While doing some research on the Republican attempt to “foreignize” John Kerry, I ran across an old Rush Limbaugh transcript (courtesy of So Far, So Left) that pointed me to the quote below; Rush actually managed to get the gist of the quote correct! This is from the Boston Herald‘s Joe Battenfield, on 23 April 2003, as reproduced in The Hotline newsletter from The National Journal Group (shout out to pay-as-you-go LexisNexis).
You’ve got to love Theresa Heinz Kerry for cutting right to the chase:
The New York Times also quoted an unnamed Bush adviser
handing Kerry “what is probably the ultimate postwar political
putdown”: “He looks French.” Kerry responded by saying: “It
means the White House has started the politics of personal
destruction.” He added: “It’s funny. I laughed about it.”
“Minutes after Kerry sped off” to a speech in NH, Teresa Heinz
Kerry compared the comment to an insult by “kids in the
playground.” Heinz Kerry: “They’ll probably say he’s French,
he’s Jewish … he’s a monkey. I just find it sad.” She added:
“They (WH officials) probably don’t even speak French”
(Battenfield, Boston Herald, 4/23). Asked if she thought “the
comment impugned her husband’s masculinity or patriotism,” Heinz
Kerry said: “They can’t take him on patriotism; that they can’t
do. And I guess if they want to call the French ‘not manly,’ I
don’t know, but they have to do with the French on that.”