ALLEGATIONS ABOUT KERRY AND INTERN CREATE MEDIA FRENZY

Times Herald ^ | 02/13/2004 | BETSY GILLILAND

[new cruelty]

"This is more excitement than we're ever used to having," she said.

Calabrese was scanning the crowd of 20 or so media members that had gathered on Madeline Drive outside the home of her neighbors.

Local print and television media, a CNN camera crew, an NBC crew, a New York Times reporter and two reporters that are employed by an agency that works for The (London) Sun had staked out the house.

Calabrese seemed more fascinated with the media attention than with the possibility that the family's daughter reportedly had a relationship with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

"The story here is the story behind the story," said Calabrese, who has lived in the neighborhood outside of Malvern for 11 years.

She said she had received telephone calls from reporters at the Los Angeles Times and a Washington, D.C. paper - she could not recall the name - the night before.

East Whiteland Police Sgt. James Smith sat in a police vehicle, along with a line of cars and vans, across the street from the pale green and stone ranch house. Later in the afternoon, two East Whiteland patrol cars also circled the neighborhood.

Smith said he was there to make sure the media behaved. "We're just monitoring the situation," he said. A story broke Thursday on an Internet site that the Massachusetts senator may have had a two-year relationship with a 24-year-old East Whiteland woman. The Democratic front-runner made his campaign rounds Friday while repeatedly denying having had an extramarital affair.

"I just deny it categorically. It's rumor. It's untrue. And that's the last time I intend to (respond to questions about it)," he told reporters who asked about reports on an Internet site, reported the Associated Press.

Several Internet sites of mainstream American newspapers posted stories about the allegations.

According to The Sun, there is no evidence of an affair between the two.

However, The Sun reported, the woman's parents said Kerry invited their daughter to Washington and asked her to work for his re-election campaign two or three years ago. She declined, they said.

According to The Sun, the young woman is a journalist who is currently in Kenya.

At least one member of the East Whiteland household was at home Friday.

A young man driving a burgundy Nissan Sentra pulled into the driveway of the home mid-afternoon.

"Would you please get off my property?" he asked reporters, who continued to stand on the street, as he unlocked the front door of the home. "Thank you."

He later came out to retrieve the mail from the roadside mailbox, and the crowd of reporters surged forward.

"I'm not saying anything," he said, looking over his shoulder. "Have a good day, guys."

Missy Keehn Ritti of Pottstown, a former intern for Kerry, was skeptical of the allegations.

"Obviously, it is impossible for me to say," she said in a telephone interview. She is a former Daily Local News reporter.

However, she said, during her tenure in Kerry's office, he acted professionally and gave no indication that he would become involved in an extra-marital affair.

Kerry has been married to Teresa Heinz, widow of Pennsylvania GOP Sen. John Heinz, since 1995. He divorced his first wife in 1988.

Jessica M. McRorie, a reporter for the Daily Local News in West Chester, interned with the East Whiteland woman at ABC News in Manhattan in 2001.

She also questioned the reports.

"When I heard the news . . . I kind of laughed to myself because I know this person," she said. "And it just doesn't seem logical.

"But then my immediate reaction after that was how hard it must be for her now . . . to just try to keep sane because there's going to be a media circus in this because John Kerry's big in the news."

In the more than two years since she has known her, McRorie said she never heard her friend mention Kerry. "As a member of the media, I know we jump on certain topics," she said. "And this really hits home." McRorie, who still keeps in touch with her friend, heard from her about six months ago.

"The last time I talked to her she'd sent me an e-mail from Israel where she was honeymooning," she said. McRorie said her friend is a hard worker. She is a former Associated Press reporter who put in long hours as a reporter, McRorie said.

"She's one of the brightest and strongest people I know," said McRorie. "And I'd hate to see this happen to someone if it turned out not to be true." Adam Cirucci contributed to this story.

[ClearCase_guy]

You are right.

I think Kerry lied when he said he didn't get botox treatments.
I know Kerry lied when he said he never heard of botox (his wife has used it).
I think Kerry is lying about the intern.
Kerry always seems to be on both sides of every issue (so he's lying half the time).

It's a bad pattern. The man is just like Clinton (but less charming).

[hosepipe]

[ If we let Kerry off the hook on this, the media will give him a pass on everything. ]

"WE" are a very small niche'.. more important the high ground, because FR is the high ground... Minutia is for the kids.. let others do the nit picking

[hershey]

If we had an honest press, they'd detail Kerry's switcheroo behavior back twenty years and more...when he carpetbagged all over MA, looking for an open seat to run for congress. He moved five times that year...and when that all came out in the papers, he lost. The country has a right to see Kerry for what he is, the entire package, lies and all. As for his chasing women, especially rich ones, in the old days they'd have called him an unprincipled scoundrel and ridden him out of town on a rail. Clark's fawning all over him today was ridiculous. One of the TV liberal talking heads snickered when asked if Clark had done it in exchange for getting the vp spot --"Let's just say he thinks he made the short list." Imagine Kerry and Clark as a package deal-- is your skin crawling yet?

[RandyRep]

Yep, a frenzy, but do they have the right woman?

If the supposed affair lasted two years, and was ended during 1993, which is what is alleged as I've heard it, then this can't be the same woman that the Gore campaign (Chris Lehane) thought he was involved with before or during the 2000 campaign. The common thread here is Lehane - he worked for Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Clark.

Perhaps the Dems are being really clever here -- trolling the Alexandra Polier name and story through the weeds to get all of the vast right wing conspiracy to bite at it, and then show that the Kerry-Alexandra relationship was innocent. It would inoculate Kerry against another charge - been there, done that, nothing to it.

Just my two cents...

[kcvl]

It was given to the media by Chris Lehane according to Pat Cadell, Democratic consultant, on O'Reilly tonight. He also said that Lehane gave LISA MEYERS a story that she NEVER even checked out and ran with it. I can't remember what they story was about but it was a "RUMOR".

[optimistically_conservative]

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

This shut out by the American leftist news media is very telling...

Kinda Clintonian.

[lilylangtree]

Did I miss something here? There has been actual noticeable lack of reporting on the subject.

[hershey]

Who else is going to detail Kerry's 'missteps' if not us? And I don't just mean whatever poor woman he's been chasing, it's his 82 percent absentee voting record, the flip flops when he did bother to show up and vote, the carpetbagging, the lies. The total self absorption. Forget the Yale degree, the tailormade duds, the Louisburg Sq. address, he's your loser of a brother-in-law who shows up on your doorstep to borrow money all the time. Never worked a day in his life and sure as hell isn't planning to start now. He'll sell us down the river as fast as he can come up with some Cayman Island bank address so he'll finally have some millions to call his own. The Euroweenies, the Left Coast intelligentsia, the Cambridge elite, they'll fall all over themselves to get him elected. Like Matt Lauer, going to Moscow and sneering at how slowly things were improving (well, it must be Bush's fault...you were so much better off with the gulags), the Euroweenies, Left Coast liberals hate sharing the country with the rest of us. When they talk about 'flyover country', it isn't just geographical. They mean us. They want a society where they're annointed as the 'big thinkers' and run everything. We're the peons who need to be put in our place...way at the back of the bus. And if you listen to the latest blather coming out of Euroland, they're sound like they're all joined at the hip. They'd run the world because they're smarter, more cultured, classier...while we're to provide the dumb muscle when needed to keep the lower orders in check. Kerry's already making stump speeches bragging about handing the keys to the country to the UN the minute he steps into the oval office. I only hope if he is the RATS' nominee, that Bush hammers him in each and every debate, and that Rove's ads expose Kerry for what he is. Lastly, we aren't a small niche. We're part of the VRWC, and Hitlery and the rest of the RATS don't take us lightly. On a hopeful note, I believe the country is sick of Clintonlike parsing, the constant lies. Look at the Superbowl fiasco a few weeks ago. That half time show was a direct result of the vulgarization of our culture. When congress was deciding what to do about Clinton's impeachment, I argued at work that this was important...and some said, oh, it's just sex. What goes on between two people in a bedroom, or just off the oval office is private. Well, they're not saying that now. Here in MA., we're faced with the gay marriage mess, MTV's influence, and suddenly people at work are saying that Clinton had a bad influence on their children. They had to explain oral sex to grammar school kids and they didn't like it. They woke up to the fact that Clinton had the chance to grab bin Laden and turned it down. They blame him for 9/11 and its aftermath, dirty bombs and anthrax fears. It's as if you start pulling a loose string from a sweater, and the whole thing unravels. Our job is to pull that loose string.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

The media would be covering this, but they have too many reporters assigned to the GW 1960's AWOL story. Sorry.

[Salvation]

Come on Kerry, tell us.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

It's a bad pattern. The man is just like Clinton (but less charming).

Men without a moral compass are all the same, but to varying angles and degrees. Kerry is every bit as duplicitous as Clinton, although apparently not as "smart". This charlatan CANNOT be elected President. Whatever our differnces, we must back GW.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

The media wants "their guy" to win, pure and simple. That means a Democrat -- any Democrat who has a chance.

[Just mythoughts]

Sure hope some of the locals will ask these media whores if they have gotten JFKerry's military records yet!

[Richard Kimball]

Proof of Kerry cheating:

[Julliardsux]

Keep your eyes glued to a female staffer of Kerry to the Senate Finance committee, rather than Polier.

[jim35]

Bravo!!! Your post is just brilliant, I am so impressed!

[Beck_isright]

Frenzy? It appears that if Kerry made porn videos and attended conventions with Ron Jeremy that the media would just call them "rumors" still.

[unienglish26]

It also hasn't been reported on Fox News.