The party never ends at National Review; it just gets less viable over time.
MC Byron York busts out the following remix, sampling various tunes from 2004's Now That's What I Call Bullshit Volume 27:
It's common to see mentions in the press these days about some "swiftboating" of Barack Obama that is allegedly in the works, or might someday allegedly be in the works, or might someday be thought to be allegedly in the works.
Ha. Ha. Ha. Silly press. Seriously, who gets "Swiftboated" in a U.S. presidential election? This hasn't happened to a single presidential candidate since 2004.
While I'm sure there will be some hit jobs on Obama...
Yeah, maybe. Who knows? There's really no way of telling what tomorrow may bring. Like, maybe there will be some sort of massive e-mail whisper campaign to the effect that Obama is a radical Muslim, or perhaps a GOP operative and a former CIA agent will run around claiming that there exists a video of Michelle Obama making outlandish racial comments, and perhaps these rumors will be broadcast on Fox News and other major media. Or maybe not. It would take William Gibson himself to predict that sort of thing.
... this talk seems to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps willful in some cases, of the swiftboat episode in the 2004 campaign.
Okay, I'm going to drop the snark now because it's about to become obsolete.
The swiftboat veterans in that year were the officers who served alongside John Kerry in Vietnam.
If by "alongside," Byron means "in the same country and at the same time and on the same sort of boat," then he's... still wrong. Only one SBVT member actually served in Kerry's crew. But, whatever.
They had first-hand knowledge of Kerry's service...
If by first-hand, Byron is - wait, you know what? Fuck this. You get the drift.
... and they had a story to tell about Kerry's behavior in Vietnam and his later antiwar activities at home.
This clause is technically true. I hereby award Byron York the Silver Star for bravery in the face of facts.
Based on 35 year-old [sic] memories, some of their claims were accurate, and some weren't.
And some were intentionally spliced together into TV commercials in order to give off the inaccurate impression that these were all guys who had actually been within a mile of Kerry at some point and thus had some sort of special insight into whether or not he conducted himself as well as Byron York would have.
Today, there is a tendency to describe any criticism of Barack Obama as "swiftboating." So far, it's been a pretty effective attack pre-emption device. But it has nothing to do with "swiftboating"; you can't just "swiftboat" somebody. Now, if all of the pastors who worked with Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago came together to criticize his behavior back then, that would qualify. But until something like that happens, could everyone — at least those not working for the Obama campaign or the DNC — dispense with the "swiftboating" talk?
What do you say, guys? Should we go back to just calling them lies?