Jay Homnick on MUTTERING TERESA
[Blog Only Version--it was too risque for the mainstream]
Not all reporters are soulless; President Bush famously observed that Adam Clymer of the New York Times has “a soulâ€ÂÂ. It seems fitting that in the midst of the murk of the campaign’s final days, we honor the person who best exemplifies that special spirit. So we award the First Quadrennial Adam Clymer award to Teresa Heinz Kerry for saying that Laura Bush has probably never held a real job. Although Ms. Kerry is eminently qualified to judge a real piece of work.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to see the claws in Kerry’s marriage contract. Still, she had qualities that led John to preen up and buy her dotty line. There is something about luxuriousness that brings out uxoriousness. And perhaps it was winning her presidents that emboldened him to seek the live presidency. We, on the other hand, look at her as a high-maintenance First Lady and would rather not give her access to our excess.
Yet despite ourselves, we are nostalgic for the Democrat First Ladies of yore, who brought acerbity, pungency and mordancy into their yeasty wing of the White House. These fluttery Republican sweeties like Laura Bush and these elegant Republican ladies like Nancy Reagan and Pat Nixon are quite lovely, of course, but they offer little in the way of red meat for rapacious political hyenas.
We yearn for a gawky wrong-headed arrogant meddler like Eleanor Roosevelt, traipsing around the world helping all the underprivileged masses until they beg for mercy. Where can we find a Rosalynn Carter, breathlessly paving that famous road with her good intentions, who bequeathed us this quote about the man who saved the American economy and won the Cold War: “He makes us comfortable with our prejudices� And how about that snide sneering vicious grasping wife that Clinton had, what was her name, Hilton or something?
Teresa would be a wonderful addition to that lineup. And she can insult us in various exotic languages. After four years of the degage Mizz Laura, perhaps it is time for the exigeante Madame Kerry. Instead of giving Laura the term again, we can take the termagant. We hear that those White House ushers have been getting lazy again since that Clinton woman – is it Heloise? – moved to New York someplace, Chappaquaddick or something.
But the thing that really boggles the mind and fogs the goggles is the startling colorblindness and tone-deafness exhibited by this charming haute-frau. Surely her first
lady-in-waiting should have explained things to the First-Lady-in-waiting. She should have told the bosslady that 99.9 percent of Americans who look at her and at Laura know who is more “real†in a flash. We may have had it up to here with the backyard barbecue story, but between the West Texas librarian and the Martinique socialite there ain’t a whole lot of gray area to anyone using their gray matter.
Still, she blithely dismisses Laura Bush as “out of touchâ€ÂÂ. If touch is anywhere sane, Laura Bush is in it with both feet. She may not play touch football skiing down the mountain, like such ordinary Americans as the Kennedys, and she’s not touched in the head, but otherwise she and George keep in touch. When we think “out of touchâ€ÂÂ, we think of that Clinton woman – Helene? Now Teresa herself seems to have lost, as it were, touch.
It must be hard keeping track of five homes but the biggest of all is her glass house, just a stone’s throw from the White House. And people who live in glass houses should get undressed in the basement. Or the old wheeze, “Physician, heal thyselfâ€ÂÂ. This from the Mishna: “Adorn yourself before you try to adorn othersâ€ÂÂ. From the Talmud: “Whoever accuses, accuses of his own flawâ€ÂÂ. Snapping at maids ain’t no real job, honey.
But perhaps we should be more charitable. After all, she may be a Democrat wife but she’s first a Republican widow. She was always dedicated to Senator Heinz. Why, even the morning of his plane crash, I saw her personally fixing the engine. (Just a joke, yikes, back off. You Secret Service guys are so jumpy since Al Qaeda tried to assassinate the President with a pretzel.) Valentino cuts her slacks; why can’t we cut her some slack, too?
So let us be charitable. Why should we tar her for feathering her bed? Let her live top-drawer, we will give her quarter. We need not sauté her with the Arabians. Such daintily pedicured feet were not made to be held to the fire. Besides, criticizing her lack of class will make us seem envious of her class. Let us put up with her and shut up. We will withdraw our anti-social Clymer Award.
Once and for all, we declare that she is out of the Bush League. In fact, like that Clinton woman (Hildegarde?), she is major league.
