As a resident of Minneapolis I watched the outrage over the Wellstone Memorial in 2002 morph from nothing into a major scandal through GOP manipulation of the media. The GOP slime machinery is doing the same thing with Kerry's recent statement.
Desperate to avoid a humiliating loss, the GOP slimers are looking for any way to turn the political situation to their advantage. If it wasn't Kerry it would have been Dean or Pelosi or anyone. The GOP specializes in turning minor things into shitstorms because of their control of the corporate media. Kerry was just the latest to give them something, anything, to use.
This is exactly the same kind of fake outrage they ginned up from the Wellstone Memorial. I watched the short statements of a grieving political compatriot and friend of Wellstone, during an election, unfold into a major political issue. As the GOP slimers pushed it more and more into the spotlight, Democratic talking heads all went out into the media to apologize and make nice. It made the controversy stronger. Had they simply said, early on, that it was completely appropriate and political enemies had no business dictating a memorial it likely would have died down quickly.
Kerry's slip-up was insignificant. Why wasn't there this kind of wall-to-wall coverage when, the day before, Bush called democratic Americans traitors to their country? He's the sitting president, that statement was unbelievably out of bounds. Even with Kerry's slight bungling the intent of his comment was clear.
The GOP seized the opportunity to make Kerry's statement into something the talking heads can chatter about. The content of his statement is being ignored while they parse out every syllable of his words. It's like the CBS Bush AWOL story. Let's not talk about the substance, let's attack the way the message was delivered.
Kerry is doing the right thing by punching back hard right away and not trying to explain it away. Everyone who's mad at Kerry really needs to understand it's the GOP slime machine at work, not anything Kerry did.