Rugged Kerry woos the jocks

[T_i_B]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3427027.stm

Front-runner John Kerry was playing action man in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Saturday afternoon.

The Vietnam veteran has a tendency to enjoy showing off his more masculine side, sometimes driving his Harley Davidson motorbike to rallies and even once onto the set of a late night TV talk show.

But today, it's ice-hockey. He is in the middle of Manchester's JFK arena in a blue shirt with "Kerry 04" on the back of it, as part of an unusual campaign event. Kerry shows that he is able to stay on his feet and skate pretty well, although his first attack ends with a pretty weak shot.

Coming to a hockey game does two things for him. Firstly, it reaches out to a certain sector of society who are more interested in sport than politics. Kerry is also here because he knows that playing the tough guy is his best bet to redefine his image. Pictures of Kerry from Vietnam do remind voters of his impressive military past, but the general impression that he gives off now is "senatorial" in the sense of slightly self-important and aloof.

[trumad]

1. Careful JK

We need you healthy..

[Killarney]

2. I think this is good

If he ends up being our candidate, one obstacle in the GE will be his boring, patrician image. Playing hockey makes him seem more accessible and shows us more of his interests and personality. That's good.

[KoKo]

3. Mimicking Bush's "fly boy" appearance doesn't go well with some of us,

but then I think that's the point.

[seaglass]

4. The entrance price for this hockey game was a donation

of canned goods. Kerry has skated in Denis Leary's benefits for firefighters in the past and the firefighters appreciate it. He knows the Bruins players who skated in this game, he's skated with them before. The IAFF union president also donned his skates in this match.

How many of Bush's fellow fly boys were on that aircraft carrier with him?

That is the difference between real and not real.

[KoKo]

5. Well.....then it's okay...He's a "Macho....Macho....Maaaaan! I wanna be a

"Macho Man,too!"

LOL's......you gotta do what you gotta do. Maybe he could roll out his old Bob Dylan albums....I might have some sympathy with that!

(just trying to be humorous, here.) :-)'s

[seaglass]

11. Just trying to enlighten you a little bit.

Obviously it didn't get through. Oh well.

[adadem]

17. The difference is

Kerry is a "real" hockey player, albeit as a hobby. Bush is not a "real" military hero as he tried to portray with his fake aircraft carrier stunt.

on edit: replace portray with pretend.

[JI7]

14. this is a charity event he has done few times before

he is doing something here he has always done. he has been for firefighters before 9/11 and they were seen as cool. as denis leary said he was one of the few toshow up to help the firefighters and listen to them before 9/11 when they needed help the most. there were no media around. he did it because it's what he does. this is why firefighters had no question about who to endorse.

[WiseMen]

6. Also relevant that Kerry Windsurfs, cycles, fly a plane himself etc.

That is not play acting. He has been doing these things all his life.
Learned to fly, for instance, from his father who was a pilot.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

7. Is there footage of Kerry in Vietnam?

I heard that there is film of Kerry in action in Vietnam. Is this true? Anyone know?

[paulk]

9. they had some footage on 60 minutes

he was walking through a clearing with an m-16 in hand.

[Bombtrack]

8. One of the reasons I support Clark and Edwards more than Kerry

is that he does alot to reenforce the fact that I, as a working class kid, can't really relate to him.

The hockey players I knew were always the upper middle class kids who drove better cars and wore their abercrombie/nautica "uniforms".

I still think he'd make a decent candidate, much better than Dean,(he could beat Bush), but he just doesn't speak to me much

[paulk]

10. nah -

I grew up in a very impoverished area in upstate NY. We played hockey every night on the frozen pond behind our house.

It was the lacrosse players that I couldn't stand...

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

12. lacrosse players

no kidding!

[T_i_B]

13. The Iceman Cometh: Kerry scores in New Hampshire

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=484808

Whether he wins the real New Hampshire primary will only be known tomorrow evening - but, this weekend, John Kerry won the photo-op primary by the ice hockey equivalent of a landslide.

Before 1,000 fans and at least 100 television cameras, the senator for Massachusetts swept on to the ice at the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial Coliseum in Manchester to show that if he's a bit stodgy on the stump, he's dynamite on the ice. "I'm in the worst shape I've ever been in my life," insisted Mr Kerry.

But as you watched the 6ft 3in, 60-year-old gliding around the arena on his practice skate, deftly controlling the puck and whipping in some wicked shots, the question arose: what would he be like if he was in shape? At that stage the senator was in breach of the rules by playing without a helmet - the better to show his trademark grizzled thatch.

All this was not just to demonstrate his sporting prowess. In this frozen corner of the US (minus 20C last night), ice hockey is the average Joe's pastime. What better way for Mr Kerry, multi-millionaire Boston Brahmin, to show he is one of the boys? Then the game proper started. With 2 minutes 12 seconds left in the first period, the patrician senator swept in a soft rebound to score. A cynic would cry fix - and certainly the other team didn't make much effort to stop the puck going in. But who cared? As the candidate wheeled away, arms aloft in triumph, a lady in a back fur coat let out a joyous shriek: "That's why he's going to win on Tuesday."

[Forkboy]

15. That goal was a soft one

Time for a new goalie :D

[Nlighten1]

16. This is great...

It makes Georgie in his cut little running shorts look like the little Sheila he is.