"Vote Kerry In '04. Because we've never actually had a Tonya Harding-esque First Lady before." :)
Posted on 08/02/2004 3:20:46 PM PDT by RWR8189
Teresa Heinz Kerry, the morning after.
Boston
WITH THE EXCEPTION of Jimmy Carter, Teresa Heinz Kerry probably got the worst reviews of any prime-time speaker at the Democratic convention. Will Saletan of Slate criticized her for talking about her late husband John Heinz, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania. Andrew Sullivan called her speech "condescending, unnecessary, and pointless." Off-the-record comments were even more devastating. And who can blame reporters for mocking a speech that featured lines like this: "With John Kerry as president, global climate change and other threats to the health of our planet will begin to be reversed"?
Journalists weren't the only ones who noticed. Twenty-four hours later, both Elizabeth and John Edwards seemed to be sucking up to the boss's wife, ostentatiously inserting testimonials to Teresa into their own convention speeches. "I am honored to stand with her," Elizabeth Edwards said at the top of her remarks. "By the way, how great was Teresa Heinz Kerry last night?" John Edwards asked, apropos of nothing.
Still, anyone who's covered Teresa knows that her convention performance was savvy and disciplined, by her standards. Not only did she use prepared remarks--she actually spent part of her speech talking about John Kerry.
But by the following morning, she was back to normal. Her first stop was the Hispanic Caucus, at the downtown Sheraton. She arrived to an enthusiastic ovation and spoke, as she almost always does, quite extemporaneously.
With her soft voice and Audrey Hepburn-like caressing of her words, she began by noting that she's "about seven-eighths Latin." Yet for some reason, she said, "recently, a columnist chided me that I wasn't really an immigrant."
Teresa takes some offense at this notion, and talked about how difficult her life was when she came to America, leaving behind her beloved Mozambique. The idea that someone can't appreciate the immigrant experience just because they happen to be a billionaire, she said, is "tommyrot."
She then went on to explain how she was recently thinking about Cuban Americans and why they tend to vote Republican. It turns out that she identifies with them, and understands what they must feel, since it hurt her deeply when Mozambique fell to the Marxists. "I still feel that way about my country," she said.
She asked if there were any Brazilians in the audience. One woman stood up and cheered. She and Teresa shared a few words in Portuguese. Then Teresa mentioned her late husband and their three children and one grandchild, and talked about how important family is to her. After 11 minutes, she wrapped up, having made not a single reference to John Kerry.
TERESA was then whisked across the hallway to a ballroom to address a combined audience of the African-American and Veterans Caucuses. Not wanting to leave either group out, she started off by talking about equal pay for women. Then, she segued into the importance of early-childhood intervention to keep kids in school.
Unlike most political speakers, Teresa Heinz Kerry rarely repeats herself. She doesn't have a stump speech--or, for that matter, any set speeches. The only subject she's guilty of recycling is the story of her childhood in Africa. She's always telling audiences about how she was born and raised in Africa, and how her father, who was a doctor, used to take her out into the bush on weekends. It's always a little disappointing when she tells her "growing up African" story--it's the only time a Teresa speech feels like a performance and not simply the broadcasting of her interior monologue.
But she's never stuck there for long. The African Americans and veterans get the "growing up African" story, but sure enough, less than a minute into it, Teresa veered to a more interesting topic: medieval Portuguese poetry. "In the 15th century, when the Portuguese were making stops in Africa on the way to India," she cooed, the African people gave inspiration to "the most famous epic poet Luís de Camoes, who wrote The Lusiads." After quoting a passage from The Lusiads, Teresa told the crowd how she marched against apartheid as a young girl, but never told her mother about it.
Even as a lass, she knew that the fight against apartheid was important, and she promised, "In John, and John Edwards, and Elizabeth, and in me, you will have strong, soft, persuasive stands, with you all the way." It's her first mention of Kerry since the night before.
Not wanting to dwell on the Democratic presidential candidate, Teresa moved on, until Max Cleland entered the room and was wheeled onstage. She stopped in the middle of her remarks and winked to the crowd, "I have to give him a kiss." And she did.
No other woman running for first lady could get away with being as impossibly sweet and flirtatious as Teresa Heinz Kerry is.
HER NEXT STOP was at the Gay, Lesbian, Bi-Sexual, and Transgender Caucus, where the woman introducing her asked the assemblage, "Did she not look really hot last night?" The audience responded with an enthusiastic and husky "Yeah!" They were still cheering when Teresa got up to the microphone. Caught a little off her guard, she looked down and giggled.
She spent the first half of her remarks "on topic," talking about gay rights. She said that if her son came home to tell her he was gay, had met a wonderful man, and wanted to get married, she would hope that she could share her joy with all of her friends and family, no matter what their cultural or religious differences.
She then recounted a story from a campaign fundraiser in Sonoma. A man in the audience "put his hands up," Teresa remembered, "and he said, 'I'd like you to be my mother.'"
The GLBT crowd laughed, but Teresa wasn't telling the story as a goof: "It was a sad statement," she said, because it told her that he hadn't been able to make peace with his mother. "So I told him, 'At least, if nothing else, you'll have a mom in the White House who loves you. You can call me Mama T any time.'"
It was an odd moment, the elegant, Swiss-educated heiress not looking much like a "Mama T." But it was neither as odd--nor as revealing--as when she told the group, "If I have one quality that I can brag about, because it's just who I am, it's that I like to nurture people, I like to enable." After closing her remarks, she was done campaigning for the day. She had mentioned her husband once all morning.
IT'S EASY to see why Teresa Heinz Kerry bothers some people: She's part Arianna Huffington, part Zsa Zsa Gabor, and part Ginger from Gilligan's Island. But in many ways, she's a ray of sunshine in a tough and unpleasant campaign. Teresa is intelligent and charming, to be sure. But she's also both honest and candid--a little like John McCain. If he were attractive, a bit dotty, and filthy rich.
Her candor can be incredibly touching. "When I was 5 years old, or 6, I had just had a little baby sister, so I was really enchanted," she told the GLBT caucus during one of her digressions. "And people would say, 'Well, what are you going to be when you are big?' And I always said, 'I'm going to have 12 children.'" Here the audience broke out in laughter, but it was not a joke.
"I didn't," Teresa continued. "I tried, but I didn't." Not understanding what she meant, the audience laughed again, and started clapping.
Teresa paused for just a moment. "I lost three, okay? So I got up to six," she said gently. "But I have three wonderful children, and a grandchild." Her voice had real pain, and pride.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
Last is listing, toward port.
Teresa is obviously a woman who is on some type of anti-depressant medication(s), has never gotton over the death of her first husband, and who I think tries to bring him to life in John Kerry. Did that make sense?
Note that she did not say, "My old country," or "My country of birth."
And one half of the country is willing to have a First Lady that thinks that her country is somewhere else?
Insert Joke Here. :)
Their previous choice was also a john, altough he was called Bill.
She has three sons but only two are campaigning..where and WHO is the third one?
I think this is a good example of how NO ONE can get a clue about her. She's all over the board and they don't know if she's series (serious for those that aren't familiar w/FReep speech)or telling a story. This woman needs better meds.
There is NOTHING Audrey Hepburn-like about Teresa or her voice. I would have paid to listen to Audrey Hepburn read a phone book. I would pay to have Teresa shut up!
I forget, was she talking to the Lesbian/Gay group when she said this?
Next they'll be saying she dances like Ginger Rogers....
I think you're last name made me think of that....hmmmmm
Not to make fun of her loss, but I find it interesting that she counts the three children that she lost as her children (which I fully agree with), but I wonder what she thinks about late term abortions, in particular, and abortion in general.
Makes sense to me. Bitter about her husband's death and angry at the world. Her coping mechanism is to destroy what is good and just in America. I am sure she realizes her convenience to kerry boy(MONEY) A neurotic slipping in to a psychotic state which is passed off as eccentric. The ketchup gal is on her way down hill in the mental department. Put on your sunglasses, sit on your ass, light up a Kool, this is the promise land and vote demorat. "it's easier than getting a job." Bush/Chney 2004
I like to enable
Gee, that says a lot, doesn't it?
"Vote Kerry In '04. Because we've never actually had a Tonya Harding-esque First Lady before." :)
"There, there, snuggle-bunny...I'll get your money back as soon as I screw everyone who votes for me!!!"
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Kinda like that sickly green sunshine right before the worst storm of the century hits.
You've probably hit on it. She has so much money no one ever tells her 'no' or says a discouraging word, so she simply comes out with whatever she pleases. Kerry is clearly in her life because she needed an occasional escort and he stalked her night and day until she gave up. Unfortunately, now he wants to be president, and she's so accustomed to buying him whatever new toy he has his eye on, that she's already said if negative republican campaigning starts, she'll buy the presidency for Botoxboy. She's delusional.
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