical, because the Dems have again nominated a candidate who needs his wife to tell people, "No, really, he's very funny! I swear!"

By the way, Stevens is now convinced we're losing the war in Iraq. Guess it makes sense -- she's supporting a candidate who gave up on Vietnam as soon as he could.