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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
From the start, it was a marriage brought to you by Aaron Spelling. People called them Cash and Kerry, implying that he had married her hoping that her $600 million would fund a presidential run. She can legally contribute only $2,000. Yes, the well-bred but threadbare New Englander did marry two Pennsylvania heiresses. But Teresa married two senators named John! There are a lot of heiresses out there; there are fewer senators named John.
Many have talked about how Teresa imperils Kerry's campaign; others suggest that she adds a bit of color to his drab plumage. Both schools of thought are wildly understated. Teresa Heinz is far and away the best reason to get up in the morning and pay attention to politics since the Watergate hearings. Should her husband lose his party's nomination, we can only hope that she will miss the memo and stay on the road herself. And you know, that's not such a stretch.
Teresa is a woman who told Elle reporter Lisa DePaulo that she didn't "give a shit" about whether people call her Heinz or Kerry, that she has gotten Botox, considered an abortion, took Prozac after her first husband's death, and that, "You've got three kids with somebody else, you've got to have a prenup." Heavy-lidded, with a fondness for deep-hued scarves, Teresa appears at campaign events and gives long-winded lectures on the benefits of green tea, rabbit meat as part of a healthy children's diet, and her husband's prostate. Last week she told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that her major complaints about George W. Bush are that he "is afraid to be Socratic" and that he came to the White House "with a lack of curiosity about the job." Heinz dresses in Chanel and sports a snazzy diamond crucifix. She is not a morning person. She is fluent in English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Italian. She knew Yitzhak Rabin. Her private plane is called the Flying Squirrel.
She has had a life laced with tragedy and politics: her aunt, sister and first husband were all killed in accidents. Only under pressure from journalists and her husband's campaign staff has she forced herself to refer to John Heinz as her "late" husband, rather than simply "my husband." Conversely, in an interview with the New Yorker's Joe Klein, she rather charmingly implied that Kerry had never been married before. Hey, it's a common mistake to make about a guy who has two daughters by another woman. Heinz changed her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat last year and funded the study of a proposed universal prescription-drug plan for Massachusetts' elderly. She lends the campaign a touch of magic realism, occasionally bringing down a crowd -- as she did at Kerry's Manhattan coming-out party at Cipriani's in March -- with a rambling, mournful speech about dictatorship and cancer, or in Iowa, where she mystically compared small Midwestern towns to African dorps.
"I just go out and do my own thing," Teresa recently told Ed Bradley on "60 Minutes." "Go out and get him all into trouble, that's what I do."
Like the best trouble-making divas -- Alexis Carrington, Margo Channing, Mame herself -- Teresa seems to aim her blows directly at her partner's cojones. She has a reputation for looking bored during her husband's speeches and occasionally interrupting them to make little corrections. While glaring at barking MSNBC interviewer Matthews last week as if she would have liked to club him, Teresa began a sentence by saying, "I don't want to give [John] more due than he deserves, but..." She told Ed Bradley that one of her jobs as first lady would be to keep Kerry humble.
But Teresa's effect on her husband doesn't seem to threaten him; in fact, some of her bluster may be rubbing off. After her bout of potty mouth in Elle, Kerry responded to Rolling Stone interviewer Will Dana by asking, "Did I expect George Bush to fuck up as badly as he did?" And whose breathy voice may or may not have whispered in Kerry's ear: "Just a little shot, just above the eyebrows. It won't hurt. And you won't look so worried all the time..." On "60 Minutes," the senator was asked how he felt about marrying into a half-billion-dollar fortune. "It's one of the reasons I was cautious," he replied, taking time to really consider the hardships of instant wealth, one arm around his wife. "But then emotions and feelings take precedence and you take what comes with it."
"Gimme a break, I came with it," interrupted Teresa, her giggle barely disguising the note of warning in her voice, "Come on!"
"No, I don't mean that, what I mean is, that's my point!" stuttered a flustered Kerry. It was a tiny, good-natured moment of discord, but distant enough from the canned claptrap spoon-fed to us by graspy-happy political couples that it shed light on the couple's snap. They are charged, intense and sexy; they have great chemistry.
And while that might be all we need to keep tuning in, there's more. Like the playboy stepson!
Chris Heinz is Teresa's youngest. A 30-year-old banker who recently quit his job to help with his stepfather's campaign, Chris was a bona fide celebutante long before his stepfather threw his hat in the ring. He was a Harvard MBA candidate with steamy good looks when he first hit gossip's upper echelons by dating Gwyneth Paltrow in 2000. Though the relationship didn't last, Chris never left the Page Six family. In March 2001 he was spotted at Asia De Cuba in L.A. "ferociously" making out with actor Tom Sizemore's ex-wife Maeve Quinlan. He was at the Hugo Boss House at 2001 Sundance with Paris Hilton and Stephen Baldwin; at the Russian Tea Room with socialite Elisabeth Keiselstein-Cord and DJ Samantha Ronson; at a Suite 16 party for publicist Lara Schriftman. It was reported that he lives in the same downtown Manhattan building as Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. At the December 2003 Miami birthday party of actor and producer Fisher Stevens, Chris hung out with Nicole Kidman and Lenny Kravitz. Tracked down at a Hamptons Kmart, he told a New York Post reporter, "It's sweet! Who knew there were so much oils and lubricants!" and this Christmas he was named one of "The Apple's Top Studs" by the paper.
An image on celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan's Web site shows Chris at a Bridget Hall party at Pop Burger, seated at a banquette next to actor Liev Schreiber. On Chris' lap sits a tan, trim woman whose face is not visible. Hey baby. You wanna come and see the Lincoln bedroom?
