"Queer Eye for the Queer Guy"
Posted on 09/26/2004 1:51:45 PM PDT by quidnunc
New York – The jury was out for a while, but Teresa Heinz Kerry has been declared a resounding liability by women.
In a scathing attack, the feminist writer Naomi Wolf claims the exotic ketchup heiress is having an emasculating effect on John Kerry, her second husband. "Listen to what the Republicans are hitting Kerry with: Indecisive. Effete. French. They are all but calling this tall, accomplished war hero gay," she writes in New York magazine.
Wolf, who advised Al Gore on capturing the women's vote in 2000, blames Heinz Kerry for making the charge stick. "Let's start with Heinz. There is no genteel way to put it — she is publicly, subliminally, cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man — a dead Republican man at that."
Heinz Kerry's first husband, John Heinz III, was a senator whom she has called "the love of my life". He died in a plane crash in 1991, bequeathing his fortune to his widow.
"Her first husband was (as she herself is now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband," Wolf points out. "Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a colour that no woman wears in the heartland, and you have a recipe for just what Kerry is struggling with now."
Democrats are alarmed that Kerry has lost the advantage he enjoyed among women until recently. In the latest Fox News poll, Bush enjoys a two-point lead among women.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Should wives matter in a presidential campaign? Is it trivial to weigh Laura Bush’s gentle, Xanax-like demeanor, her faultless librarian’s poise and sincerity, against the imperious sexuality of Teresa Heinz Kerry? We often feel a twinge of guilt over our own fascination with presidential candidates’ wives — as if we are secretly reading the Star for our campaign information instead of the policy journals.
But the iconography that candidates’ wives create is important and a serious medium through which a modern candidate can send out his message. Heartbreakingly for Democrats, this is a lesson that the Republicans have learned to their vast advantage. By manipulating the images of the women around George W. Bush, including Laura herself, the Bush team has brilliantly eroded the traditional Democratic advantage among women.
What happened? Karen Hughes. The true genius behind the Bush success is not Karl Rove; she’s a suburban working mom in sensible shoes. It was clear from the start that Team Bush realized that the old, white, male face of the Republican Party was a recipe for losing those crucial suburban women in the swing states who are socially progressive and fiscally conservative. As long as the face of Republicanism was that of Newt Gingrich, ready to talk about women soldiers getting gynecological infections in foxholes, the GOP would face a Democratic hegemony, to paraphrase Rove, for the next twenty years.
So they devised a deliberate strategy that went unnoticed by Democratic strategists, most of whom are white guys over 50: to showcase a moderate, mainstream feminist makeover for the Bush brand. Everyone fell for it, including the press. Bush’s speeches are routinely cast before the eye, I am convinced, of Karen Hughes, who spins tax cuts as a boon to women entrepreneurs, like the one Laura Bush mentioned in her convention speech (Carmella Chaifos, “the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa”). The fallen heroes of Iraq are “moms and dads.” Afghanistan was the first time U.S. troops were deployed for a feminist goal, “so Afghan girls could go to school.”
Abortion is an issue not of Ms. Magazine–style fanaticism or suicidal Republican religious reaction, but a complex issue on which “good people can disagree.” (W. mimicked his father’s trick of catering to his religious base while leaking the fact that his wife is pro-choice.)
Look at the language. Starting in 2000, every Republican-male dinosaur on TV began to sound like Oprah. Suddenly they all used the words — sensitive, comfort (or comfortable), and appreciate. George Bush is “comfortable in his skin.” Laura Bush and her husband want to “comfort” the bereaved families of dead soldiers. Republicans would speak of Bush as “sensitive” to the complexity of issues and as being someone “appreciative” of working moms. It worked frighteningly well: The words “changed the tone” of Washington Republicans from that of the losing old boys’ club of 1992 and 1996.
A key tactic is wife deployment. Is Dick Cheney a scary, old-guard, male-dinosaur guy? Send out Lynne to talk about how he whips up brunch. Karl Rove makes eggs with bacon for Mary Matalin! Laura Bush speaks eloquently about the young George W. changing the twins’ diapers. Why worry about abortion rights when you have Alan Alda in the White House? The Bush team sends out brilliant imagery of women vis-à-vis the president: carefully staging scenes in which a seated W. is listening attentively to a standing Condoleezza Rice. That image counts far more than a thousand words by John Kerry about child care.
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(Naomi Wolf in New York Magazine, September 27, 2004)
To Read This Article Click Here
This is from New York Magazine, not The New Yorker. New York Magazine is not a prohibited site.
I guess she hasn't read my posts.
Any human being who has seen the Condi Death Stare would sit and listen attentively to anything she had to say.
Yikes!!
Gay? I would never stoop that low (wink, wink). Treasonous? Now there's a topic that has achieved traction with me.
LOL. Naomi Wolf thinks StingRAYza is sexy? Maybe Naomi's a masochistic lesbian. And StingRAYza is her sadistic "friend." Apply that to the StingRAYza/Johnkerry relationship and we are faced with a candidate for president who has dark subconscious masochistic tendencies.
All supposition of course, but something dark dwells in his soul, apparently, that causes what might have been an intelligent, able public servant to repeatedly shoot himself in the foot one toe at a time. Clintonesque, one might think.
Female trouble? That answers a lot of questions...
And Teresa's an ugly hag too.
She won't be getting anywhere near the White House.
"Queer Eye for the Queer Guy"
Beg pardon?
This from an uber-feminist like Naomi Wolf: equating such fundamental weaknesses of character as indecisiveness and effeteness with homosexuality? Gad, Kerry supporters really are losing their grip, aren't they?
gay or not. treasonous or not.
tereeza is a real, what we used to call "weenie shrinker."
fifteen minutes with that woman could make a man rethink his commitment to any sexual activity for months.
absolutely shrivelling.
Bet Kerry never has to take a "cold shower".
Being married to a hag like Tay-Rah-Zah can do that to a guy.
Can you not be short and a war hero? Or tall and gay? Naomi Wolf has slandered short war heroes and tall gay men everywhere.
I don't think Kerry is gay, but there is something about the dude...he's just not a regular guy. Despite, or maybe because of, all his football passing and wind-surfing and snowboarding, he comes across as a too-tall, skinny candy a$$.
I wonder what his bench press is. If he signs form 180, will we find out?
Which is what, some kind of dominatrix vibe? "Grovel, John. I said, GROVEL, slave!"
But there's also the fact that there is no affection between her and Lurch. It's pretty obvious that he married her for her money. I don't see the gigilo as a leader, no matter how many times he tells us that he's a war hero.
I'm not so sure of that. With his mannerisms and demeaner, I imagine more women than not think of him as a Gigo-no-go.
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