Teresa Heinz Kerry's bold normality (from a Pittsburgh columnist)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04270/384981.stm

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"When people get to see her close up, it's hard not to fall in love," Romash said. "The problem is that not enough people get to see her close up. The people in Pittsburgh have gotten to see her close up for a lot of years."

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There is, too, the fact that Heinz Kerry is great in normal settings with normal people. But she continues to act like an average person when thrust into very abnormal situations, such as rallies, conventions and photographer scrums.

Her most famous media treatment came during the Democratic National Convention, where Heinz Kerry encountered an unabashedly partisan editorial writer for a newspaper that has, in the past, red-baited her and more recently published a sloppily researched article alleging she funds radical groups. She told the man to "shove it." Impolitic? Yes. A woman on the verge of madness? Hardly. It's what any Pittsburgher would have told an avowed enemy.

In short, Teresa Heinz Kerry behaves normally in normal situations and normally in aberrant situations that call for stagecraft and phoniness. Consequently, she seems weird.