Gore made an infamous appearance on Rolling Stone’s cover leading up to the 2000 election. Leering, preening, and sporting an air-brushed zipper region, the would-be president was at the center of “The Affair Of The Crotch,” an episode in American political history best forgotten.

Photographers later confessed to “touching up” Gore’s photo in an attempt to portray him as not only non-robotic, but a person – a virile, chest-thumping, testosterone-soaked alpha-male. The strategy, however, only worked for one man, Bill Clinton, because “for a change, everybody was talking about someone else’s private parts.”

The top-secret campaign memo said Kerry “wasn’t going to go the touch-up route” but rather would “stuff a Nerf football down the front of his pants” to portray himself as a man’s man.

The memo also stressed the urgency of the photo shoot in relation to Kerry’s comments two weeks ago, when he said American forces under his command would conduct “a more sensitive War On Terrorism.”

“Pre-sensitive war comments, I would’ve suggested our boy stuffing 10 acorns down his pants,” an anonymous Kerry campaign adviser stated in the memo. “Post-sensitive war comments may merit about 25 or 30...and I’m talking chestnuts here, not acorns.”