P.J. O'Rourke was on C-SPAN's Book TV this weekend flacking his new book and explained why he's had "a nonpartisan grudge against John Kerry for 18 years."
It all had to do with threatened young data-entry clerks during a rigged election, with a delegation of American observers looking on in Manila. They needed some support...
About nine o'clock on Sunday night, [Joe] Conason and I were drinking in the bar of the Manila Hotel when a friend of mine from ABC News told us about the COMELEC defections. The workers who quit in protest were very young, in their teens. The 28 girls and 2 boys weren't really computer operators. They were doing data input. They were kids from poor families and very proud that they'd been to data input school. They didn't seem to be politically motivated and were at pains to describe themselves as unpolitical in a touching, if somewhat garbled, statement they read to the press at the NAMFREL-surrounded church. And they certainly were scared. But their professional dignity had been intolerably injured when the voting data that they'd input did not, as it were, outcome.Posted by Alan at June 28, 2004 06:31 AMJoe and I actually sent Bea Zobel to get members of the international election observer delegation, headed by Colombia's Misael Pastrana and John Hume, from Northern Ireland. Before we'd gone to the bar, Joe and I had been at a press conference at the Manila Hotel, listening to Pastrana and Hume denounce vote fraud by Marcos.
But when Zobel arrived the only election observer she could find was Kerry, having a late dinner. Zobel was gone for a long time. She said Kerry was "curt" and refused to leave until he'd finished his meal and then only reluctantly returned to the church with her.
From my journal: "Gets there & never talks to Comelec girls. Boy is ball-less. Joe and I finally push forward & tell Kerry it was us (1 Dem. & 1 Rep.) that called for him (we also heard, Comelec girls wanted Observers called). That it was Joe & me seemed to make a big difference to Kerry. Who still did f---all."
What I meant by "seemed to make a big difference" was that Kerry's ears perked right up when he heard his name called by members of the press. His reaction was to turn to us and say, magisterially, "No interviews, boys." We explained that we had no interest in interviewing him and suggested that he provide some reassurance to the frightened conscientious objectors from COMELEC.
Now, with benefit of hindsight, I think I can tell you why Kerry didn't do so. He was caught in Kerry-ish calculation--an ambitious young senator on his first important bipartisan delegation with its delicate mission of neutrality. Cory Aquino was very popular. But so was President Reagan. Which way to have it? Why, have it both ways! So Kerry was firmly behind Pash Commit of Flips to Dem, up to a point.
Just as today Kerry is brave sailor/bold war protester; foe of Saddam/friend of Hans Blix; political underdog/entitled nominee; big government liberal/corporate tax-cutting conservative; rider of Harleys/marrier of Heinz; and, incidentally, still a real jerk.