I think I am changing my mind again, and I think this is the piece that really explains what has happened with Blumenthal:
Mr. Shays, a 10-term incumbent who lost a re-election bid in November 2008, was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. He said he and Mr. Blumenthal began their careers in politics at roughly the same time and frequently addressed the same groups. He recalled that early on, Mr. Blumenthal spoke humbly about his military record, rarely discussing it and always making clear that he had held only desk jobs and had not been in the line of fire, though he remained proud of having been a Marine.
“But as time went on, he would mention it more often, and Vietnam would show up,” even when Mr. Blumenthal was not speaking to veterans, Mr. Shays said.
Eventually, Mr. Shays said, he began hearing Mr. Blumenthal refer to having served in Vietnam. Mr. Shays said he assumed, wrongly, that Mr. Blumenthal had perhaps been a military lawyer there. That alone, he said, was enough for him to have had the impulse to advise Blumenthal to be careful, that people could interpret his remarks as a claim to have seen action there.
“I felt inclined to go to him and say, ‘Dick, in your service in Vietnam, you weren’t on the firing line, you don’t want to overstate that,’ ” Mr. Shays said. “I just felt like he was raising the stakes in a way that was inconsistent with what he’d said in the past. I was actually going to go up and speak to him. And I wish I had.”
Mr. Shays said the change occurred gradually in statements made over time.
“More and more it kept creeping in,” he said. “And it was very different than when he first described his service. I’m not surprised, because he just kept adding to the story, the more he told it. I think what happens in a case like this, it’s a tiny increment of change, but when you haven’t heard him in years you say, that’s a big difference.”
He added: “I understand how these things, over 30 years, you keep adding a little bit to it. And you’re on very thin ice. And obviously he’s on very thin ice right now. He walked too far out on the lake. It’s really too bad, because he’s a very good person.”
I think it is clear now what happened: Blumenthal allowed other people’s faulty ideas about his service to persist, until the legend got to the point where he himself stepped over the line. Even though he has stated point blank that he never served in Viet Nam, he was more than happy to lie by omission and to allow people to have mistaken ideas about his service.
Hunter Gathers
I’m with you on this, but it really doesn’t matter after Captain Texas got away with it for so long. This will not give him problems. Lies like this no longer matter.
El Cid
Look, I too served briefly in the military a while back in an unexciting stint, and if there was one thing I learned from my hundreds of battles and the thousands of swamps I hiked through to single-handedly defeat millions of enemies, it’s that this is SPARTA!
Michael D.
That happens to a lot of people. Kinda like when Republicans say they are for small government and lower taxes and fiscal responsibility. Over time, even they start to believe it.
Even given my comments yesterday, I feel a bit bad for him. He’s to blame for his embellishments, but he got a lot of positive reinforcement over those 30 years.
lawguy
I’m not sure, didn[‘t he just say a couple of months ago that he wasn’t in Vietnam?
Although as someone else said on another thread, nobody under 50 cares.
Mike Kay
I love how Shays was a “conscientious objector” when he faced the draft at age 22, but somehow found a way to change his conscience as old man to vote TWICE to invade iraq (1991, 2002).
flukebucket
Mr. Shays said that he thought someone might eventually check Mr. Blumenthal’s record and find that he was in Vietnam, but in a desk job.
Statements like this just add to my confusion.
Tom
1) This differentiates him from the gasbag he’s trying to replace, and the other 99 gasbags in the Senate how?
2) Does this make him a worse candidate than the Republican alternatives?
(Answers: 1) It doesn’t; 2) No.)
dmsilev
Somebody better tell, or beat some sense into, Tweety. Last night, he was almost foaming at the mouth about this, vituperative even by his standards.
dms
Mike Kay
This reminds me of the infamous bush interview when he said the air national guard was better than actual combat veterans.
Punchy
There was a time in this country when claiming to be a Vietnam Vet would have surely kept you out of elected office……now it’s a badge of honor, eh?
Mike Kay
http://www.dubyaspeak.com/mp3/nam.mp3
Ash Can
Actually, this follow-up story makes me feel a little better about the NYT’s journalistic standards. They could have just let yesterday’s story stand, a la the “pimp” video, but they followed up with more information and context. Good for them in this case, at least.
Face
Nobody under 50 seems to vote.
Guster
I think you’re right, and he should’ve known better–but I always assumed that ‘serving in Vietnam’ didn’t mean ‘saw combat in Vietnam,’ but ‘served in the armed forces during the Vietnam War.’
My uncle served in Korea. He was a fireman on an air force base–in Japan.
John Cole
@Guster: Served “during” Vietnam would make sense.
Served “in” Vietnam means you were “IN Vietnam.”
HRA
@lawguy:
“Although as someone else said on another thread, nobody under 50 cares.”
Nobody over 50 should care either.
Rosalita
Shays is another GOPer for FFS. Not discounting what Blumenthal may have let go on, but as a CT voter, I’m not listening to the other side for information.
QuaintIrene
I don’t know, it was still ridiculous for him to keep saying he ‘mispoke.’ Either you served in the army or you didn’t. There’s not that much fudge room there to get mixed up in. It ‘s like if I started saying how thrilling it was the time I walked on the moon. And when someone pointed out I never did any such thing, for me to say, ‘Oopsie. Guess I mispoke.’
stuckinred
@Guster: You’re goddamn right he knew better. I don’t give a rats ass what “anybody under 50” cares about. No one who served either in country or not could misspeak about this. I guarantee you that they people serving today will know the difference between era and in country and they are largely under 50.
jwb
@Rosalita: Glad somebody else mentioned this. I don’t know enough about Shays to know whether he’d be the kind to put the shiv into someone with a smile, but that’s how I read the article.
stuckinred
I urge you to read this from the Times:
Now that flawed thinking has been carried forward. Many of these men who evaded service but claimed idealism lead our elite institutions. The concept of using legal technicalities to evade responsibility has been carried over to playing with derivatives, or to short-changing shareholders. Once my generation got in the habit of saying one thing and believing another, it couldn’t stop.
eemom
@Tom:
Good point. See, I was thinking that in an IDEAL world, we wouldn’t want to elect someone with a track record of self-delusion to the United States Senate.
stuckinred
@Rosalita: I’m pretty sure you have said your pop was a Nam vet, I’d be interested to know what he thinks?
mai naem
Look, Blumenthal screwed up and I wish he hadn’t but I see nothing said about Shays being a Republican. I know Shays was supposed to be an old fashioned New England Republican but still, nothing about him being a Republican??? I mean doesn’t that somehow give him some motive to say stuff like this?
B W Smith
I need to see actual links to all the newspaper articles he failed to correct and to more videos where he stated he was in Viet Nam. Chris Shays, by all accounts, is a moderate guy, but let’s not forget he is a Republican and there may be ulterior motives at play. As for Tweety, I see that as survivor’s guilt. Like a lot of men of my generation, he chose the Peace Corp over Viet Nam. Since then, like Cheney, Chambliss, etal…he proves he wasn’t a coward by being a hawk. Viet Nam was a long time ago, can’t we finally put it to rest.
Butch
At what point does our politics get over the 1960s?
stuckinred
@Butch: His “misstatements” are current. And dragging the Patriot Guard assholes up there with him for the presser amplify his pandering.
jwb
@QuaintIrene: Well, he did serve in the Marine reserves, so that’s where the ambiguity comes in. It seems fairly clear that he had adopted the locution of saying that he served in the Vietnam era and over time and/or on certain occasions that was abbreviated to saying that he served in Vietnam. As John points out, he should have been saying that he served “during” Vietnam, which would have avoided the temptation to conflate the terms.
stuckinred
@John Cole: So does “how WE were treated when WE came home”.
Jay
Shays has an ax to grind. Notice the wrinkle that he was “thinking of” advising Blumenthal to cool it, but he never did. For a long time, Shays was an ok congressman, but he flipped his lid after a close 2006 campaign, during which he compared torture to group sex. The campaign of Linda McMahon has to be loving this, and she herself was a financial backer of Shays, so he is probably acting as her point man.
McMahon shouldn’t go rummaging too far into the closet, or else, as a former executive for the WWE, she’ll find several dead wrestlers in it.
stuckinred
@jwb: Yea,it’s traditional for Harvard trained lawyers to struggle with “locution” now isn’t it?
JCT
I’m of two minds regarding this. While I really think he should have worked harder to make it abundantly clear from the start that he did not go to Vietnam, the bottom line is that he has been an enormous supporter of veteran’s concerns in a substantive way. He is well-known for this in CT. One of my uncles is a Vietnam vet and lives in Western CT, I called him the other night and asked him about this and he laughed. Said that he knew many guys like Blumenthal and that his support of Vet causes way outweighed this “minor misrepresentation” as he put it.
In comparison to Bush who talked the talk but didn’t give a rats’ ass about the VA (not to mention using our armed forces in a gigantic game of Risk) — I’ll take Blumenthal any day of the week.
Guster
@stuckinred: Sure. But it seems like a fairly minor thing–will anyone other than self-impressed members of the military who get the main part of their identity from their service really care? I mean, it’s not like _me_ saying I served in Vietnam. He was a member of the Marine Corps reserve during Vietnam. He said a bunch of times that he didn’t serve in Vietnam, and once he said he did–probably dropping the caveat because he wanted to seem like a tough man’s man.
To me, this is just hair-splitting. ‘Vietnam’ can mean the country or ‘Vietnam’ can mean the war. It’s like calling someone a liar for repeatedly asserting they fought in Vietnam war, because it wasn’t legally a war.
It’s pretend news. I say my father ‘fought’ in WWII, but you know what? He never fired a shot. Am I lying? And does it really matter, if he’s applying for a job as a CFO?
rickstersherpa
Yep, in Linda McMahon and her husband, we really have two classic grifters, who probably should be in jail, but who may end up in the Senate where they will do God only knows what kind of mischeif.
As true now as it was true 3,000 years ago:
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
It is pretty obvious that large portions of America, and certainly its economic and media elite, have gone mad.
HRA
@Butch:
“At what point does our politics get over the 1960s?”
Most likely at the point where we really stop believing in the tooth fairy and/or the Cinderella story.
Why does it really matter that someone went too far in stating his service when others did a lot worse and are still representing their constituents in our government?
stuckinred
@Guster: If it’s minor to you that’s great. It’s not minor to me for a number of reasons. He is pimping off of people, some of whom were very close friends of mine, who have no voice now. I’ll repeat that no one who was in at the time would believe that what he said was a mistake, it was bullshit and it was purposeful.
Guster
@John Cole: Maybe. But my uncle doesn’t say he served ‘during’ Korea, he says he served ‘in’ Korea. The Korean War.
I suspect this sort of hair-splitting is more important to younger men who perceive it as a threat to their masculinity. They’re really men for serving in-country, and if they killed a gook, so much the better–that’s how they know they’re men–and if someone tries to dilute that, it’s an attack on their self-image.
I think it’s clear that Blumenthal allowed other people have a mistaken impression of his service, and almost certainly encouraged it. But, eh. This is a minor infraction, like a politician giving people the impression that he’s happily married when in fact his wife and kids hate him.
Blumenthal said, ‘I didn’t serve -in- Vietnam,’ ‘I served in the Vietnam era,’ ‘I didn’t serve -in- Vietnam,’ ‘I served in the Vietnam era,’ ‘I didn’t serve -in- Vietnam,’ ‘I served in the Vietnam era,’ ‘I served in Vietnam.’
WHAT A LIAR!!!!!!!!!! What’s the military equivalent of pearl-clutching?
Violet
It’ll be in his favor that he’s dealt with this now. Plus, the angry-looking Marines standing behind him and glaring at anyone who suggested he did anything wrong don’t hurt.
Sounds like a classic case of believing your own hype.
Marc
Wait a second–the NYT is reporting “impulses to advise” and “inclinations” that didn’t get acted on, and conversations that never happened? From an ex-Republican congressman?
This is just hit job, round two.
Not to say that Blumenthal didn’t fuck up colossally, because he did, but the Times is just taking dictation from McMahon and now Shays–imaginary dictation, at that.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
stuckinred
Ever here of Professor Joseph Ellis?
jwb
@stuckinred: Oh, I don’t doubt for a minute that the adoption of the locution, even in its original form, was intentionally ambiguous. And, no, even the original locution is not at all innocent. On the other hand, I can’t quite square that ambiguous locution with the fact that he would at other times be completely honest about his service. It’s not like he made a secret of the fact that he hadn’t served in Vietnam. Personally, I don’t know where I stand on his candidacy at this point because I don’t really know enough about him or the situation in CT. I can say that I don’t think he’s handled the aftermath of these revelations very well so far, but I also do not yet feel that the evidence is compelling enough to say that he is unfit to hold office, and a lot will depend on how he ultimately addresses the situation.
stuckinred
@jwb: That’s right, one of the talking heads last night said his campaign slogan will be “I tell the truth some of the time”! BTW, did you watch the press conference?
Face
@stuckinred: Then feel free to vote for the Republican. I’m sure they’ve never lied (being involved in professional wrestling and all), and will certainly better represent your values with their anti-abortion, anti-tax, anti-immigrant, and anti-Miranda viewpoints.
stuckinred
@Face: Sorry, I said it yesterday. I don’t have a dog in the fight, vote for who you want to. I’m just calling a spade a spade.
Guster
@stuckinred: ” …it was bullshit and it was purposeful.”
Nonsense. It was bullshit and not purposeful.
What was the purpose, to get bad press? Because he was falling behind in the poll and needed to appeal to Vietnam non-era vets?
It was purposeful. Sure. An easily-debunked lie that he himself had contradicted a hundred times, and that he avoided 99% of the time by the addition of a single word was purposeful.
He either mistakenly dropped the word ‘era’ because ‘fought in Vietnam’ scans better than ‘fought in the Vietnam-era’ or he was bullshitting with the macho talk, trying to appeal to tough-guys, and lost himself in the moment. Or probably both. If there’s one thing this wasn’t, it’s ‘purposeful.’
Rosalita
@stuckinred:
Dad was in Nam, a paratrooper. Multiple tours. He sees it for what it is but is not overly offended. He thinks Blumenthal is standing “on the edge” of the truth, that he should have known better it’s going to cost him. In the end, his record as AG is important to him as well. In other words, annoying but not a dealbreaker. That doesn’t mean he’s not sensitive to Vets who are angry about this, it’s just his view.
Violet
@Butch:
We’re still fighting the Civil War, so….
stuckinred
@Rosalita: Thanks.
Rosalita
@JCT:
My dad’s a vet in Western CT too…
stuckinred
@Guster: The purpose is and was to pander to the “veterans” community in his state. Just like macaca was purposeful, it was directed at a specific audience.
jwb
@stuckinred: “That’s right, one of the talking heads last night said his campaign slogan will be “I tell the truth some of the time”!”
And that distinguishes him from every other politician in what respect? It’s really not a question of not telling the truth, which is just in the nature of politics (and whichever talking head made that quip is playing even dumber than usual); it’s a question of whether the particular falsehood Blumenthal said was sufficiently grievous as to disqualify him from public office. And really that comes down to whether (or to what extent) it affects the CT voters’ trust in him to effectively represent their interests.
stuckinred
@jwb: Fine, the thread is about something that is important to me. John has gone back and forth and I have stayed steady on it and will. I never heard of him until this came up and I hope he gets elected and does a great job for his state. Plenty of people have done worse.
Larkspur
My father used to do that to my brother, call him a “Vietnam veteran”. My brother was always careful to say that he was a Vietnam-era veteran. He served in Germany and Japan. He never saw combat, and would never imply that he had. He’s a total libertarian, but we have some common ground now and then.
I don’t think my father meant anything in particular about it, other than to make the experience sound more colorful. But see, for my father, the only real war was World War II. He was an MP who served behind combat troops in Burma and China, so he endured privation and discomfort, and of course long years of dreadful uncertainty, but not actual shooting and being-shot-at combat. He loved that war.
Bobby Thomson
I wonder why Shays told the NYT reporter that he was a c/o in/during Vietnam, but not that, like Chris Matthews, he was a Peace Corps volunteer.
It’s one of the few things I find very admirable about Shays. And I don’t want to get all Peggy Noonan here, but it’s curious why, in this article in which Shays slips the knife into a potential rival for Lieberman’s seat, he avoids any mention of his own record.
JCT
@Rosalita:
And they seem to have very similar “takes” on this situation.
Some of my most searing childhood memories were my father (a Korean war vet who ran away from home to join at 17), worrying about his baby brother in Vietnam.
Always my favorite uncle, nicest guy in the world. And liberal to the core.
Bobby Thomson
@stuckinred:
Plenty of people currently “serving in Washington.” Including the Senior Senator from Connecticut. Also, too, the NEW YORK FUCKING TIMES? Employer of Judy “I was proven fucking right” Miller? Good thing her lies only resulted in hundreds of thousands of people losing their lives.
jwb
@stuckinred: I’ve actually shifted from “it’s another NYT hit job, really no big deal,” to “well, maybe it is a big deal, despite the fact that it was a NYT hit job.” I just don’t feel at this point that I have enough information and context to know where I stand.
Xenos
@Violet:
My thoughts exactly. Imaging how a 30 year old in 1890 felt about everybody over the age of fifty being still full of rage, bitterness, false glory and resentment. That generation was really, really eager to get into the 20th century already.
Zach
Yup. His staff was obligated to aggressively seek corrections the moment this stuff started showing up in the papers. Undoubtedly, a number of them have their boss’s name on Google Alerts and have been checking it for years, every day. Someone was aware of this. Blumenthal himself says that he was aware of the Harvard swim captain error; he didn’t seek to correct it.
Edit: And this is a big deal, but no way is it A1 material. It’s not nearly as seedy as the Iseman nonsense, though.
stuckinred
@Bobby Thomson: Maybe he took the Peace Corps as his alternative service whereas Mathews just joined to join. I’ve never heard Tweety say he was a CO.
Kilkee
I’m with stuckinred on this one. There’s a huge difference between “served in Vietnam” and “served during Vietnam,” and I can’t believe Blumenthal doesn’t think so. How one explains that on some occasions he was quite cognizant and respectful of the difference, and in others clearly not is difficult to explain in a way that reflects reasonably well on his honesty. One slip of the tongue might be excused, but if the accounts of him referring to “when we came home from Vietnam” are accurate, it’s hard to explain that away.
My father was with the 9th Infantry Division in WW2: North Africa, Sicily, Normandy (D-Day+4), the Falaise Gap, Remagen, the Hurtegan Forest, the Battle of the Bulge. I don’t think someone who pushed a pencil in Scranton, whatever his contribution, would confuse the two experiences.
Ed Marshall
My dad (I hope he doesn’t read this) served in Vietnam as a Marine and I was always told he was a door gunner on a Huey (I think he may have been a crew chief in some of these stories). One of the stories goes that he was trained as a helicopter mechanic and when he got to Vietnam the only job was KP and that he took a combat job on a helicopter to get out of it. Except he has *other* stories about working maintenance in Vietnam. I don’t want to call him out, but I asked one time “I thought you didn’t work on helicopters in Vietnam” and he told me, no that was Okinawa on the way out of Vietnam.
There was just a bunch of stuff that didn’t add up exactly right, and he last year he was having a problem with the V.A. saying he didn’t serve in a combat zone. I really don’t know if this is a bureaucratic problem or if he was embellishing his war.
grandpajohn
@stuckinred: well since you don’t have a dog in the fight and since you have time after time made your opinion known, don’t you thing then that its time to STFU and continue to another topic?
stuckinred
@grandpajohn: You write this 2 hours after my last post. How bout you go fuck yourself asshole?
merrinc
@Marc:
It’s a rare day in Tunchville when I have to read the original post plus 40 comments before finding something which expresses *exactly* what I was thinking.
Chris Andersen
We like to tell ourselves stories that paint a positive picture of ourselves. This is natural. Unfortunately, if you aren’t careful it can lead to a self-conception that is widely divergent from the facts.
aimai
Jeezus christ I was a little girl during Vietnam and I wish to point out that a) we were all complicit in the fighting and the killing, b) people suffered and feared and died avoiding the draft as well as in the actual fighting, c) I don’t give a flying fuck whether guys who were “over there” think they have something very, very, very, important that is utterly distinct from guys who never went. I doubt seriously that any person of that era could stand to have all of his/her actions as a young man, in war or out of it, carefully examined for truth value thirty years after the events. I can barely remember the last fifteen of my own life. I’m sure I’m as guilty as anyone of a little embellishment here and there. Its not the crime of the century to slip, rhetorically, between “served during a time of war” (true) to “served in a region of the conflict physically in Vietnam”–its just not. Its not even the difference between saying “I was a coward” and “I was very brave” although really stupid people may think that those things are synonyms. Some very courageous, thoughtful people, refused to serve, some very cowardly people served *with distinction.* Lots of both kinds were drafted.
Get the fuck over it, already. It sounds, in fact, like several commenters veteran dads have.
aimai
eemom
but why is this even ABOUT Vietnam? Why isn’t it about the fact that the guy is not a real stickler for the truth? I know it’s a quaint old fashioned notion, hopeless to aspire to in the infinitely fucked world we inhabit…….but there IS something to be said for electing public officials that don’t fucking lie, OR embellish, OR exaggerate about their pasts.
Norman Rogers
It’s a classic case of “hey, you’re on my team–I’ll keep clapping until Tinkerbell comes back to life.”
If Blumenthal were a Republican, the howls of outrage would drown out even the loudest delusional clapping. A man who lies about being in combat is a thief of valor, and you can find them in any political party. They’ve already given him a pass and something called “The Plum Line” says he’s going to survive. That’s too bad. When the next lying chair ranger tells the story of his false service in Iraq, he’ll get a pass from everyone on his “team”, of course, and the standards of integrity and honesty will drop even further.
Joel
Either way, he needed to own up and he didn’t.
Time for him to step out of the race.
jwb
@eemom: Point to one politician ever who didn’t lie, exaggerate or embellish their past? Hell, name me one person who hasn’t?
stuckinred
@aimai: people suffered and feared and died avoiding the draft . . .
put down the bong
soonergrunt
I really have to disagree with a lot of you on this.
I’m under 50, and I care a great deal. And you should too.
A guy who will embellish a service record like this is going to be more prone to supporting military adventurism if for no other reason than for the same reason that he lied about his record in the first place–because he thinks that’s what people want in a leader.
Not going after this guy is wrong and immoral for several reasons.
For one, it also allows that kind of thinking, that military brawn is something to treasure and respect at the expense of diplomacy to persist.
Secondly, by not hitting this guy and hitting him hard, we encourage, or at least do not discourage dishonesty by those who join the leadership of the country. If he lies about something like this, what else might he lie about?
Thirdly, we as a society tend to listen to combat veterans when discussing military matters and particularly military operational matters. Rightly or wrongly, we give their opinions more weight than the opinions of non-vets. In our society today where less than 1% of society is either a military member or a veteran of one of the recent conflicts, a liar in the midst only confuses the issue even more, especially when veterans themselves cannot frequently come to agreement on things that should be done. I cannot emphasize enough that this man wants to join a group of men and women who have a tremendous say in the use of military force by this country. The US Senate has tremendous input on issues from the very decision to use or not use force to decisions about how the force is sized, equipped, trained, and organized. It is our children who will bear the burdens of those decisions.
Fourth, it’s a problem in this country that men run around pretending to be decorated combat veterans and they use this to defraud the Federal and state governments and private persons and organizations. They steal benefits and services from those who have earned them. As a society we still do not treat such fraudsters with the contempt and sanction they deserve, and to not punish this guy is to say that it’s not important to us at a time when veterans’ programs both public and private are being cut across the country. When we waste money on phoney veterans, real vets get shortchanged, and other programs get shortchanged as well because cutting vet benefits isn’t as politically safe as cutting schools.
Fifth, this guy is a democrat. His behavior plays into a right wing narative about democratic veterans.
Last, but not least, I have served with men and women from all walks of life who did their assigned duties when asked, without fanfare. Some volunteered for dangerous work, most didn’t, but damn few of them failed to earn their pay whether they were deployed forward to some hell hole or they stayed stateside and worked extra hours to cover for a deployed person, or they did something in-between. But some of those few, eight of whom were known to me personally never came home from those hell holes. They deserve better. They deserve that we approach the causes of the wars that killed them with maturity and honesty above all else.
A lot of us have nightmares, anger control issues, and other problems. For all of that we are remarkably normal people just like the Vietnam vets of our fathers’ generation, but it’s hard for some of us to ask for help because of how we are frequently portrayed by a press and an entertainment industry that doesn’t understand us and pigeon-holes us into easily marketed caricatures of reality.
stuckinred
Come on all you fucking experts, tell him to “get over it”.
WereBear (itouch)
I remember when the Republicans were making a big deal about Clinton not serving. A Merchant Marine of the same age expressed his own outrage, then asked me what I thought.
I said that it seemed to me that at this point it had been agreed upon that the Viet Nam War had been a very bad idea that both parties had been complicit in.
It shut him down.
eemom
@soonergrunt:
Yeah. That. Sorry, but “everybody lies” is not a satisfactory response.
Norman Rogers
*Senator Larry Pressler, NYT op-ed
That says it all.
aimai
@stuckinred:
No, not putting down the bong: students were killed (albeit those killed weren’t protesting), people fled to Canada, people were jailed. A friend of the family was strangled by a returning vet suffering from PTSD. A lot of people died in and around that war. The bright line of courage or meaningful action, or moral action doesn’t run “everyone who fought in Vietnam” vs. “Everyone else.” It just doesn’t.
As for Blumenthal–again, despite eemom’s views and the trumped up hysteria allowing people to imagine, even by implication, that one served in country instead of out of country just isn’t the biggest crime on record. Its not indicative of an inability to tell the truth in important matters. Its a) not an important matter and b) was a crime of indirection rather than direction. When a politician gets up at a speech in front of some podunk town and says “Man! I love being here! I had a friend from Po-dunk at college and he always told me what nice people there are here…” no one fucking fact checks to see if that’s true. Its a hommage more than anything else.
aimai
stuckinred
@aimai: sounds like you got some shit to “get the fuck over” now doesn’t it?
aimai
@soonergrunt:
This is a misrepresentation of what happened, though. It doesn’t sound like he really embellished in the classic suck up to the military way–he didn’t assert that he’d killed anyone, he didn’t assert that he’d received any medals or commendations. The actual quote refers more to having lived through an experience *of the war* in an ambiguous way. At other times, most other times seemingly, he was very careful to distance his experiences from those of combat veterans. It just doesn’t seem to me to be any kind of slam dunk certainity that Blumenthal was faking–not any more than is true for “I serve in the military for 30 years as a JAG Scott Brown” who basked in the assumed glory of the military while carefully staying very far from any kind of weaponry.
aimai
aimai
@stuckinred:
No, not really.
aimai
soonergrunt
@aimai: So does his fictitious friend then give him license to opine on the issues surrounding the bond issue for Podunk’s library?
Was anybody killed or crippled because your politician got a traffic light in the wrong place in Podunk?
soonergrunt
@aimai: Bullshit.
Flat, simple bullshit.
Brown has been completely honest about his service. Blumenthal claimed or intentionally allowed people to believe that he served forward in some capacity. It doesn’t matter that he never claimed to kill people or not. There is NO moral fundamental difference in the level of the lie.
The fact that he did this multiple times, and frequently combined the bullshit hippie-punching “we were spit on when we returned” story only makes it worse. I would think you’d care about that, but I guess some ethics are situational. For me the fact that he has a (D) after his name makes absolutely no difference.
He lied repeatedly and ascribed to himself honor he didn’t earn and dishonor to others (the spit stories) they did not. The guy is a dirtbag. If he’d just been honest about it, and said ‘you know, I was a reservist. We drilled once a month and two weeks every year. I made my drill dates and did my job.’ then I’d be a fan but that’s not what he did.
jwb
@eemom: Sorry, but you’re the one who recklessly made the blanket demand that politicians not mislead, exaggerate or embellish. If you want to say that politicians not mislead, exaggerate or embellish about their service record, that’s a different issue entirely, and we can discuss whether elevating the service record to special status is warranted. (I thought Soonergrunt gave a good argument for why it is.) But you are the one who wanted to generalize the issue, so just STFU.
Xantar
@stuckinred: You have taken a reasonable stance throughout this thread, but being an asshole about it isn’t exactly going to predispose people to agree with you.
soonergrunt
@soonergrunt:
Further to my last:
For all of that, I honor those men and women who are and were true consiencious objectors. Those who stood up and said “this is not for me, and I’ll tell you why” are always more deserving of my respect because THEY STOOD UP for what they believed. To say that Blumenthal should get a pass is to dishonor those people who freqently took principled stands at personal, sometimes physical risk.
stuckinred
@soonergrunt: What I find most disturbing in his “supporters” is their complete lack of understanding that he was doing as you said to make himself palatable to the right wing saber rattlers. In his remarks yesterday he was all over how it was nearly impossible to get in the guard or reserve of the other services but the Marine, oh, the Corps Reserve is so tough that hardly any one would have tried to get in there (knowing snickers from the jar heads and gathering of eagles behind him).
stuckinred
@Xantar: Let me put it this way, that “get over it” shit is something I don’t tolerate from anyone, got it?
FlipYrWhig
Where does this idea that he “lied about being in combat” come from? Because as we all remember from the Gore campaign, if not from, like, life, it’s entirely possible to be “in Vietnam” and NOT in combat. For Blumenthal to have said on some occasions that he was “in Vietnam” _and to have said many times that he was NOT “in Vietnam”_ is IMHO not the same thing as implying that he was in combat.
FlipYrWhig
@stuckinred:
The only thing I’ve seen it said he did with his ambiguous veteran status is… help veterans. How has he been “making himself palatable to the right wing saber rattlers”? What has he said about war, defense spending, etc.?
eemom
@jwb:
That is a totally uncalled for level of rudeness in response to what I said, asshole. YOU shut the fuck up.
jwb
@eemom: “Yeah. That. Sorry, but “everybody lies” is not a satisfactory [email protected]eemom: “but why is this even ABOUT Vietnam? Why isn’t it about the fact that the guy is not a real stickler for the truth? I know it’s a quaint old fashioned notion, hopeless to aspire to in the infinitely fucked world we inhabit…….but there IS something to be said for electing public officials that don’t fucking lie, OR embellish, OR exaggerate about their pasts.”
Corner Stone is fucking right about you, asshole.
Comrade Luke
How come Lindsey Graham can do this and it’s ok, but this guy does it and he has to drop out?
Wait, I think I know the answer.
Jim Schimpf
I always make clear I had the Laird fellowship in European studies during that time. Others had the Asian studies version and a much harder time. I would never in a million years try to blur that distinction.
–jim
eemom
@jwb:
Corner Stone’s your role model, eh? Impressive.
Fuck off.
Xenos
In case this does not get posted in front, I think it important to mention the latest news: The AP fact checked the NYT piece, and found that Blumenthal stated earlier in that same speech that he had not fought in Vietnam.
This whole kerfuffle has as much truth in it as the usual World Wrestling Foundation production. Stuckinred: I think you have been punked.
kay
Well, I think this is important:
I’m sorry, but I think this exonerates him. In the same speech.
You really have to wonder why the NYTimes didn’t post the whole clip. They posted only the part where he makes the error, but not the section of the same speech where he doesn’t?
He may be glorifying war, or beating up on hippies, all of that could be true, but I think the charge that he deliberately lied in the 2008 speech is a pure political hit, and work worthy of the National Enquirer.
kay
@Xenos:
Thanks. You beat me to it.
I think the NYTimes has some explaining to do. How in the hell do they defend cherry-picking that clip?
That’s Drudge-level “journalism”. I mean, Jesus. They didn’t watch the whole speech?
Ruckus
@aimai:
Thank you!
For the record, just to be crystal clear, I am a Vietnam ERA vet. I joined the navy for 4 yrs to avoid the draft as 1/3 of the inductees I saw on the day of my draft physical were being drafted into the Marines. I can not imagine these guys didn’t take a lot more crap than normal and I’m pretty sure they went directly to Nam with an M-16 to play point on patrol. I didn’t want that. A lot of us didn’t want that. The vast majority didn’t want that. I went where they sent me and did what I was told. Just like thousands of others.
Some had connections which got them out of service, some joined the peace corp, some were actual conscientious objectors, some went to jail, some fled the country. And a lot went. And a lot died and a lot were wounded. The war ended, what, 37-38 years ago. I say it’s time to move on. Don’t forget what happened. Don’t forget those who died. Or what they were doing when they did. Don’t forget those who were wounded, many permanently.
But it’s still time to move on. The man misspoke. Maybe time is playing it’s curse on him a bit, and he doesn’t quite remember to add that one word all the time. He joined the Marines. He could have been called up to go to fight. He, like a lot of others got lucky. He didn’t have to get shot at, he didn’t have to shoot anyone. He didn’t get wounded, or die.
I for one am ready to let him off the hook.
Nellcote
Apparently in the full version of the video, he corrects himself about his service during the Vietnam era. It’s up at Huffington Post.
Also, check out this column by Colin McEnroe, a well regarded Conn. columnist.
I wonder if the NYT is hoping to cash in on some of that abundant McMahon campaign money. Strange that her site was bragging about pushing the story on the NYT then turned around and scrubbed the page on their site.
stuckinred
@Xenos: chieu hoi
stuckinred
@Ruckus: What exactly do you mean by move on?
Original Lee
@soonergrunt: Once again, you have stated the central point eloquently. Thanks!
One of my cousins is MIA in Vietnam. Another cousin debunked to Canada because his application for conscientious objector status was denied. An uncle served Stateside as a flight instructor. The two that are alive are annoyed with Blumenthal, but as my uncle put it, “It’s bad enough when you’re a regular guy and every time you talk to a journalist, they screw up the quote. Blumenthal probably decided it wasn’t worth the time and effort to try to fix the mistakes, but it’s easy after a while not to be precise if they’re going to write it down wrong anyway.”
Not that they excuse Blumenthal really, but they’re kinda going easy on him because at least he really served.
handy
This happens way too often to be an accident: Democratic poliltician/candidate says some stuff, “serious” MSM journos parse and tease for great justice, either things they’ve actually said but totally ripped from context (Algore invented teh interwebs), or completely made up (Algore saved the Love Canal), and in the end, the voters are either enraged at said candidate or at best are so confused in the whole matter that they resign themselves to “all politicians are phonies” and don’t bother to vote.
Meanwhile, Obama is a soshulist who is going to take your guns and lowering taxes will solve all our problems.
Ruckus
@stuckinred:
Look forward.
Move forward.
I get that people think Dick Blumenthal, lied about his service record. But it appears that if you watch the whole speech, he correctly stated he was a Vietnam Era vet. At the end of the speech he left out the one word, era, but it is obvious to me that he was not trying to hid or embellish his record.
I worked for someone who published a first person story that he was a corpsman during Vietnam and flew in copters. It was compete bull shit. Not a corpsman, not in Vietnam, not even in the service. If he had been hung by his balls and beaten with the butt of an M16 over that article that would have been OK with me. He lied, and he didn’t even understand the concept of what he had done.
This is not that. Blumenthal did not do that. The vets in the room at the time of the speech didn’t/don’t seem to be upset about this. Maybe it didn’t happen quite the way it’s been portrayed or the way my ex bosses BS did.
I’m ready to give people the benefit of the doubt, I’m ready to forgive a small slip in what sounds like a pretty good overall record, as vet stuff goes.
IOW I’m ready to move on.
Xenos
@stuckinred: Being too young to know how to pour piss out of a boot, I had to look it up.
But I still don’t understand it. So pick from the multiple choice as you see fit:
a) Thanks!
b) It’s cool.
c) OK.
d) Fuck you too, buddy!
stuckinred
@Ruckus: ok,
funny, I had exactly the same experience with a guy, total liar and had the rap down to a T. Makes my back go up when this kind of stuff comes up. I’m going to Hatteras and fish! Don’t mean nuthin.
Ruckus
@stuckinred:
Ain’t no thang.
Don’t mean nuthin.
Ain’t nuthin but a family thang.
Haven’t heard those in a long time.
Popeye
WTF are you crackheads smoking?
The New York Times runs a front-page hit piece on someone for being deceitful about his Vietnam service.
One of their main bits of evidence is a line from a speech.
TWO MINUTES EARLIER IN THAT VERY SAME SPEECH, HE IS 100% CLEAR AND FORTHRIGHT ABOUT HIS VIETNAM SERVICE.
That’s disgraceful. Total fail.
Cam
@jwb, @stuckinred, @eemom:
C’mon folks: “asshole,” “shut the fuck up,” “fuck you” — it sounds like we’re back in high school, and a vulgar high school at that. And no, I don’t care who started it. It doesn’t reflect well on you or the quality of your thought process if that’s the best you can do. Be the better man or woman and be civil. We will all be grateful.
stuckinred
@Camwhatever
tomvox1
Yeah, but here’s the thing about this whole deal (via Greg Sargent)…
To me this sounds like Judge, Jury & Executioner talk from the fucking the Newspaper of Record. Is that really their role?!? I mean, I am all for investigative journalism and exposés but this McNulty person getting on her high horse about Blumenthal’s “long and well established pattern of misleading his constituents” just feels a bit vindictive, particularly in light of all the bullshit we all now know was fed into this story by the McMahon campaign.
And I am still waiting for someone to reconcile these two quotes from Jean Risley
From the NYT article:
Yesterday at Blumenthal’s presser:
To me these two statements by the same person are hard to figure… Would the reporter care to share his interview notes perhaps?
handy
@tomvox1:
Yeah maybe the NYT needs to do a follow-up on Jean Risley. She’s obviously a big fat liar, too!
Ruckus
I’m glad that the limited public speaking that I’ve done has never had to rise to the level of absolute perfection. That every word uttered has to be exactly the right one. The tone, the nuance, has to be just what the listener wants to hear.
How many here are afraid to speak in front of an audience?
How many people here speak publicly?
You’ve never left out a word? Stumbled on a sentence construction? Lost your concentration momentarily? Lost the power of speech itself? Coughed. Sneezed. Had everything you say deconstructed, parsed by someone not even hearing the speech? Sometimes years later? Walk just 10 feet in someone’s shoes who has had even some of these things happen, then we can talk. When someone has a long history of speaking on an issue and is saying the right things, a gaff once in a while should be allowed. Even on an issue this volatile.
oldswede
Shays has no credibility. He is part of the republican smear machine now running its game on Blumenthal. He will try to make another run for office – it’s all he knows, really, and he is racking up points with the party now. Blumenthal’s most well financed opponent, Linda McMahon of the WWE blood money fortune, is a patron of Shays and this is his service to her.
Don’t you all recognize the standard Rove playbook here? Attack the strength. Blumenthal is well-respected for his integrity, so that is the obvious target. The internet comment sections are teeming with Gopper operative trolls, repeating the same lying version of the event, trying to make it stick. This is the standard game.
oldswede
oldswede
@tomvox1: Risley has [email protected]tomvox1: According to ABC News, Jean Risley says that she was misquoted about the spitting. More great journamalism from the NYT.
oldswede