Press Action ::: Blaming America First, Part II

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Blaming America First, Part II

By Tracy McLellan

"Somewhere there are still peoples, but not where we live; here there are states. State? What is that? Well then, open your ears unto me now and I shall speak to you of the death of peoples. State is the name of the coldest of all cold monsters. And coldly it tells lies. Whatever it says it lies. Whatever it has it has stolen. It bites with false teeth and bites easily. Even its entrails are false. It vomits its bile and calls it a newspaper.”
-- Nietzsche

The May 3, 2004 Newsweek has a fawning cover story of John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. The article educates the citizenry to exactly nothing about the potential First Lady. Granting Newsweek‘s premise more than it deserves, Heinz is controversial enough to add zest to the campaign. Newsweek‘s tacit premise is that Heinz is a blue-blooded enough alternative to the current titleholder of presidential spouse to serve the capitalist masters.

Newsweek quotes Heinz: “I’m more old-fashioned than a lot of women. I don’t view abortion as just a nothing. It is stopping the process of life.” Nice to know a near-billionaire can relate with the vast majority who are struggling to feed existing mouths.

John Kerry is asked whether he worries that his wife “communicates a perhaps too-European brand of confidence at a time when he is being derided as ‘looking French.’” He responds: “I understand that [but] it’s not a place I want to go in this article, but I understand what you’re saying.” This despite the fact that there is nothing of substance in the article Heinz expresses that any other mega-millionaire wouldn’t feel confident expressing and having fawned over by an America that worships success.

I’m not sure what it is Kerry understands. But it is typical of him. As a candidate, a person, a politician and a philosopher he is a complete zero. He has no positions, thoughts or political planks that will do anything to solve massive problems, except those which he thinks will further his political ambitions.

“Of the whole idea that [Heinz] can be forthcoming to a fault, [Kerry] says, ‘People make a great mistake about that. She does believe in the truth about things that some people think are silly,’ like the fact that she gets Botox injections,” Newsweek says. This is the seventh time I’ve read this. Am I correct to understand Heinz thinks there is some kind of great truth in getting Botox injections? Newsweek quoting Kerry further: “But about the things that make a difference in life, she’s very grounded.”

She’s grounded all right. She probably uses 10-pound sacks of gold dust as topsoil in her vegetable garden. The Kerrys own, featured prominently in the article, five different houses from Idaho to the capital, valued from $3.9 to $9.1 million, along with a $35 million private Gulfstream jet and an $800,000 boat. Someone want to tell me where the justice is, let alone the equality and democracy, in a couple owning five multi-million dollar houses, while hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens are homeless and own nothing more than the filthy clothes on their backs?

Refusing to answer questions from reporters on her tax returns, Heinz says, “People don’t understand family trusts, [us common people are kind of dense that way] but I hate to put what’s my kids’ out there.” In other words my family’s filthy lucre are none of your business.

About her “venture philanthropist” organizations Heinz gives a couple of meaningless insights, which are treated with all the earth-shattering merit they warrant of the official organ of the cult of capital. She also offers a profound defense of Andy Warhol: “I don’t own a Warhol [what? $500 million and not a single Warhol?], but he was significant in that he represented his time and that 60s New York craziness, and also the technology of his time. In a sense Warhol became a kind of superrealist [!] of his time, and that he’s really real [as opposed to merely not fake] appeals to young people: you see, you look, you rebel, you move on.” If only the Founding Fathers had had such a profound grasp on that silly rebellion stuff.

Heinz lays the myth of the Demopublican duopoly to rest. A 33-year Republican, she registered as a Democrat just before her husband announced for president. As with all the rich, it’s principle over expediency every time. Jeff Lewis, a still-registered Republican and the longtime chief of staff of her “venture philanthropies,” tells Newsweek that Heinz “has brought her husband to a new appreciation of market-based solutions to public-policy problems. ‘Now you have a Democrat who really wants to use a business model to create change.’” Why haven’t we thought of this before? Bet the homeless begging change in the doorways on the streets of Chicago are going to be relieved.

Newsweek quoth Heinz: “Historically, the Democratic Party has not really partaken of what’s afforded in the marketplace ? John understands [this].” Says Newsweek: “[T]here you have it: Teresa Heinz Kerry, still real, and finally on message.” Translation: The organ of the cult of capital approves neo-Clintonesque economics.

Tracy McLellan can be contacted at tracymacl@yahoo.com.

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