Being Teresa Heinz
In response to Nightfly’s brilliant post below:
I hope someone fisks this crap. “Ultraconservative” bishops refusing Kerry communion? Since when is it ultraconservative to actually take a stand in favor of something the whole Church teaches? Or to insist on Catholic doctrine on Sunday? I hear stuff like this and I sound like the end of “The Right Profile” – gkkkknnn… grbblbllb… thppht wwrrrraaaaaah!
It’s Teresa Heinz Kerry, honey!
(which gets my vote as “Best Comment” so far in the month+ history of the Coalition) I present the following humble attempt.
In The Northwest: Teresa Heinz Kerry hasn’t lost her outspoken way
By JOEL CONNELLY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Well, in space, no one can hear you scream, which is what I was doing after reading this. And I guess in Seattle they’re so Blue State and advanced that they’re post-intelligence.
What made Teresa Heinz Kerry so refreshing to some voters, and threatening to others on the 2004 campaign trail, is summed up when THK talks about her speech to last year’s Democratic convention:
“Nobody told me what to do,” she told a Saturday fund-raiser here.
The implicit afterword: Nobody better try.
…or their sorry-ass would’ve been fired, which, as I recall is what happened to the Kerry Staff on November 3rd.
In her speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, Teresa Heinz Kerry said “no one will defend this nation more vigorously” than her husband, John Kerry.
The sails of the philanthropist wife of Sen. John Kerry were not trimmed by November’s narrow electoral defeat.
No, but his boat was swiftly sunk, eh?
The softly accented voice gives pointed advice to the Democratic Party, which she lately joined, formerly having spent 15 years as wife of a Senate Republican.
The Democratic Party, her gardeners, her hubby; somehow I think THK is pointed with everybody because she’s rich and no one has the cajones to tell her to Sod Off!; certainly JFK ain’t opening up his mouth.
Heinz Kerry flew into town on her own Gulfstream jet (the Flying Squirrel, named for a Sun Valley ski run) direct from a conference on global philanthropy at Stanford.
She talked energy-efficient building design with Seattle Art Museum boss (and old friend) Mimi Gates. She dined at Wild Ginger and flew back east with takeout food from the Third Avenue restaurant.
My, now there’s an “energy efficient” use of a Gulfstream: picking up take-out! Kind of takes the phrase “limousine liberal” to a new level, eh?
At a lunch for Rep. Adam Smith, guests were treated to more spicy observations than will likely be heard at all fund-raisers under the Westin’s roof from now to the 2008 presidential race. A sampling:
Not knowing what “Westin” is, I can only assume it’s some sort of mental instituion.
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: A practicing Catholic, as is her husband, Heinz Kerry remains outraged at attacks by bishops on her husband’s pro-choice views.
Yes, yes, how dare those men issue statements in support of their doctrine.
“You cannot have bishops in the pulpit — long before or the Sunday before the election — as they did in Catholic churches, saying it was a mortal sin to vote for John Kerry,” she said.
Heinz Kerry gave no examples. Last year, a few ultraconservative prelates said they would not allow the Democratic nominee to receive communion in their dioceses. The bishop of Colorado Springs declared that Catholics voting for pro-choice candidates were not welcome at the communion rail.
“The church has a right and obligation to teach values,” Heinz Kerry declared. “They don’t have a right to restrict freedom of expression, which they did.”
Ho boy. This is a beaut. “Ultraconservative” is Theresaese for “guys who have read catholic doctrine and have the nerve to, um, believe it” evidently. The church, whether you believe what it teaches or not, has a perfectly legitimate right to enforce its doctrine and rules. If you don’t like the rules and doctrine of the catholic (or any) church there’s a simple solution that involves no government or lawyers: you leave the church and join another one. “Free association” baby. It’s a beautiful thing.
Sorry Teresa, but the only one who’s interested in restricting freedom of expression is you. You’re the one who seems interested in restricting the speech of pastors in their own pulpits. Been reading McCain/Feingold, have we?
COUNTING THE VOTES: Heinz Kerry is openly skeptical about results from November’s election, particularly in sections of the country where optical scanners were used to record votes.
“I’m never wrong, because I’m rich (and everyone tells me I’m beautiful); therefore I wuz robbed!”
“Two brothers own 80 percent of the machines used in the United States,” Heinz Kerry said. She identified both as “hard-right” Republicans. She argued that it is “very easy to hack into the mother machines.”
One wacked-out hag owns 80% of the ketchup used in the US. Makes me think that it would be very easy for her to slip something into our condiments…
“We in the United States are not a banana republic,” added Heinz Kerry. She argued that Democrats should insist on “accountability and transparency” in how votes are tabulated.
Yes, and I would also like the Democrats to insist on “accountability and transparency” in how people are registered to vote.
“I fear for ’06,” she said. “I don’t trust it the way it is right now.”
Well, since it’s ’05 right now there isn’t a whole lot of ’06 to worry about, is there?
A SECOND KERRY RUN: Heinz Kerry won’t stand in the way of a second presidential bid by her husband. She tersely summed up emotions at the end of November’s long election night: “No tears, some sadness.”
“I think we should focus on ’06: If ’06 doesn’t work out, ’08 will be impossible,” she argued. “If it were right for John to do it — and he felt right — he would do it again (in 2008). If he didn’t feel it right, he wouldn’t.”
Teresa dear, I’m not sure how to break this to you, but you’ve never stood in the way of his running; but you are a hell of a speed bump on the road to him winning.
Theresa Heinz Kerry campaigned tirelessly — “When I put out, I put out” — but seemed to scorn the political wife’s expected role of fixing her husband in adoring upward gaze.
At Saturday’s fund-raiser, she talked openly about conflicting emotions when confronted with her spouses’ ambitions. Born in Mozambique of Portuguese parents, she was married to Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania. Heinz was killed in a 1991 air crash.
She inherited her husband’s fortune, took charge of Heinz family endowments and married Kerry in 1995.
When she puts out, she puts out (Hey, she said it, not me!).
“I kept my first husband from running for office for four years,” she explained. “Terrified” at the prospect of public life, as a non-native born American, Heinz Kerry adjusted to what she described as a life of “losses, diseases, hurt, disappointments and many joys.”
The billion dollars helped with the adjustment phase.
She confessed to similar self-doubts when John Kerry launched his bid for the White House: “I’m too old. I can’t handle it. I have too much to do.”
A hike by herself in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho gave THK time to reach another conclusion: “I thought, ‘There’s no way I have a right to keep him from doing it’. “
Que up the Tammy Wynnette.
She was always a hit in Seattle — even while Deaniacs had John Kerry’s campaign in the doldrums — but ran into bumps on the campaign trail.
She responded to nasty questions by a columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a paper owned by right-wing mogul Richard Mellon Scaife, using words familiar to many Americans: “Shove it!”
Ah, the class and elegance that those schtuuuupid Red Staters denied in November. What a welcome change she would have been from that shameless hussy Laura Bush!
The Drudge Report, a popular conservative Web site, missed no opportunity to run unflattering pictures of THK or float untruthful personal rumors about her husband.
That Drudge! Never posts anything unflattering about conservatives. Uh-huh.
A gossipy, superficial book on the 2004 campaign by the Washington, D.C., bureau of Newsweek depicted Heinz Kerry as a loose cannon requiring constant maintenance.
And this differs from reality how?
Heinz Kerry is still steamed at what the Republican attack machine did to her husband.
“Think about last year,” she said. “Once John had his nomination, the Republicans spent $90 million to destroy his reputation.”
“Destroy” being Theresaese for “uncover unfortunate truths.”
“Dammit John! You said the Magic Hat would protect you from everything!”
She cited dirty tricks used in the campaign to mobilize what the religious right called “Values Voters.”
“In West Virginia, John was going to burn Bibles,” she said. “It’s not ‘values.’ It’s outright lies.”
No no no, he was going to grill small children and serve them to the elderly while wearing a white hood as part of the “Robert Byrd Appreciation Month” festivities. Geesh, get your facts right, honey.
Often a vigorous overseer of grants, Heinz Kerry has taken a lesson from the concentrated incoming fire she received from the right flank.
“We have to develop a discipline for this party, so the people of this country know more clearly what it is to be a Democrat,” she said.
Your right, we do need to know what it means to be a Democrat; we have all to clear a knowledge of what it requires to be a Democratic Leader, and we really hope there’s a difference.
She came away from 2004 with a high opinion of Americans’ ideals and gratitude to a campaign that exceeded Bill Clinton’s winning vote total of 1996 by 9 million votes.
…and still got schmackerooed by sevreal million votes. That’s gotta leave a mark.
“Basically, we are at a crux, a crossroads right now,” Heinz Kerry said. “It’s no place for self-indulgence. It’s no place for looking back. We must be totally committed to this journey … to believe again, to hope again.”
If it’s no place for self-indulgence, then what are you doing here?
Nanny State | Mr. Bingley | 
March 8, 2005 2:06 pm
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Pickle Barrel fisking
Mr. Bingley fisks the Pickle Lady so you don’t have to….
Smacking The Ketchup Outta Her
Mr. Bingley does an excellent job of fisking Theresa’s spewage in Monday’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The Coalition of the Swilling: Being Teresa Heinz My, now there’s an “energy efficient” use of a Gulfstream: picking up take-out! Kind of takes the p…
Mr. Bingley, you flatter me, and I duly return the flatter. (Flatter? Hell, you made my day!) Scroll down to item #4.
PS – There actually is a microbrew called Magic Hat.
PPS – “Westin” is the name of a hotel chain. It only doubles as a loony hatch when loonies visit, I suppose.
Yeah, I’ve seen “Westins” before, but usually the name is preceeded by “Seattle” or “RiverView” or somesuch.
That “magic hat” site is…different.
Thanks for the link!
Oh man, that is one of the coolest, weirdest, most disturbing websites ever! (BASTARDS !! wanted the year of my birth, tho. Nosy poopheads, inflicting needless pain and suffering.)