No. 9: A joke about troops in Iraq by Vietnam War veteran Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) doesn't exactly go over well.
During the 2004 presidential election, the Democratic candidate tried to portray himself as a smarter alternative to Republican incumbent George W. Bush, whose alleged intellectual limits have been the subject of many a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Critics assailed Kerry for coming across as elitist, overeducated and out of touch with the average American. Two years later, he still hasn't been able to shake that image.
In a campaign appearance for California gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides at Pasadena City College on October 30, the Massachusetts senator made an unfortunate remark: "If you make the most of (education), you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Video of Kerry's speech in Pasadena hit YouTube almost instantaneously, and the outrage began.
Kerry was widely criticized for stereotyping the American soldier as uneducated. While he claimed that he was actually making a jab at President Bush's blunders in Iraq, the stigma remained.
Photo by Wikimedia Foundation/Photo courtesy of John M. Adriatico
