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April 23, 2004

Trivial Political Pursuit

So now I see that John Kerry's military records are drawing a disproportionate amount of attention for no good reason. Apparently Kerry's team claims that Kerry took command of his Swift boat earlier than he, in fact, did. This is apparently a big deal, for reasons I can't really understand. We do know that Kerry served in Vietnam on Swift boats for 4-5 months, and that he earned a Silver Star while doing so. Do the precise dates really matter all that much? As far as I'm concerned, Kerry's Vietnam service shouldn't even be a factor in whether or not to vote for him. But what does this new 'incident' tell us, other than perhaps that his campaign staff is a little sloppy? This is a non-story, and the Globe would have done well to fill those column inches with something a little more informative.

On the flip side, I should note that this is an excellent counterfactual for those wild-eyed right-wingers who always carry on about media bias (not that we actually have anyone like that around here...ahem...moving on). Granted, the full weight of the press has yet to land on this episode, but neither have they buried it, and it's about as irrelevant as the Bush AWOL non-story that floated about earlier this year. Chalk one up for the media being more even-handed (if still lousy).