Right after Clinton was elected and when Chelsea was thirteen years old
at the time I remember listening to a radio talk show with listeners
calling in. Virtually the whole show seemed to be devoted to one caller
after another talking about how ugly Chelsea was.
On 9/18/2015 11:03 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
Certainly an argument can be made supporting a long, drawn-out
political campaign. Time to seek out new potential leaders. Time to
air their views, their proposed policies and priorities.
But come on! How long has the current presidential campaign been
fuming and fussing and building up a huge head of hot air? Sadly, the
opportunity to "Educate" Americans has become a Season of Lies.
Anything goes.
But the only difference between today's campaign and those of past
seasons is the length of time the Public must suffer.
Remember, Eleanor Roosevelt was constantly slammed. Even the
president's little dog, Falla. Truman's daughter's musical talent was
sneered and smeared by those opposing the president.
While I agree that violence among Americans is on the increase, it is
not new to our generation. What was it they said about President
Jackson's common law wife?
I campaigned for a man for Seattle City Council, many years ago. His
wife was the administrator of a local medical clinic. Among other
positions, this man supported abortion. He lost a close election, but
his wife lost her job. Mass pickets and hate mail turned the clinic's
daily life into a nightmare. This was prior to legislation preventing
the blocking of entrences, and patients could not get through the
doors. Even the majority of patients who were not pregnant. The
candidate went back to his business as a private contractor, but his
wife's career was shattered.
The bottom line is that it is simply easier today to trash a person's
family than it was fifty years ago.
But the Evil People are no more or less Evil than at any time in our history.
Carl Jarvis
On 9/17/15, Bob Hachey <bhachey@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi all,
The editorial pasted below my name comes from the Boston Globe.
Long time members of this list know that I’m no big fan of Secretary of
State John Kerry. I see him as a guy who loves his privileged life and who
is generally bought and paid for by the corporate ruling class.
But now, it looks like some right-wing bloggers are attacking his family
members in a most despicable way. So far as I’m concerned, when attacking
public figures, most things are fair game when it comes to attacking the
invidual. But attacking family members is a low blow that should not be
tolerated.
Finally, please know that I was equally perturbed when Trump the chump made
classless remarks about Jeb Bush’s wife.
Bob Hachey
KEVIN CULLEN
A very inconvenient truth . Once upon a time, political partisans and
gangsters used to adhere to a certain code of conduct: all's fair when it
came to your rivals, but their families were off limits. But that was a
long
time ago. There are no men of honor left in criminal societies, and it is
increasingly harder to find them among those who truck in today's
hyperpartisan politics. Consider the Iranian nuclear deal. Republicans are
uniformly against it. Some believe it is an unnecessary capitulation to an
untrustworthy regime that still traffics in terrorism. That's certainly a
legitimate argument to make. But some opponents of the deal who harbor a
visceral dislike of anything associated with President Obama have gone, as
Sean O'Casey might have put it, beyond the beyonds. A constellation of
right-wing websites has propagated a conspiracy theory ostensibly aimed at
Secretary of State John Kerry, who was the United States' chief negotiator
with Iran. But the real victims of this smear are Kerry's daughter and her
husband, Brian Nahed, who are physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital.
The story went like this: John Kerry is in the tank with Iran because his
son-in-law is Iranian. Not only that, but the best man at the 2009 Boston
wedding of Nahed and Vanessa Kerry was the son of Mohammad Javad Zarif, the
Iranian foreign minister who negotiated the deal with Kerry. Kerry sold out
his country for his in-laws. It was a great story - except none of it is
true. 'My husband is a private citizen. His being asked about this is a
weekly if not daily occurrence. It became painful to watch this affect my
husband. Vanessa Kerry Brian Nahed was born in New York to Iranian parents
who left Iran in 1975. He's never set foot in Iran. He doesn't know Zarif's
son. He doesn't know Zarif. Nahed is a brilliant neurosurgeon, but he
doesn't follow politics. He married into a very prominent American
political
family, but that doesn't give anyone the right to use him as a crash dummy
in a hamfisted attempt to smear his father-in-law. Vanessa Kerry told me
she
and her husband initially ignored the conspiracy theory. But that
laissez-faire approach didn't work. Getting its biggest bump on the popular
website of Allen West, a one-term congressman and prominent conservative
pundit, the lie metastasized on websites and conservative talk shows.
Zarif's son morphed into Nahed's college roommate. Except he wasn't. "Like
most people," Nahed told me, "we thought it was so outlandish that no one
would believe it. The couple became alarmed when they read some of the
menacing comments attached to the unsubstantiated claims. If those sinister
comments could be dismissed as the idle threats of anonymous trolls, the
theoretical became real when Nahed's patients and prospective patients
started asking him about the claims. Not surprisingly, many people plug
their doctor's name into a search engine. When they plugged in Nahed's
name,
his impressive résumé at MGH came up. But so did a bunch of websites
peddling the phony story, including The Daily Caller and The Blaze, which
have more mainstream conservative followers. Vanessa Kerry is used to the
drill. She has seen her father vilified by political opponents his entire
public life. As hard as it was for her to shrug it off, it was harder for
her husband. "My husband is a private citizen," she said. "His being asked
about this is a weekly if not daily occurrence. It became painful to watch
this affect my husband. Rather than ignore it, Vanessa Kerry and her
husband
began contacting websites directly. They pointed out the lies, and most
sites, including West's, took the postings down. But others have not.
Vanessa Kerry and Brian Nahed said the website of Kenneth Timmerman, a
conservative author and activist, flatly refused. Timmerman's account,
headlined "John Kerry is Compromised on Iran," is still displayed
prominently on his homepage. A pair of physicians who take care of sick
people in Boston don't deserve to be collateral damage in a national
political debate, no matter how important that debate. People are entitled
to their opinions, but as Vanessa Kerry put it: "Opinions are one thing.
Lies are another. Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
cullen@xxxxxxxxx . Follow him on Twitter @GlobeCullen
