Bill Clinton jogged. George Bush swings his golf club. But when it comes to performing for the photographers, John Kerry prefers the latest thing in extreme watersports…
There's a scene in Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 in which George Bush addresses the assembled press from a golf tee. "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you." Then he pulls back his club and says: "Now watch this drive."
What a loser. Doesn't Bush realise that the days when an incumbent president could impress anyone with his proficiency in a sartorially repellent oldsters' "sport" like golf are over? Doesn't he know that to win the looming election, he'd better get down with the kids? Isn't he aware that to show that he remains in full control of not just the free world but his own personal mojo, he needs to stick his golf clubs where the sun don't shine and get waxing his board prior to racing along the high seas at 40 knots?
These, surely, are some of the reasons that Democratic challenger John Kerry allowed himself to be photographed off the coast of Massachusetts this week with his feet strapped onto a board and his hands clasping a kite, engaged in the hip and quite possibly happening sport of kitesurfing (some call it kiteboarding - opinion seems to be uninterestingly divided on the proper nomenclature). Was Kerry using this photo-op to make some trenchant political speech - a critique of Bush's opposition to gay marriages, for instance? It seems unlikely. More likely he was yelling to no one in particular: " Duuuude! I've never felt so alive! I'm maxing the envelope! I'm overshooting the extreme!" These are words, to be sure, that have little or no political content but they are undeniably ones that would play well with the bong-toting, Jackass-viewing under-25 demographic that Kerry needs to capture.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1267395,00.html