{"id":985,"date":"2003-12-22T10:24:17","date_gmt":"2003-12-22T15:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/985.html"},"modified":"2003-12-22T10:24:17","modified_gmt":"2003-12-22T15:24:17","slug":"clark-appears-to-have-scored-points-with-over-heard-curse-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/clark-appears-to-have-scored-points-with-over-heard-curse-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Clark appears to have scored points with over-heard curse word"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s with the candidates and their potty mouths? Two weeks ago, John Kerry made headlines<\/a> for a profane critique<\/a> of Bush’s policies in Iraq, saying that he didn’t expect “George Bush to f— it up as badly as he did.” Oddly enough, Kerry won praise<\/a> for showing a more human side to his persona.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Wesley Clark offered up a curse word of his own, and like Kerry, it seems like it’s working out well.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Clark was in New Hampshire to give a speech, which was covered live by C-SPAN. The fun thing about watching events on C-SPAN is that camera crews broadcast the event and the subsequent mingling without having annoying on-air talent step in to mess it up. As a result, once a candidate is done giving a speech and he or she starts chatting in small groups, C-SPAN cameras give viewers a chance to hear some of those personal conversations that we otherwise would never hear. Sometimes the cameras pick up something interesting. Saturday was one of those instances.<\/p>\n

One of the people on hand to hear Clark approached the candidate and mentioned how Republicans have a history of tearing rivals down with some pretty nasty attacks. The guy asked Clark how he’d respond if anyone came after him like that and, without missing a beat, Clark said, “I’ll beat the s— out of them.” He added, “I hope that’s not on television.”<\/p>\n

Of course, it was on television. Live television.<\/p>\n

Wisely, the campaign didn’t back off the comment at all. Jamal Simmons, Clark’s press secretary who was with Clark at the time, later told reporters, “If anyone tries to question Wes Clark’s character, integrity or his commitment to this country or its security, they’re going to be in the biggest fight they’ve ever had.”<\/p>\n

The response, from what I can tell, has been quite<\/a> positive<\/a> from those who’ve heard about it.
\n
\nBetter yet, some Clark supporters are taking a page from Dean’s playbook and turning an interesting exchange into a fundraising opportunity.<\/p>\n

Georgia for Wesley Clark immediately launched a pitch for contributions using the over-heard comment from C-SPAN.<\/p>\n

“When General Clark was asked how he would respond if anyone from the right-wing criticized his patriotism or military record, he responded in no uncertain terms: ‘I’ll beat the s— out of them,'” the group said. “Do you agree it’s time to beat the – ahem – ‘spit’ out of the right wing? Well, show it by donating to our special ‘Beat the Spit’ fund-raiser! Every dollar raised will be categorized as a ‘Beat the Spit’ dollar, and will go to the ‘Clark for President’ campaign.”<\/p>\n

And in the off chance that you’re a Bush fan reading this and believe it’s just awful to hear leading Democratic presidential candidates use “bad” words, Atrios reminds us<\/a> that the current occupant of the Oval Office has his own record involving profanity:<\/p>\n

“F— Saddam. We’re taking him out.”
\n-George W. Bush, March 2002, as reported in Time.<\/p>\n

“You no-good f—ing son of a bitch, I will never f—ing forget what you wrote.”
\n-George W. Bush, to journalist Al Hunt in front of his 4-year old daughter, 1987.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s with the candidates and their potty mouths? Two weeks ago, John Kerry made headlines for a profane critique of Bush’s policies in Iraq, saying that he didn’t expect “George Bush to f— it up as badly as he did.” Oddly enough, Kerry won praise for showing a more human side to his persona. Over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}