Kerry's Home Movies
Drudge is ablaze with news that back in Vietnam John Kerry reenacted some of his battlefields heroics for an 8mm movie camera:
The official convention video introducing Kerry is directed by Steven Spielberg prot?g? James Moll.
Moll was given hours of Kerry's homemade 8 millimeter film to incorporate into the convention short, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
"Kerry carried a home movie camera to record his exploits for later viewing," charges a naval officer in the upcoming book UNFIT FOR COMMAND.
"Kerry would revisit ambush locations for reenacting combat scenes where he would portray the hero, catching it all on film. Kerry would take movies of himself walking around in combat gear, sometimes dressed as an infantryman walking resolutely through the terrain. He even filmed mock interviews of himself narrating his exploits. A joke circulated among Swiftees was that Kerry left Vietnam early not because he received three Purple Hearts, but because he had recorded enough film of himself to take home for his planned political campaigns."
Needless to say this is the sort of revelation that right-wing types live for. And there is something decidedly creepy and bizarre about restaging scenes such as these–that's something everyone can agree on. Drudge cites a 1996 Boston Globe story which noted the films "reveal something indelible about the man who shot them—the tall, thin, handsome Naval officer seen striding through the reeds in flak jacket and helmet, holding aloft the captured B-40 rocket. The young man so unconscious of risk in the heat of battle, yet so focused on his future ambitions that he would reenact the moment for film. It is as if he had cast himself in the sequel to the experience of his hero, John F. Kennedy, on the PT-109."
"Indelible" isn't the word I'd use. Unseemly, yes. Disturbing, you bet. Weird as hell, yup.
But will this sort of revelation have any real effect on Kerry's campaign? Somehow I doubt it. GOP operatives thought they had Clinton nailed to the wall when his ridiculous draft-dodging letters came to light. But the letters didn't ruin the guy. The last-minute revelation of George W. Bush's drunk-driving record didn't keep him from becoming prez. And when it comes to embarrassing home movies, Paris Hilton has made everything short of a snuff film just a prelude to a Fox reality series.
More important, the Reps can't afford to dwell too long on Kerry's military experience, regardless of the context. It raises too many "Where Was George?" questions for their guy.
But this latest revelation does make the convention video more interesting to watch than otherwise.