Inkwell will never get over the image of presidential candidate John Kerry using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as he tried to revive the family hamster. Hammie had just fallen into the watery deep at a marina, and Kerry had dived in to save him. (Did Hammie’s gaping absence from the line-up on the stage last night mean that, unlike the ubiquitous Mr. Rassman, whom Kerry fished from the waters of Vietnam, Mr. Hammie didn’t make it?)
This was the best image of a loving father daughter Alexandra, a documentary producer, could produce?
Aren’t there some less outr’ images? Tucking the girls in bed at night, telling them Swift boat stories, or showing up for a school play? I think Alexandra went overboard, so to speak, with the hamster story.
As Lucianne of Lucianne.com quipped: “Anybody notice how uncomfortable Teddy looked?”
Though Realclearpolitics, one of the best things on the internet, opined that the two Kerry daughters “did a wonderful job of opening an attractive, empathetic window through which people could view their father,” I found the hammie story just plain…weird.
I also loved Vanessa Kerry’s example of what a risk taker her father is — when she she half-muttered “our house,” out of the side of her mouth. This was a reference to Kerry’s taking out a loan on his Beacon Hill house (it was part of his wife’s immense dowry) to finance his campaign when it was at a low point. Somehow, loan or no, I don’t think Teresa would let him end up sleeping in his car.
Thursday night wasn’t the first time the girls have hammed it up for Dad — Vanessa grabbed headlines a few months back by charging that George W. Bush was behind the ouster of Haiti’s would be president-for-life, everybody’s favorite Catholic priest turned Marxist “leader,” Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Alexandra burst on the scene when she showed up at a screening of “Kill Bill 2” at the Cannes film festival clad, as The Other Charlotte put it at the time, in a “translucent black evening dress that revealed just abut everything, including the fact that Alexandra wasn’t wearing a brassiere.”
If Kerry becomes president, we’d better prepare ourselves for the strangest trio of dames since well, let’s just say strange and leave it at that.
I happen to like Teresa, but I think her self-involvement, tendency to embrace odd notions, and peevishness (see her disavowal of the pumpkin spice cookies she did or didn’t submit to the Family Circle magazine First Lady Cookie Bake Off) might not wear well.
The campaign seems to realize it has a Teresa Problem and has decided to just embrace the petulant heiress’s bluntness head-on — that was what Kerry meant last night when he said, “And what can I say about Teresa? She has the strongest moral compass of anyone I know. She’s down to earth, nurturing, courageous, wise and smart. She speaks her mind and she speaks the truth, and I love her for that, too. And that’s why America will embrace her as the next First Lady of the United States.”
Translation: There’s not a damned thing I can do about her.
In terms of the election, it doesn’t matter a whit what the Kerry women are like, and, as a staunch defender of Marie “Let Them Eat Pumpkin Spice Cookies” Antoinette, Inkwell defends their right to be just as exotic as they care to be.
Still, if he’s elected, I think they’ll cause a lot of double, double, toil and trouble.