Watching author Douglas Brinkley discuss John Kerry makes me wonder what goes through this person's mind. Brinkley did not talk like an boring idealogue and presented his antedotes and facts in a chipper, upbeat fashion that pointed out interesting facts in John Kerry's life.

There were several things he said that probably mislead the audience into thinking John Kerry was something he was not. He indicated that John Kerry signed up with the Navy out of a sense of duty instill in him by his father. That is not the case at all. He signed up because he was going to be drafted into the army. You didn't have to be a graduate of Yale to know that at that time he signed up the chances for seeing combat were significantly less if you were in the Navy than in the Army. I have no problems with Kerry's choice but to characterize it as something that it wasn't is a problem in my book.

Another misstatement that Brinkley made was that John Kerry did not protest the war while he was still serving in the Navy and working at a cushy job as an admiral's aide in Washington. He did join an anti-war group at that time which judging from Brinkley's Atlantic Monthly article was not unexpected and if he did not protest actively it wasn't because of some sense of honor that Kerry had as Brinkley implied. Kerrry could have been court-martialed for being in violation of Article 88 of the UCMJ.

Brinkley, rather than talk about the John Kerry of today, concentrated on presenting information about the John Kerry of 30 years ago. It seemed strange, as if Brinkley found little or nothing about the John Kerry of today worth a significant comment.