Tres charmant Kerry fundraiser last night

New York Times (free registration req'd) reports. I think they left a couple of words off of the article head: It's "Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash of Bush".

Kerry's Celebrity Fund-Raiser Is a Huge Bash

Some choice tidbits:

In a two-and-a-half hour gala that raised $7.5 million, a record for a single event, Chevy Chase poked fun at the president's pronunciation of "nuclear" and "terrorist" and said Mr. Bush had invaded Iraq "just so he could be called a wartime president." Paul Newman decried "tax cuts for wealthy thugs like me" as "borderline criminal."

I'm glad Chevy Chase, that great foreign policy analyst, has made it clear we're not actually in a war or anything. Now we know where John Kerry stands. Good job.

The comedian John Leguizamo, who is half Puerto Rican, said the notion of Hispanics supporting Republicans was "like roaches for Raid." And Whoopi Goldberg, after joking about refusing to submit her material to campaign censors, made an extended sexual pun on the president's surname.

Hey, John Leguizamo, I'm 100% Puerto Rican, si lugar di nacimiento means anything. (I suppose it doesn't - or are Charlize Theron or Teresa Heinz Kerry "African", or what? Class, please discuss.) And I don't find that funny. But maybe you should ask Columba or George P. about it.

Then the Academy-Award-winning actress Meryl Streep asked which candidates Jesus might support.

"I wondered to myself during 'Shock and Awe,' I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our president's personal savior, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?" Ms. Streep said.

Steve Schmidt, a Bush campaign spokesman, denounced the event as "a Hollywood fund-raiser filled with enough hate and vitriol to make Michael Moore blush."

After the concert, Mr. Kerry's press secretary, David Wade, said, "Obviously John Kerry and John Edwards do not agree with everything that was said tonight," adding: "Performers have a right to speak their minds even when we don't agree with everything they say. That's the freedom John Kerry put his life on the line to defend."

Hey, did you know - John Kerry was in Vietnam! Yes! Really!

Most telling point:

Campaign aides said the performers would not allow broadcast journalists to record the concert.

The performers wouldn't allow it? Or - maybe the campaign didn't want it recorded? But that would be a little Moore-ish of me to so speculate, wouldn't it? I'm sure the performers, people like Dave Matthews, were just afraid of bootlegs.

But unlike one of Mr. Kerry's vanquished primary rivals, Howard Dean, who denounced racial humor and profanity at one of his own fundraisers in New York, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry hardly veered from their script when they mounted the stage at the end of the extravaganza, looking more subdued than they had all week.

So Howard Dean had better manners and more presence of mind than John Kerry?

Surely a national party can do better than this.

Comments

[Gerard E.]

This national party can't do better. Particularly by inviting Whoopi Goldberg. Who called John Edwards a 'kid.' And President Bush by another name- this is a family blog. And wheeled around the stage, bottle of wine in hand. And didn't clear her material with Kerry campaign workerbees. Any movement, cause or campaign that enlists her has a highly pronounced death wish. GWB should only surround himself with Gov. Ahnuld and a few country music stars. Who will arrive in sobriety.

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