I’m a little late to this party, as many others have commented (probably more intelligently) on this, but I just have to talk about William Saletan’s “Kerryisms” feature on Slate- “Kerryisms” is an apparent attempt at balance. Since Slate has “Bushisms” which are quotes from George W. Bush, they must also have “Kerryisms” which take John Kerry quotes and make them shorter- often in the process distorting and perverting what Kerry actually said. Some balance.

The beauty of Bushisms is it’s simplicity- no long explanation needed, no instructions. It’s just a quote from the president. You know, like, “This is historic times.”

Kerryisms are a different animal- these aren’t quotes, these are distortions authored by a Republican hack.

Kerryisms were first introduced with instructions which later had to be clarified, then a few days ago a whole article had to be published explaining it all over again.

It was only after this third attempt at explanation that I took an interest- I read the first quote- it’s a critique of the administration and the Pentagon’s response to the prisoner abuse scandal, in Saletan’s version of the quote the Pentagon is left out of the quote. I’m afraid I don’t understand how excluding the Pentagon simplifies the quote. The reason Kerry mentions the Pentagon is because he is talking about the Pentagon. You can’t just arbitrarily drop a few nouns and expect the statement to convey the same meaning.

Slate might drive up traffic in the short term printing sloppy stuff like the “Kerryisms” column, but in the end they are paying a high toll in credibility.

A few Saletanized quotes, just for fun:
FDR: “Bad Day”
JFK: “Do [things] for [the] country.”
MLK: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Reagan: “Tear down wall.”
Clinton: “It was just her hand.”