Earl Appleby discusses Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s recent profile in the New Yorker and her penchant for speaking her mind and thus sounding like a modern-day Marie Antoinette (or the caricature of her preserved by history). From the story:
Despite her linguistic prowess and her worldliness, Heinz Kerry has, at times, a deaf ear for the nuances of slang, code, condescension, and vulgarity in Englishcribe some of her detractors.
Or saying that those sending relief supplies to Caribbean nations hit hard by hurricanes to “let them run naked” for a while until after the most necessary supplies of food and water are there. It’s not that what she says is necessarily wrong, it’s how she says it. “Let them run naked” evokes images of dark-skinned people as uncivilized savages. That may not be how she meant it, but it’s how she sounded.
The funny thing is that the more I hear her speak, the more she reminds me of Mrs. Howell on “Gilligan’s Island.” Mrs. H was always making suggestions and statements that showed her to be completely out of touch with the reality of the average person. And John Kerry has even admitted that he calls Ter-AY-za by a pet nickname: “Lovey.” They just satirize themselves.
