Great article about strong women (LOTS of nice things said about Teresa Heinz Kerry!)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/04/30/notes043008.DTL


Laura Bush, docile doormat

Behold, the ideal Republican wife: Prim, sexless, nearly useless, lets the men do the real thinkin'. Hot!

I fondly recall, just before the tragic Bush/Kerry presidential election, an impassioned discussion I had with a family friend, a conservative Catholic mother of four and grandmother of six, headstrong, outspoken, hilarious, a real no-BS matriarch of her big crazy messy family and clearly the wearer of the pants in her marriage and a woman whom I always liked for her wit and her outsized personality, despite her unfortunate choice of religious and political affiliation, a woman who, it turned out in our discussion, absolutely hated — hated — John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Remember her? Controversial. Fiery. A little weird, prickly, unpredictable. Also: headstrong and outspoken and didn't take any crap from any men, no matter how powerful.

Heinz is also rather amazing, in terms of sheer accomplishment and self-made acumen: world traveled, highly educated, spoke multiple languages (she was an interpreter for the United Nations, early on), took over the philanthropic arm of the Heinz empire when her husband died unexpectedly, almost ran for senate, raised her enormously accomplished, well-adjusted sons to adulthood by herself, and so on. I thought she was great.

And my friend hated her. And why? Well, ironically enough, for most of the reasons I list above. Apparently, Heinz had too much personality. She was too strong, too in your face, too fearless and outspoken, something was "just not right about that woman." All this, of course, made Heinz into "a total bitch."

...

I was equal parts appalled and amused. And not only because my brash, blunt friend and Heinz obviously had far more in common, personality- and attitude- wise, than she cared to acknowledge. No, I was stunned because my friend far preferred, as the perfect counter to Heinz, as a role model and a woman and the ideal presidential wife, one tepid, timid, thoroughly useless Laura Bush.


A good read.

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