irritated[For those interested, the original story can be found here.]
As I pretty much suspected, the outburst is a show of frustration against a local paper that's been giving her headaches over a long period of time and had little to do with the situation at that moment.
The second I read that she wasn't waving her arms at FoxNews or a "national" conservative talking head and instead had snapped at a representative of a local paper I figured this was the case. She probably even knows (or at least knows of) the owner. BtW, this would be normal when one party is the publisher of the local newsrag (Richard Mellon Scaife) and the other is a 'pillar of the community' with money and big-time political clout (Teresa Heinz Kerry).
While I'm hesitant to rely on the New York Observer as my sole source of information, the whole business from the get-go sounded like a snap of "that's enough!" from Teresa Heinz Kerry's side. It wouldn't shock me if there was enmity going back to when she was married to John Heinz or when she took over the Heinz Foundation because of her generally moderate-to-liberal stances.
The Kerry Election Committee has somewhat confirmed the New York Observer by stating that the incident has been blown out of proportion (I agree; this is getting more press than Cheney's "Fuck You" on the Senate floor, not that I thought Cheney's language deserved its 15 minutes of fame) and that it wasn't the first time Teresa had run-ins with the paper. As for JFK himself, it's been reported he doesn't think his wife said anything in appropriate.
So, we're probably talking about a situation where it was one barb too many and Teresa snapped. *shrug*
Anyway, the fact that this is STILL getting play in the press positively boggles the mind.
Let's not even talk about some of the headlines in the papers today. Did USA Today see the same convention session I did? What the hell was up with the front page? Ditto for the Boston Herald. And what's this that I hear? The networks didn't even carry the Dem Convention? Are you shitting me?
People in the local Dunkin' Donuts, aka, Church of the One True Donut (tm
nwhepcat were bitching that they have no idea what actually happened at the convention last night because every newspaper seems to be carry a radically different story and that none of the stories agree.I pointed out that you can watch for yourself by tuning in to C-SPAN and see it uninterrupted, no commentary, and on a live feed. Hell, don't wanna do that? Go to the C-Span web site and read the text of the speeches.
People looked at me like I was the crazy one.
Excuse me while I weep for the U.S. electorate now...
Anyways, I gotta pack tonight for
writercon, so I probably won't be posting anything until next week.Thanks everyone for letting me play reporter for these past couple of days. It's helped the jonesing a little.
Now I have to plot so I can be near a TV for the Kerry keynote on Thursday.
