Likewise, Teresa Heinz Kerry isn’t a bit sorry she undermined the poetry of the speech she gave last night at the Democratic National Convention by earlier this week telling a Pittsburgh editorial-page editor to “shove it.’’ In fact, she used the same words Cheney had to justify his remark. She smilingly told CBS that she was right to be rude because the writer who had been questioning her “was trying to trap me with words I hadn’t said. I think that’s my right and I think you would do that, too, if someone attacked your integrity.''
This was the attack on Heinz Kerry’s integrity: “What did you mean by ‘un-American activities?’’’ the editor had asked. Unfortunately, Heinz Kerry had been speaking about raising the level of public discourse at the time. And what she had actually been decrying was that “sometimes un-American traits’’ were creeping into political life.
Activities, traits–a distinction without a difference, it would seem. But because Democrats have no Fox News anchors to chortle with–not that this is a bad thing–it was left to Hillary Clinton to defend John Kerry’s wife. “A lot of Americans are going to say, ‘Good for you’,’’ Senator Clinton said. “‘You go, girl’.’’
The editor Heinz Kerry sent packing works for a paper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, who is probably best known for spending millions on investigations into Bill Clinton’s private life. And Scaife’s paper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, does have a long history of provoking Heinz Kerry with scurrilous stories.
On July 11, the paper accused her of receiving an improper tax break on her family farm in Pennsylvania. (The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has since reported that in fact, Heinz Kerry had twice written the county about raising her assessment after it was incorrectly lowered.) Earlier this month, the Scaife paper suggested that Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, are socialists. This spring, it ran an editorial saying Kerry, a pro-choice Roman Catholic, was not fit to receive communion. Some years ago, it ran a nasty gossip item that Kerry’ had had “a very private tete-a-tete’’ with a woman already linked via the tabloids to Bill Clinton.
So, I’ll grant you, Heinz Kerry’s reaction was hardly out of the blue. But it was beneath her.
Was it beneath us, though? We live in a culture where rudeness is rewarded and civility is for chumps. Right, left and center, we’re all emulating what passes for political discourse on those “talk’’ shows where everybody screams and nobody listens. Thus First Daughter Jenna Bush marked her debut on the campaign trail last week by sticking her tongue out at the press. A column by conservative writer Ann Coulter, which was recently spiked by USA Today but can be read in its entirety on her Web site, notes that Coulter and her thin, pretty Republican girlfriends “stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no-makeup, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant, hippie-chick pie wagons they call “women’ at the Democratic National Convention.’’ One certainly hopes so, madam.
But then, the left seems just as inordinately self-congratulatory that in Michael Moore it has finally found a propagandist who can go toe-to-toe with Coulter. And this is progress for progressives?
Of course, as George W. Bush said so frequently during his campaign in 2000, the tone is set at the top, and I don’t remember hearing this president apologize for anything in the past three and a half years. John Kerry, for his part, seems to be following suit. If Kerry has any misgivings about, oh, say, authorizing the use of force in Iraq, he’s keeping it to himself, perhaps out of concern that a shocking admission like “I was wrong’’ would be viewed as another of his supposed flip-flops. And what really seems to have become un-American are those two little words: “I’m sorry’’ (Oh, for the more innocent days of such pro-forma nonapologies as “I’m sorry if you were offended by my utterly innocent remark….’’)
So, TV news shows are still gleefully rehashing Heinz Kerry’s rash comment, which she herself played up by joking in her convention speech that “by now, I hope it will come as no surprise that I have something to say.’’ This is especially unfortunate because, even after last night’s address, the public still does not know Heinz Kerry well. They may know about her lavish homes, but are less likely to have heard about all the good she’s done with her late husband Jack Heinz’s fortune, funding important research on women’s health, the environment and early childhood education. They don’t know that on the campaign trail, Heinz Kerry listens longer than anybody I’ve ever seen work a rope line to stories about people’s lives and problems. The “shove it’’ remark, though, has quickly become as well-known as the fact that she gets Botox injections. And for that, I for one am sorry.
I’m sorry, too, that we in the media didn’t give more attention to the humility and graciousness of Al Gore’s stand-up remarks on Monday last night. The delegates in Boston noticed, though. Matthew Schmidt of Preston, Iowa, who is attending his first political convention at age 19, said of Gore, “He’s still so inspired by the nation. He’s lost so much, but he cares more about what the people lost.''
And while I’m apologizing, I’m sorry that we have been so quick to poke fun at Gore’s unique predicament since his equally gracious concession speech four years ago. People have been known to crack up over less historic losses, after all. (Does he still wake up thinking, “If only I hadn’t told that story about my mother-in-law’s arthritic dog?’’ Or, “If only I had visited West Virginia before it was too late?’’ Or, as he joked last night, does he lie awake at night “counting and recounting sheep?’’) Yet, there he is, getting up every day and going to work and giving the passionate speeches for which he’s routinely mocked.
I personally have spent a few restless nights contemplating how quick we reporters were to deride as “desperate’’ Gore’s simple postelection claim that every vote in Florida should be counted. Hey, didn’t he know it had been announced on TELEVISION that Bush had already won the thing? (So it had to be right, right?) And didn’t he know we were all really tired and wanted to go on vacation? Really, the gall of the man….
So, Mr. Vice President, here’s the thing: I am sorry. I’m under no illusions, though, that I’m about to start a trend.
