ELECTION 2004
Day after reporter altercation, old words haunt Mrs. Kerry
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Posted: July 27, 2004
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
A day after Teresa Heinz Kerry told a hometown reporter to "shove it," some equally testy words from 29 years ago came back to haunt the would-be first lady.
The Boston Herald today published excerpts from a 1975 book about political wives in which she ripped the Democratic Party generally and the senior senator from Massachusetts – Ted Kennedy – specifically.
In the book, "The Power Lovers: An Intimiate Look at Politicians and Their Marriages," she decried the Democratic party's "putrid" politics and called Kennedy, with whom she will share the stage tonight a "perfect bastard."
"I know some couples who stay together only for politics,'' Heinz Kerry said at the time. "If Ted Kennedy holds on to that marriage (to ex-wife Joan) just for the Catholic vote, as some people say he does, then I think he's a perfect bastard.''
Heinz Kerry, then married to Republican Sen. H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania, said she "didn't trust'' President Richard M. Nixon but added, "Ted Kennedy I don't trust either.''
In a speech Sunday to her home-state delegates to the Democratic National Convention calling for the restoration of a more civil tone in American politics, she used the term "un-American" to describe the sometimes harsh rhetoric used.
Minutes later, when a journalist from a Pittsburgh paper asked her what she meant by the term "un-American," John Kerry's wife turned angry.
"I didn't say that," she said. "You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that."
Unfortunately for Mrs. Kerry, who sometimes goes by Mrs. Heinz, she did say it – very clearly in the speech recorded on videotape.
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian – and sometimes un-American – traits that are coming into some of our politics," she told her fellow Pennsylvanians at a reception at the Massachusetts Statehouse.
Minutes later, Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on exactly what she meant by the term "un-American." This confrontation, too, was videotaped by WTAE Channel 4 Action News in Pittsburgh.
Repeatedly she insists to McNickle that she did not use the term "un-American." McNickle calmly asks her to explain what she did say, but Mrs. Kerry refused – at one point telling the journalist to go listen to the tape.
After conferring with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others, Kerry then returned to confront McNickle.
"Are you from the Tribune-Review?" she asked.
"Yes," replies McNickle.
"I thought so," she said. "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
Related story:
Teresa calls for civility,
tells reporter to 'shove it'
