Kerry's got cancer? Kick him again! If you're Kerry-hating Slate blogger Mickey Kaus, John Kerry's prostate-cancer operation isn't a signal that it's time to lay off. No, it's a signal to step it up. Kaus sneers at how slickly Kerry stage-managed his news conference yesterday at which he announced that he has cancer, then adds:

Kerry's prostate cancer operation "helps" him, in the unsentimental political sense, in a way it might not "help" another candidate -- namely by emphasizing to voters that he's in fact a liviing, breathing human being and not a continually trimmed and positioned semi-holographic self-creation.

Now, Kaus isn't the first pundit to make this point. In fact, Kerry joked about it himself yesterday, telling reporters that he was going to have his "aloof gland" removed. But Kaus is just so over-the-top mean that he dehumanizes the guy, and he does it on a day when Kerry's recovering from what must have been some mighty unpleasant surgery -- with, let's not forget, some might uncertain prospects as well.