{"id":7059,"date":"2004-07-08T00:16:11","date_gmt":"2004-07-08T00:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/point_the_finger.html"},"modified":"2004-07-08T00:16:11","modified_gmt":"2004-07-08T00:16:11","slug":"point_the_finger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/point_the_finger.html","title":{"rendered":"Point the Finger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Peggy Noonan is amusing on the Kerry-Edwards announcement<\/a><\/p>\n

I continue to wonder why an accomplished athlete like Mr. Kerry handles his body with such unease. He never seems to know what to do with his arms and hands. They fly away from him. His physical actions do not seem coordinated with his expression, with what his face is doing and his eyes are seeing. And so he has taken to pointing. When he goes on stage he looks out at the audience and then makes a face as if he’s surprised to see a friend standing over there to the right, and another over there to the left. He lurchily points at them with his long arm. Sometimes he gives them a thumbs up. Sometimes it ends with a finger flutter.<\/p>\n

He does this because Bill Clinton did it. Mr. Clinton did it because someone told him that pointing in a commanding way while the cameras click makes him look like a leader. It also makes him look as if he has friends in the audience. I used to go to Mr. Clinton speeches and watch him point. I’d swing my head around to see who he was pointing at. He was never pointing at anyone. No one knew who he was pointing at. They always thought it was the guy behind him or the girl over there. But they liked it. Anyway, the Point is a perfect Time\/Newsweek cover, and often has been. <\/p>\n

I remain impressed by Teresa Heinz Kerry’s palpable boredom and disinterest in playing the part of Mr. Kerry’s wife. Tuesday, when Mr. Kerry first came out and started to do the pointing-at-my-friends-in-the-crowd thing, he took her hand and whispered in her ear something like, “There’s Bob Smith.” Meaning, “I want you to look with me at Bob and smile.” She couldn’t hear him and shook her head, twice. Then finally when she heard him she smiled wanly as if to say, So what? She stifled a yawn on stage too. I love her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Peggy Noonan is amusing on the Kerry-Edwards announcement I continue to wonder why an accomplished athlete like Mr. Kerry handles his body with such unease. He never seems to know what to do with his arms and hands. They fly away from him. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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