Chelsea Clinton the mannequin; serial jerk Bob Kerry

My comments are below the story
_________________________
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071231/D8TS58V00.html
Chelsea Clinton Guards Her Words
Dec. 30, 2007
By Beth Fouhy, Associated Press

VINTON, Iowa (AP) - It's one thing for Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign to turn down interview requests for the candidate's daughter, Chelsea. But can't a 9-year-old reporter catch a break?

Sydney Rieckhoff, a Cedar Rapids fourth grader and "kid reporter" for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls as they've campaigned across Iowa this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event Sunday, she got a different response.

"Do you think your dad would be a good 'first man' in the White House?" Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.

Such is the paradox of Chelsea as she campaigns across Iowa in the closing days before the state's caucuses Jan. 3.

Tall and attractive, Chelsea cuts an impressive figure on the campaign trail; she plunges enthusiastically into the crowd after her mother's speeches, shaking hands and posing for pictures while asking, "Are you going to caucus for my mom?"

But onstage, Chelsea never speaks; she stands next to her mother and applauds but utters not a single sentence and doesn't even say hello. And reporters covering the campaign have been put on notice that Chelsea is not available to speak to them. An aide follows the former first daughter as she works the crowd, shushing reporters who approach her and try to ask any questions.

Famously protective of their daughter's privacy, Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken pains to shield Chelsea from the harsh glare and rough edges of presidential politics. She stayed largely absent from her mother's campaign until December, when she made her first visit to Iowa.

For her part, Sydney looked a bit crestfallen after Chelsea turned her away. But luckily for Hillary Clinton, Sydney's mother has made up her mind to caucus for the former first lady.

"I like her position on family values and health care. And I think it's time we have a female president," Robyn Rieckhoff said.
_________________________
For more on the topic of Chelsea as a mannequin, see this Associated Press story from May 14th, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18654658/ , which compares Chelsea's experience in Washington to Patti Reagan Davis, titled Chelsea Clinton weighs role in mom’s bid, Could become the first first daughter to do it all over again.
_________________________
Letters, we get letters...

Dear SouthBeachHoosier:

We love it when women are seen but not heard, and used mostly as props for whatever political or social purpose suits us at the moment, including death by stoning for fraternizing with men outside her family, or whippings for being gang-raped.

Sort of like how we often score political points at home and abroad by tweaking President Bush and Secretary Rice and the U.S., by asking for Bill Richardson to deal with some problem that, if it even involves the U.S. in the first place, is more properly the domain of the U.S. State Dept., since that's their actual job, and they are, after all, overseen by an elected U.S. Congress, while Richardson is not. We love the free lancer!


Meanwhile, we do nothing but complain about U.S. 'meddling' from the sidelines, as we do in Darfur, as we allow thousands of innocent people to be killed because it suits our larger political purposes and goals, and their religion is the wrong one.

Love,
The Middle East, Islamic parts of Africa and Asia and parts of macho South America not named Chile.
________________________
As to the AP story, here's what nobody wants to say out loud but knows is true: the fundamental differences b/w Chelsea Clinton and Patti Reagan were that Patti was actually quite interesting; from California not Arkansas; had lots of friends back home and because she was older and independent, didn't have to always be in D.C, and play the dutiful daughter card; wasn't forced to play the role of a young scholar.

(Or, have a mother like Hillary that talks piously in public about the benefits of public education, perhaps to appease the NEA and AFT -and the powerful education lobby, largely unregistered, that so many of my frieneds belonged to- but when push came to shove, enrolls her own daughter in a prestigious private high school like Sidwell Friends, a school that I used to live only a few blocks from, and would occasionally watch their field hockey or soccer games; just be honest and say it's for security purposes and nobody would argue the point);

Patti was cute and crazy mischievous; more importantly, she was always up to something that would make for good copy, especially if it would somehow allow the press to highlight the differences between what her father said and meant, and what Patti actually did.

In the comparison, Chelsea Clinton, while likely a perfectly nice and relatively normal person, honorable considering what she's been thru, is, frankly, a bore.
Even now, all these years later, nobody can remember a single memorable quote of hers, much less, have any audio or video of a single interesting thing she's ever uttered about anything.
If she had, we'd all know it, thru its sheer repititious airing since 1992.

But friends of mine and people I know in Washington, D.C. who are still very connected to the political and media fray in D.C. STILL remember Senator Bob Kerry's cruel joke about Chelsea, which is ironic now, given that Kerry's a Hillary supporter, and only too willing to help malign Obama, like Gov. Jean Shaheen's husband, Bill, thru calculated false charges.

(See Shaheen's mea culpa at:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2007/12/obamas_nh_leade.html
and http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/13/clinton_apologizes_to_obama_fo_1.html )


Whether it's done to perhaps further Kerry's career in a possible Hillary administration, after his very mixed-record at The New School comes to its end, or just because he doesn't like Obama's lack of experience, should hardly matter.
He still said it.


You have to wonder, at what point does the national media take away Kerry's perpetual 'hall pass,' and start asking the question of why having the support of a serial jerk like Kerry is such a bonus for Hillary & Co.?
The guy whose own family restaurant business ran afoul of many state business wage regs?

Frankly, his dating actress Debra Winger -a SouthBeachHoosier favorite- while Nebraska's governor was about the only interesting thing about him. Let me paraphrase some comments of a friend of mine who was a veteran staffer for a Nebraska congressman.

Kerry's Vietnam experience and the attention he received for the Winger thing gave him lots of traction in Washington at first. But he fundamentally misread it.
He started believing he really was that fascinating, and started believing what he was saying, and both bore little truth to the reality.


Once it dawned on Kerry in Washington that he was just one vote in a hundred, and that he no longer held sway over a semi-cowed regional press, his ego got out of control.
He became eager to tell others, esp. reporters, how truly exceptional he was, what a statesman he'd be when the time came... blah, blah.


You don't have to take my word for it, but a Republican congressman most of you have never heard of named Doug Bereutter, had much more influence over the intersection of U.S. agriculture and foreign policy than Kerry had.
That's what Nebraska cares about because farm exports are what pays the bills.
It's as simple as that.
That's why even conservative Republicans from there want to lift the trade embrago with Cuba.
I saw Bereutter in action dozens and dozens of times in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, under both Chairman Dante Fascell of Miami, whose picnics I often attended, and later, Hoosier Lee Hamilton, before the GOP took over after the 1994 congressional election, which sent real shock waves thru my circle of friends, since a few lost their jobs at the committse as a result of the switch.
(As you may've already guessed, given my background and the subjects of this blog, I lived in both of their congressional districts over the years. More on these great men in a future post.)

While I often disagreed with Bereutter's particular ideas or proposals, they were always tethered to the reality of his state's economic future and some commonly accepted facts.
Eventually, Bereutter became Chairman of the re-named House Committee on International Relations. Honestly, did you ever see him on Meet the Press?

(See my earlier mention of Bereutter in a from April on the Washington Post's anti-Putin editorial:
http://southbeachhoosier.blogspot.com/2007/04/wash-post-editorial-aims-right-at-putin.html )

Kerry on the other hand was a guy who really loved seeing his reflection in a camera lens, whether TV or newspaper. This banner was later grabbed by yet another Nebraska egomaniac who wanted to be recognized as a brilliant and thoughtful statesman, Chuck Hagel.

(See Kerry's apologia: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/kerrey-apologizes-to-obama/ and http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/12/16/kerrey_for_clinton.html )

Sad but true: Chelsea is a cipher.

Also, if you didn't know, I believe it was the Washington Post that once wrote in quite laudatory fashion about a bill in Congress that Chelsea's current boyfriend's mother, Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky -who was also a very popular TV reporter in Philly before she was elected to the 103rd Congress- voted for to support President Clinton, but which most observers said would all but ensure her re-election defeat in '94.
It did.