Sam, Sam, Sam. Maybe you ought to try eating the raisens too.
First off, there are no instances, yet, of Teresa’s daffier ideas (and this is the first I’ve heard of it) influencing White House business. Nancy would schedule trips and meetings on the basis of what her astrolger was telling her.
What made the Reagan presidency ridiculous was Reagan’s poor grip on reality. I mean, really, telling the Isreali Prime minister not once but twice that he helped liberate the concentration camps when, in fact, he never left California during the war? Kinda puts those raisens in perspective, doesn’t it?
By the way, regarding Teresa, I really like the bitch. She’s smart, funny and, for her age, a hottie. When I hit my sixties I want someone next to me who looks that good. We can have our own Botox and Viagra party.
Department of Wellness may be a silly name, but there’s nothing new-age about the concept AFAICT. Any good GP physician will tell you that preventative medicine combined with good nutrition, exercise, and community involvement will result in a healthier patient; that’s all that “wellness” means in the context of medicine.
I respect Heinz-Kerry a lot more as an intelligent woman who speaks her mind than I respected Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Not that Hillary isn’t an intelligent woman who speaks her mind – she certainly is that – but when she started with the crap about changing her hairstyle because it improved her poll numbers and pretending that she baked cookies on a regular basis, I thought it was a load of anti-feminist B.S.
Don’t get me wrong about the baking – I’m a feminist who bakes, and I’m damn proud both of my feminism and of my baking – but the whole point of feminism, to me, is so that women don’t have to try to be something they’re not. If you’re a good lawyer and you suck at baking cookies, then you should be able to do what you’re good at, and not have to apologize for it. And the whole flap about her hairstyle, and whether it’s appropriate for a First Lady to wear a pantsuit instead of showing her legs? Puh-leeeaze!
I think her effect is negligible. The mid-American folks likely to be put off by her a) Europeaness, b) hypenated last-nameness, and c) general loopiness are unlikely to vote for stodgy, east-coast blueblood, let’s-talk-'em-to-death Kerry anyway.
I, however, might, and hope that she can find something noble, distinguished, and most of all quiet to do for 4 years or so.
Would it be too much to ask to find a Pres/First Spouse & VP/2nd Spouse combo that dosen’t contain at least one dimwit/loudmouth/inarticulate boob?
Count me in as one with the “it doesn’t matter” crowd. Like others, I intensely disliked Tipper Gore, but she wasn’t a factor in my decision to vote for Al Gore.
I’m amazed at the number of bloggers and Republican columnists who are treating this as if it’s some bit of whackiness that Teresa Kerry has pulled out of thin air. I’ve got to wonder where they’ve been all these years.
This is a folk remedy that goes back decades, and for which there’s an enormous amount of anecdotal evidence (including my mother, who was a pretty hard-headed rationalist). As far as I can determine, however, there’s never been a good, controlled, double-blind study, so whether it really works, or whether the effect is purely that of a placebo, no one knows.
It’d be a tough one on which to do a study, of course. How do you give people “fake” gin-soaked raisins, especially when you don’t know whether it’s the gin that may be the active ingredient or the raisins (or something about the combination)? It would be difficult to filter out the placebo effect.
But it’s hardly “New Age!” At worst, it’s an “old wive’s tale,” and it certainly can’t hurt.
Heinz Kerry even admitted that the cookie recipe sent into the one magazine for the famous “First Lady Bake Off Contest” was sent in by a staff-she had nothing to do with it.
I think the difference between Hilary and Teresa is that Hilary, for all her accomplishments, comes off as very cold and aloof. Whereas Teresa is very fiery and open and doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks.
But then, she’s also lived in Pittsburgh for a long time. She’s typical of Pittsburgh women. Just look at Sophie Maslof!
Wow. I like Teresa Heinz Kerry (& don’t need a bunch of other names for people to know whom I mean).
I find Laura Bush to be an unpleasant-looking shellacked Southern woman of the sort I would happily never see again. She doesn’t even have a pretty accent, just some nasal twang.
I guess I like rich Latin/Pittsburgh women better than rich Texan women.
:smack: I should move to Pittsburgh. Or Portugal.
(Those who accuse me of pettiness should note the sexist drivel in the rest of the thread. If we’re talking about visceral responses, well, that’s mine.)
