Kerry Fumbles

There are just some people who should not try to tell jokes. John Kerry is one of them.

He’s been using the following riff to draw cheap crowd pops in Ohio appearances:

“If you elect me and my running mate, John Edwards, we are going to give you the courageous leadership you need. We'll take the tough positions, the courageous positions, the tough stands. [uncontrollable eye-rolling, you’ll have to pardon me] But there's one tough position I will not take: I am not going to choose between the Falcons and the Rockets!" This is a local reference to the well-known rivalry between Bowling Green University and the University of Toledo. "I will say this," he added. "There is nothing better than Buckeye football, period!"

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to deduce that John Kerry wouldn’t recognize ANY football, period; he probably thought it meant what we know as “soccer” before his handlers told him otherwise. But that doesn’t really matter as long as he gets the details down so that he sounds to the local yokels like he knows something about it. Which makes the addendum about Ohio State kind of odd, since it seems to overwrite the Toledo-Bowling Green line. But he did get the latter right.

Then he goes to a Michigan stop, and repeats the same riff.

Michigan. As in Wolverine territory. As in the neighboring state where nobody and nothing is hated as much as “Buckeye football.”

He got booed off the stage.

Reminds me of the old Reagan quip about Howard Metzenbaum: “Mistaking the incumbent’s views for those of the people of Ohio would be like mistaking Woody Hayes for Woody Allen.”