Reply #27: I think the whole thing bores her because she has other passions & [View All]

[Tinoire]

is really 100% her own woman. Read the whole thing. It's highly complimentary. Sounds like my kind of girl!

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Those who know her well say she is generous to a fault and, for someone who could easily have everything done for her, is well able to look after herself. 'She's a powerhouse in her own right, not just a plus-one,' says her god-daughter and Vogue magazine writer Jill Kargman. 'She has her own causes and, instead of just standing beside him, she can get up and captivate an audience as well as any politician. She doesn't have an agenda, or secret political aspirations of her own; she just truly wants to make the world a better place.'

In doing so, Mrs Heinz Kerry is not afraid to speak her mind. With the perspective of an admiring foreigner, she often speaks of the demise of America's reputation abroad. 'I understand why so many of our friends around the world are so mad at us,' she said at a recent event. 'We have let them down. In a democracy, the one thing that cannot be done is to destroy its trust, its hope, its idealism. This administration is the most cynical, the most venal, the most Machiavellian administration in my 32 years in Washington.'

At the start of John Kerry's campaign, Democratic strategists were not sure if Teresa Heinz Kerry would be an asset or a liability. Some predicted she would help soften the stiff and awkward public image her husband had acquired; others feared she would prove too contemporary and sophisticated, her Chanel heels too high to appeal to the stay-at-home wives of the Mid-West.

And there were incidents that alarmed her husband's handlers. Asked if he still had nightmares of combat, Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, said he hadn't. His wife said otherwise, and mimicked him having a flashback. 'Down, down, down!' she screamed. And there were minor breaches of Beltway etiquette. In an Elle magazine profile, she enthused about her Botox treatments, the benefits of green tea and her late husband, John Heinz III, to whom she was still referring as 'my husband'.

She was reported as fidgeting while Senator Kerry made speeches, of interrupting him, of failing to gaze at him adoringly in the accepted manner. On the subject of marital fidelity, she said: 'I used to say to my husband, my late husband, "If you ever get something, I'll maim you. I won't kill you. I'll maim you".' And asked whether she would take her husband's name, she shot back: 'Politically, it's going to be Teresa Heinz Kerry, but I don't give a shit, you know? There are other things to worry about.' And she added: 'Swearing is a good way to relieve tension'.

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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1130604,00.html