An Unfinished Symphony

     Have you felt queasy as the mainstream media has rushed to defend Bob Kerrey, forgiving his accepting a Silver Medal while keeping silent for decades about his massacre of Vietnam civilians? There were other ways for disillusioned Vietnam vets to go, as made clear in the potent documentary, An Unfinished Symphony, by Boston filmmakers Bestor Cram and Mike Majoros, which played at Sundance in January. We see Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Washington 1971 pulling their bronze medals off their chests and slinging them angrily over a fence onto the White House lawn. We see these same vets talking to reporters with horrors about the killings of innocents they committed. One vet dares call himself "a war criminal." As these vets march through Lexington and Concord to bring the boys home, where is Bob Kerrey?

     However, there are scenes of soldier John Kerry delivering ministerial speeches pleading for the Vietnam War to end. In contrast to other Gis – haggard, scruffy, bitter, dope-smoking – Kerry is a poster boy, clean and Kennedy-coiffed, and his anti-War words are tempered and moderate.

     You'd hope our junior senator would be proud of what he said in 1971. So far he's distanced himself from An Unfinished Symphony, as he contemplates a 2004 run for the presidency of our right-tilting land.

GERALD PEARY
(May, 2001)

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