Eric Alterman one-ups Kerry's insult

During the most recent Bloggingheads.tv Eric Alterman (while debating Byron York) goes John Kerry one further (see video here).

Eric Alterman is quite emblematic of the Left. From the start he exaggerates to the point of lying in order to avoid conceding a point in a debate - hoping I guess that we're just stupid and won't know he's a liar. Or more likely, he is getting his information from within the Dem bubble and actually believes and passes it on. He says the "standards have been enormously lowered."

He is defending Kerry's 'idiot-soldier' remark by citing the Army's acceptance of category 4 recruits (the lowest acceptable group, they score low on the ASVAB test). If he had seen Army Secretary Harvey on C-SPAN (or heard his interview with instapundit [go to 13:50]) he'd have gotten a clear understanding of the actual "lowering" of standards taking place.

The fact is that the Army had decided to create their own higher standard (accepting only 2% of category 4) - above the congressional (20%) and DOD mandate of (4%), they've simply decided that instead of preventing qualified recruits from joining, they will now accept them (an extra 2%, that comes to a few hundred total of low ASVAB scorers), after increased scrutiny.

It is worth noting also that once in the Army all soliders are required to meet the same standards, just getting in does not guarantee they won't wash out.

Interestingly, the top non-commissioned officers, the Sgt. Majors, are made up of 12% category 4 recruits. It looks like opening the doors to a few cat 4 ASVAB scorers is actually a good thing, for the Army and those who are given the chance to prove themselves beyond the written test.

Alterman has decided that insulting our soldiers is fair-game, it might be if he were at least honest and informed (but then he'd probably be a Republican).

UPDATE: These are two comments left on my initial blog post on Kerry's insult. I want to post them here so they aren't missed:

-jf said...
something about the "kerry was obviously referring to bush" spin which needs to be slapped down hard is the "obviously" part.

progressives have been doing battle with the institution of an all volunteer military since mid 2003, branding it early on as a "poverty draft".

the battle became formalized and physical with the so-called "counter-recruiting" movement and tactics developed by the afsc. this gave members of the media and pundits a means to newsify their agenda against our armed forces. when counter-recruiters were active, any seasonal dip in recruiting numbers were eagerly promoted through alarmist news items.

but two years of examination disproved the assertion that counter-recruiters presented any real effect on recruiting numbers. the media elites' explaination for this phenomenon has been to reaffirrm their base conciet that the only type of person capable of military duty is stupid by issuing news items asserting that the military has lowered its recruiting standards.

a google search of "lowered" "recruiting" "standards" results in thousands of hits from both the mainstream and leftwing activist media:

Slate (uses the term "dumbing down" to describe new recruits), MSNBC and Common Dreams, etc.

other terms may be as effective. the point is that the leftwing conciet that military servicemembers are charictarized by intellectual inferiority, and that it is the noble concern of decent people that the military is the leading predator of our nation's stupid, is one which is profligate and comfortably shared amongst the left.

in stark contradiction of the notion that kerry "obviously" could not have meant the troops, it is in fact unlikely that he intended to convey otherwise. his message was not meant to his thinking with wanton malice. rather his intention was to spur his audience to moral action - to strengthen education as an alternative to the predatory appeals of military service.

of course, a shorter route to disproving kerry's spin is to try to parse bush into kerry's statement:

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you [may become a president who get's our country] stuck in Iraq."

i mean, honestly.

31 October, 2006 22:28

And from Hannibal:

Hannibal Smith said...
He really stepped in it, and his weasely backtracking was almost embarassing to watch. It wasn't a misinterpretation of some policy criticism; it was the mask falling off when he felt among friends and forgot that he was a public figure and the cameras were rolling.

It leaves me little doubt that he, and god knows how many other "mainstream" Dems, have been obscuring their true identities for the purpose of electability all this time. No doubt he buys into the full-on leftist myth of the "poverty draft," a term that he should be called on relentlessly so as to draw out the link to his ideological roots. He was in what he thought was his element - smarmy college-bound types who already know the president is a moron and the US needs glib hand-wringing to turn us around - and he carelessly dropped an insult, with a little "nudge nudge, we all know we're better than that" smirk, that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow over at the ski lodge. Oops.

31 October, 2006 19:33