Posted on 07/26/2004 10:38:42 AM PDT by Vision Thing
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended his outspoken wife Teresa Heinz Kerry on Monday after she bluntly told a reporter to "shove it."
"My wife speaks her mind appropriately," the Massachusetts senator said during a visit to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral where he promoted U.S. innovation and ingenuity.
At a reception on Sunday in Massachusetts, Heinz Kerry, a philanthropist and heir to the family food fortune, told Democratic Party delegates from her home state of Pennsylvania there needed to be a change in American politics.
"We have to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics," she said. Morning television shows broadcast the remarks.
When a reporter from a conservative Pennsylvania newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, pressed Heinz Kerry what she had meant by "un-American" she said repeatedly, "No, I didn't say that, I didn't say that."
She then turned away only to return moments later. "You said something I didn't say, now shove it," she said, pointing her finger at the reporter.
Asked about Heinz Kerry's comments, her spokeswoman Marla Romash said: "It was a moment of extreme frustration aimed at a right wing rag that has consistently and almost purposefully misrepresented the facts when reporting on Mrs. Heinz Kerry."
Kerry's 65-year-old second wife, the widow of the late Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania, has been criticized as a loose cannon but prefers to think of herself as a free spirit.
"I'm too old to be embarrassed," she told reporters during a conversation on her husband's campaign plane at the weekend as Kerry trekked across country to the Democratic convention in Boston where he will formally accept his party's nomination as President Bush's opponent in the Nov. 2 election.
Heinz Kerry, who will speak at the convention on Tuesday night, said she would talk for about 20 minutes, including applause, and that she had been practicing using a TelePrompTer for the first time. Kerry has read her speech.
She will allude to her background, the daughter of a doctor raised under a repressive dictatorship in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and schooled in racially segregated South Africa.
While Kerry's speeches have been generally upbeat and barely mentions Bush by name, Heinz Kerry has taken several sharp jabs at Bush, pointedly noting that "at least" her husband reads and comparing the election to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
This should tell the Conservative Press that if they push her she will become an embarrassment to KERRY CAMPAIGN, and wouldn't that be lovely. PLEASE let them know she needs some pressure by email. Always attack at the weakest link, and it looks like Teresa is it!!
It would have been better if it mentioned that her speech was on the topic of "civility."
Heinz has zero class.
This is just the latest of her sleaze production.
I recall how newsmax and others reported how she showed up at a moveon.idiot party and handed out buttons that read
'@$$es of Evil' and had pictures of US leaders on them.
This skank has even less class than Hitlery.
Just wondering...have any news channels talked about this?
Any Newspapers?
Or will it be covered up like every other thing that hurts the Commie/Edwards campaign.
Boy, the civility Heinz Kerry called for is coming fast and furious. Can we get a list of who is supposed to engage in the civility (obviously dems are not on that list) and who is to be treated with civility (obviously not anyone who disagrees with them)?
FYI.
No wonder ... look what happens when they try to clarify things. Given the fact that the audio proves without a shadow of doubt that TehRAYza is the one who misspoke, will either she or he apologise or correct their remarks? Yeah, right.
SHE LIED. Period
She definitely is the weakest link, but is it by accident or by her own design? My intuition tells me the latter. I don't think she wants her second choice of a husband to be president.
If you see the video (I saw it on another thread) from the local Pennsylvania station, they very clearly show that she made the statement. And I have now seen two occasions where her supporters claim the remarks were justified because the reporter was from a "right wing rag." So I guess the new rule is if you don't agree with the newspaper, you can say whatever you want? Too bad that rule wasn't around when President Bush made his comment about Clymer. Incidentally, the reporter, though persistent, was quite polite to her... he showed a lot more class than she did. She looked kind of unglued, if you ask me.
If other consquences weren't so scary, she would probably entertaining as First Lady. I wonder how many international incidents she could incite.
Well, Ter-A-Za just goes to validate the old saying that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
Will she also allude to her late Republican husband and her Republican ways BEFORE he died and she was snatched by John Gigolo Kerry?
I would like JF'nK to explain what Ms H-F'nK wanted the reporter to shove and exactly where he was to shove it! Of course, JF'n will probably respond with his canned response, "It's none of your F'n business!!!!"
Careful. Without doing it tactfully, it's very easy for it to be misconstrued as "attacking the woman".
Push this button too often and you'll get the "Kerry has to defend his wife like any dutiful husband..." stories.
Reuters and ABC may not want to show Teresa as a flip-flop artist.

Any chance this incident and the Kerry campaign's reference to a "right wing rag" can put to rest the dem facade of pretending to be centrist candidates this year? Or that just maybe the press would recognize an out and out attack on freedom of the press?
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