Looney left and lonely Kerry photo
Power Line takes on the contention of many in the left that the photo showing John Kerry without many troops around him in a dining hall was from a different time and place. The controversy came about because the camera owner never reset the date function on his camera. Power Line also has a more recent photo from the same camera that shows a copy of today's Stars & Stripes newspaper and the date has advanced by the same number of days since the original photo. In other words, it proves that the camera date was never reset and that the original photo was what it purported to be.
Update: Kerry office confirms that photo was taken on his recent trip to Iraq. The Kerry team is wise to put this issue to rest. If he had handled the original controversy about the "botched joke" this well he would not have been faced with being shunned by the troops. Instead he reacted like a Kos Kid stringing insults together, which wound up compounding his damage.
Update: Kerry office confirms that photo was taken on his recent trip to Iraq. The Kerry team is wise to put this issue to rest. If he had handled the original controversy about the "botched joke" this well he would not have been faced with being shunned by the troops. Instead he reacted like a Kos Kid stringing insults together, which wound up compounding his damage.
Thanks Merv. I appreciate your acknowledgement of the statement from Kerry's office. I hope others will do the same.
ReplyDelete"In other words, it proves [a] that the camera date was never reset and [b] that the original photo was what it purported to be."
ReplyDeleteI don't think it proves either [a] or [b], but I do think it demonstrates that [c] the photograph wasn't taken last year.
The point being that the controversy was created when a right wing blogger and captain in the army and former speech writer for the bush administration slandered Kerry by saying he had been shunned by the troops. The same bloggers that probably correctly questioned the kerning then didn't question at all this photograph. When had it been taken, what was going on, was the description accurate.
As Snopes often shows, an accurate photograph will frequently carry an inaccurate description, and that was the case here.
And has the Kerry description puts it, the slander of the original blogger, the captain in the army was shown.
And as even Malkin posts (but does not acknowledge) other pictures of Kerry at the same time show him surrounded by troops. No shunning at all.
The captain, the blogger, the former speech writer, now falls back on the excuse "lighten up, it was just a joke."
Question for you: is it appropriate for a former speech writer, an officer in the army, and one whose job in the army is as a public relations communications officer to be making political wisecracks?
Question for you: did Kerry's office confirm the photo was real but the description inaccurate? And if so, why in your update did you not mention that?
Question for you: why do so many on the right feel that it is okay to pass on inaccuracies, smears and lies?