http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=13001By Cadmium. Read the whole thing, but I found this part very touching:
First this excerpt from Mark Shields:
Let me tell you about a John Kerry much different from that glib stereotype. Seven years ago, Kerry personally recruited Brendan O'Donnell, then 19, to become an intern in his Senate office in Washington. Senate internships are coveted positions, often reserved for the children of well-connected or deep-pocketed campaign donors. Brendan O'Donnell's mother, Kathryn, was an honored elementary teacher and a widow. Her husband and Brendan's father, Kirk, was an enormously talented lawyer-politician had died unexpectedly the previous September. In the cold calculus of power, neither Brendan O'Donnell nor his family could do anything politically for John Kerry or anybody else.
What I forgot to mention is that Brendan is learning disabled. In 1999, he explained his condition this way in a statement John Kerry later quoted on the Senate floor: "I think there should be a different name for learning disabilities ... to me, it's not a disability -- it's just that I have something which causes a storm in my mind. When I look at something, I have to take my time and take it all in." But take it in he does, performing all his assigned tasks in the Senate office with enthusiasm and dispatch.
Don't try to tell Brendan O' Donnell that his boss, Sen. John Kerry, is aloof, self-absorbed or emotionally detached. He knows better. Brendan once spoke about individuals with learning disabilities: "We are the same as everyone else, and if someone takes the time to teach us, to work with us, and to help us understand, we can do whatever we want." He is right, and Sen. John Kerry has cared enough personally to take that time. Sorry if that shatters your stereotype like it shattered mine.
Then Cadmium shares his own personal anecdote, for which I can vouch for. I witnessed this first hand when I was in Boston in '06, and was really struck at what this said about John Kerry: this is a case of him showing not just that he is a fine politician, but a fine human being:
My wife and I do adult foster care (an inadequate phrase if there ever was one) for a man with major developmental disabilities and John Kerry seeks him out at events, chats with him -- no pictures, he banters, and treats him as an equal -- proof of a basic decency that rarely gets reported in the press.