Those Kerry daughters! What will they do next to help their dad’s campaign?
Back in March, 27-year-old Vanessa Kerry, weighing in on foreign policy, opined out of nowhere that George W. Bush had orchestrated the ouster of Haitian former president/Marxist dictator Jean-Bertrande Aristide. (Her father loyally backed her up, saying he’d heard the same thing from “a very close friend in Massachusetts who talked directly to people who have made that allegation.” Oh really? Only double hearsay, as The Free Republic noted.)
Vanessa, by the way, is in charge of the “youthquake” division of the Kerry campaign but so far hasn’t made much headway among the young. A Newsweek poll released yesterday showed Kerry in a statistical dead heat with Bush (45 percent to Bush’s 42 percent, within the margin of error) among voters aged 18 to 29, a sharp slide from Kerry’s 56 percent support from younger voters back in February. (The poll also showed a decline in support for Kerry among the electorate in general, where he’s leading Bush by only 45 to 44 percent, another statistical dead heat.)
Now comes Vanessa’s film-director older sister, 30-year-old Alexandra Kerry. Her contribution to her dad’s race seems to be…her breasts. On Sunday, Alexandra showed up for the premier of “Kill Bill 2” at the Cannes Film Festival in a translucent black evening dress that revealed just about everything, including the fact that Alexandra wasn’t wearing a brassiere. The festival people blame pesky camera flashbulbs for the resultant photos of Alexandra’s full mammary equipment, which you can see in this pic published by the uninhibited U.K. Sun–don’t look if you’ll be offended! A Sun caption quips: “Alexandra…showed at least two reasons why Americans should vote her dad into the White House in November.” Conservative talk-show hostess Laura Ingraham commented, “Could somebody buy the woman a bra?”
Naturally, the liberal media–the same folks who pooh-poohed us prudes for complaining about Janet Jackson’s breast exposure on family television–are brushing off Alexandra’s clear-shot couture as no big deal. Gossip columnist Richard Leiby of the Washington Post (whose photo editors have tastefully superimposed a black bar across the chest of the see-through dress) reports this today (scroll down):
“Former Washingtonian Karen Fawcett, who has lived in France 17 years and runs the Web site bonjourparis.com, also yawned at the hubbub. ‘The French would say c’est normale — it’s absolutely normal. No one would look twice. They are much more bothered by war than they are by somebody’s breasts.'”
Oh, mais oui! Zees American simplisme! These are the same people who are outraged that some renegade U.S. prison guards at Abu Graib offended the sensibilities of Islamic men by photographing them naked. But when Americans display the same modest sensibilities–why, we lack la sophistication!