KETCHUP KVETCHER HEINZ RIPS PRESS & PREZ
Would-be First Lady Teresa Heinz Kerry, who recently told a reporter to “shove it,” says she bemoans the “sad” state of political reporting – even as she calls President Bush a liar and brands her own husband an “unseductive” politician.
Would-be first lady Teresa Heinz Kerry tells The New Yorker she’s disgusted by caricatures of her quirky – one reporter called it “bonkers” – personality.
“It’s sad that in America, people have to put up with that kind of [coverage],” she says. “It’s sadder still that people like it.”
If people like it, the irrepressible Heinz partly has herself to blame.
A few days before the Democratic convention, the wife of Sen. John Kerry told a reporter to “shove it” when he questioned her aggressively about a speech she had just given.
The exchange was captured on videotape, and then replayed endlessly by late-night comics and serious news anchors.
Heinz tends to make headlines whenever she gives a speech or an interview. In The New Yorker, she explains why she’s attracted to her husband – but ends up admitting that what she likes about him is the very thing that turns off voters.
“What I love about John is that he’s immensely curious,” Heinz says. “But as a politician, that makes him unseductive. He leads with his head.”
Elsewhere in Heinz’s wide-ranging indictment of American politics, the Mozambique-born ketchup heiress criticizes President Bush for calling for lower health-care costs for seniors even as the federal government announced that Medicare premiums would rise by 17 percent next year.
It’s the largest dollar-amount increase ever.
“I never thought there would be so many lies,” she says.
A White House spokeswoman blamed Congress for the Medicare hike – and singled out one member by name: “Congress voted for automatic increases in Medicare, and Sen. Kerry voted five different times for the increases,” said the spokeswoman, Suzy Defrancis.
Yet at the end of a hard day on the campaign trail, Heinz says she tries to remain Zen-like about life as the candidate’s wife.
“I don’t dwell [on negatives],” she says. “I dwell in a better house, a house of hope.”
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