I Wuz A SEAL, Ya Know

Remember Jesse Ventura?

I was thinking about ol' meatbrain the other day, in relation to John vietnam Kerry's eternal campaign to vietnam associate himself vietnam in peoples' minds as a Vietnam veteran. The mentions are too frequent, too inappropriate, too constant...

...just like "The Mind's" extremely frequent application of his background as a SEAL to, say, debates on bonding bills.

Which brings us to James' t remark today:

But. But. How did this work, exactly? Did the CIA agent take off his hat as he was hopping off the boat to wade into the jungle? Here, take this, think of me. Or here you go, pal, you lost your hat back there, take mine, I have another. Square this with the narrative: Kerry was bitter as he bobbed in Cambodia, shot at from all sides - so he takes this hat, this extra hat, this spook lid back to barracks, and now it replaces his own hat as the object that spells luck. That sums up his experience. That brings it all back. Not the hat he wore on the boat in combat, but the hat he got from a spook on an illegal mission - that's the good luck object, that's the prized possession.

Work for you?

Maybe; again, I'm just running fiction-writer debugging scripts. If I wrote a novel with a Vietnam vet, I'd use the CIA-hat detail as a sign the character probably spent the war filing reports in San Diego.

Or sitting in Sa Dec editing home movies...

Posted by Mitch at August 11, 2004 07:41 AM | TrackBack