Heinz means no women's vote for Kerry
Sarah Baxter, New York
September 27, 2004
THE jury was out for a while, but Teresa Heinz Kerry has been declared a resounding liability by women.

In a scathing attack, the feminist writer Naomi Wolf claims the exotic ketchup heiress is having an emasculating effect on John Kerry, her second husband. "Listen to what the Republicans are hitting Kerry with: Indecisive. Effete. French. They are all but calling this tall, accomplished war hero gay," she writes in New York magazine.

Wolf, who advised Al Gore on capturing the women's vote in 2000, blames Heinz Kerry for making the charge stick. "Let's start with Heinz. There is no genteel way to put it – she is publicly, subliminally, cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man – a dead Republican man at that."

Heinz Kerry's first husband, John Heinz III, was a senator whom she has called "the love of my life". He died in a plane crash in 1991, bequeathing his fortune to his widow.

"Her first husband was (as she herself is now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband," Wolf points out. "Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a colour that no woman wears in the heartland, and you have a recipe for just what Kerry is struggling with now."

Democrats are alarmed that Kerry has lost the advantage he enjoyed among women until recently. In the latest Fox News poll, Bush enjoys a two-point lead among women.

That narrow gap represents a potentially costly reversal in the Democrats' fortunes. In the 2000 election, Gore won 54 per cent of the women's vote to Bush's 43 per cent and still failed to win the White House.

Wolf memorably advised the Democrat candidate to act like an alpha male. In her current critique she returns to the theme, arguing that "presidents are archetypes of male potency".

At the Democrat convention, she writes, "Teresa Heinz Kerry's speech, which all but ignored her husband, did more to emasculate him than the opposition ever could".

In contrast, Laura Bush's depiction of her husband "wrestling" with issues of war and peace enhanced the President's potency.

Heinz Kerry has been struggling to gain the affections of the public ever since she told a reporter to "shove it". When an Arizona newspaper put it to her last week that the state was slipping from her husband's reach, she replied: "Who cares?"

She also said she "wouldn't be surprised" if Osama bin Laden were captured next month, joining the conspiracy mongers who believe the President is harbouring al-Qa'ida's leader and will spring an "October surprise".

There was no mention that his capture would be a great coup for America.

---------------------------------------

"Who cares" if Kerry loses Arizona???+

Emasculated by a ketchup heiress..

How embarrassing!