"Kerry's Special Friends" [View All]

Kerry's Special Friends
By DAVID BROOKS

Published: February 7, 2004



Kerry, John F




ohn Kerry has been railing against the special interests, and I don't think that's very nice because it implies that some people's interests are not so special. I like to think that everybody's interests are special in their own way.

What's more, I think Kerry knows this, because if you look over his long career, you see that he loves all our interests, big and small, near or far. For example, a Chinese businesswoman named Liu Chaoying dreamed of having her company listed on a U.S. stock exchange. That's certainly a special dream.

Maybe as a little girl she would come home from school, gather up her little dollies and tell them about her dream of ringing the bell to start the trading day, or of having little Lucite tombstones on her desk to mark her mergers and acquisitions. Maybe some of the other little girls in school told her she'd never have a company on a U.S. exchange, because you know how cruel little kids can be.

But she had an interest, and to her it was the most specialest interest in the world. And she kept at it. And that cute little girl grew up to become a lieutenant colonel in China's People's Liberation Army, which is a very special army, even measured against the armies of other human rights-violating dictatorships. And what's more, she had a $300,000 bank account with funds supplied by the head of Chinese intelligence, which is certainly quite special indeed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/07/opinion/07BROO.html


read and come to your own conclusion.