by arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
august 4, 2004
The wife of the Democratic Party presidential candidate, Teresa Heinz Kerry, addressed a group of Pennsylvanians at a reception in Massachusetts the day before the Democratic Convention began in Boston. Heinz Kerry’s speech included the following,
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-american traits that are coming into some of our politics."
after she finished, Ms. Heinz Kerry was approached by Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. McNickle asked the candidate’s wife what she meant by "un-american". after repeatedly being asked the same question and after denying she said "un-american", Heinz Kerry told McNickle to "shove it".
a search of Lexis Nexis between the dates of July 25, the day of her speech and august 1, reveals 716 articles containing the phrases "Teresa Heinz Kerry" and "shove it". a random sampling of these articles proved interesting.
Many newspapers pointed out (although not enough of them to suit the New York Times) that the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review was a conservative newspaper that is owned by Richard Mellon Scaife, the founder of Hillary Clinton’s so-called "vast right wing conspiracy". By mentioning the billionaire financier, readers were left with the impression that the question that McNickle asked was inappropriate, not because of the question but because of who his employer is. This was the position taken by the Toronto Star’s Jennifer Wells. In a gushing piece on the Ketchup Queen, Wells wrote, "McNickle asked her what she meant by ‘un-american activity.’ When I heard the clip, the big, fat, face of Joe McCarthy went bobbling up in my head." aside from the fact that the Toronto Star journalist describes McCarthy’s face as big and fat", words that the politically correct Toronto daily would never use to describe non conservatives like Saddam Hussein or Yassir arafat, Wells shows no interest in what Heinz Kerry meant by "un-american".
Many of the reports on the Heinz Kerry/McNickle exchange never even bothered to say whether Heinz Kerry did in fact use the word "un-american" (she did). The fact that she gave a wrong answer, either because she was mistaken as to what was said or simply decided to lie, was treated by the mainline media as being of no importance. It was more important to defend Heinz Kerry by quoting such people as Senator Hillary Clinton who said, "a lot of americans will say, ‘Good for you! You go girl!’ and certainly that’s the way I feel about it." In their rush to show their idol’s wife giving it to an employee of a right wing rag, the media, with few exceptions didn’t report an explanation for Heinz-Kerry’s words--that she said "shove it" when she meant to say, "shove off". In the context of the exchange, saying "shove off" made more sense.
So what did Teresa Heinz Kerry mean when she used the term "un-american"? We will probably never know.
and no one other than Colin McNickle seems to care.