Did everybody see this column by Mark Shields [View All]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3000163

"WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- A couple of years ago, after the program had already begun at a political dinner honoring the beloved and then fatally ill Joe Moakley, a Boston Democratic congressman, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry made a late and highly visible entrance, walking to his table at the front of the room. The evening's master of ceremonies refused to ignore the interruption. With perfect mock sympathy, he "explained": "You'll have to excuse the junior senator's tardiness; he got caught in front of a mirror." The crowd erupted in knowing laughter.

Personal vanity had been only one part of the political-press consensus on Kerry. He was regularly described as aloof, patrician or emotionally detached. Yes, it was agreed, the man was smart, and he knew the issues. But John Kerry, it was agreed, was in love with his wife's husband. Never a shot-and-a-beer guy, he was not the kind of Massachusetts politician who could sing a song or tell a self-deprecating story. Although I was not an intimate of the man, it was a consensus from which I did not strenuously dissent.

Let me tell you about a John Kerry much different from that glib stereotype. Seven years ago, Kerry personally recruited Brendan O'Donnell, then 19, to become an intern in his Senate office in Washington. Senate internships are coveted positions, often reserved for the children of well-connected or deep-pocketed campaign donors. Brendan O'Donnell's mother, Kathryn, was an honored elementary teacher and a widow. Her husband and Brendan's father, Kirk, was an enormously talented lawyer-politician had died unexpectedly the previous September. In the cold calculus of power, neither Brendan O'Donnell nor his family could do anything politically for John Kerry or anybody else.

What I forgot to mention is that Brendan is learning disabled. In 1999, he explained his condition this way in a statement John Kerry later quoted on the Senate floor: "I think there should be a different name for learning disabilities ... to me, it's not a disability -- it's just that I have something which causes a storm in my mind. When I look at something, I have to take my time and take it all in." But take it in he does, performing all his assigned tasks in the Senate office with enthusiasm and dispatch."

more here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/24/shields.kerry/

Frankly, I think it is weird that anyone who has bothered to find out anything about Kerry would be surprised by this.