Teresa Heinz Kerry is becoming the biggest spousal liability since Andrew Jackson was forced to take up his pistol to defend the honor of his beloved Rachel.
I’m told that ladies on New York’s Upper East Side are already sporting “Shove It” buttons, but beyond such precious precincts, where “being opinionated” is the great rallying cry, some of us are playing Washington’s latest parlor game: Imagining Te-RAY-sa getting out among The People, mingling in delicious and amusing situations in which she makes Marie Antoinette look like her French-speaking husband’s helpmate.
As with all great parlor games, reality is sometimes ahead of the, well, the game: Heinz Kerry wondering what le chili was in the Wendy’s, where she helped the Edwardses celebrate their faux anniversary (they later had a four-star meal), was the most recent proof of the wisdom Francois Scot Fitzgerald’s famous bon mot about the tres riches being different from vous et moi.
Inkwell invites reader participation–there’s no reason why a parlor game can’t be a cyber parlor game. Simply imagine situations in which it would be enjoyable to watch the irrepressible (irrepressible because, as Ronald Reagan once observed a different situation, she’s paid for this mike) heiress try to make emotional contact with the rest of us.
Baking pumpkin spice cookies, while surrounded by staff, that are so delicious that in a second Bake-Off she wins the Family Circle First Ladies cookie contest–and celebrates by making a speech? Being greeted by an official greeter at Wal-Mart who makes her furious by trying to sell Teresa an incomprehensible contraption he refers to as a vacuum cleaner? Shopping for John at K-Mart and finding that there is no section for Hermes ties? For added fillip, calculate the bounce (for the other team) that such encounters with The People will generate.
Where In the World Is Te-Ray-Se? is fun, and Inkwell detests being a spoilsport, here are some helpful links on why it might not be as funny if Teresa becomes First Lady:
1. She’s a phony who exaggerated her participation in the overthrow of apartheid. For this, read ‘the forgotten radical’ in Scotland on Sunday.
2. She might be fun for awhile, but ultimately she’ll bore us to death. Here’s a description, on the website Donkey Rising (by way of kausfiles), by a Democrat who watched the crowds melt away before the candidate (who is actually more boring but deserves a chance to make his case) got to speak:
“Teresa took all of the air out of the rally. People started to leave before Sen. Kerry finished. They had to go back to work, find water or start back to home through heavy traffic. We don’t need this. I expressed my feelings to the campaign thru Kerry’s blog, but I don’t have any hope that anyone will listen.”
3. She won’t release her tax returns, which might be her own business if her money had not, as this editorial from The Washington Times notes, kept her husband afloat.
4. She is “an elitist whose radical pet projects occasionally get off the leash.” One of her pet projects is Environmental Defense, Inc, which said that American arrogance was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.
5. She won’t pay additional taxes when they are raised on “the rich.” You might find, to your surprise, that you are suddenly rich enough to pay more–but Teresa, who has the best accountants money can buy, won’t.