Below is the Letter to the Editor that I wrote to the Manchester Union Leader regarding their mean-spirited article on John and Mary-Ann Knowles.

Dear Editor:

In an August 18, 2004 editorial, you paper stated that Senator John Kerry lied about the situation with John and Mary Ann Knowles. There is NO lie. I was there at the Manchester meeting last summer when John Kerry met John Knowles. You correctly state what I heard John Knowles tell Senator Kerry that day: Mary Ann chose to continue to work through most of her chemotherapy “because her husband (John) was out of a job… She and husband John did not want to take the pay cut that would have come with disability leave, so Mary Ann kept working.”. You quoted Senator Kerry as saying ” Mary Ann Knowles …had to keep working day after day … because she was terrified of losing her family’s health insurance”.

According to your editorial, Senator Kerry “lied” because he said that Mary Ann “had” to work. You point out that “She and husband John did not want to take the pay cut that would have come with disability leave, so Mary Ann kept working.”

I guess it comes down to how you define the word “had”. Could Mary Ann have actually taken disability leave and the consequent pay cut? I guess so but, since John had been laid off, the family would not have been able to pay other expenses, like a mortgage. I think that is a pretty good reason why Mary Ann felt she “had” to keep working and not take disability.

I do not detect any “lies” here by Senator Kerry or the Knowles family, just some insensitivity on the part of the Union Leader newspaper.

The following mean-spirited editorial was published in the Manchester Union Leader on August 19, 2004

Please read my Letter to the Editor in response.

August 19, 2004
Edition: State
Section: Opinion
Page: A18
Column: EDITORIAL

Mary Ann’s story; Will the big media call Kerry on his lie?

Article Text:

SEN. JOHN Kerry visits Derry today to talk about health care. While on the subject, maybe he can explain why he is lying about a New Hampshire woman’s insurance status.

Repeatedly throughout his campaign, Kerry has held up Hudson resident Mary Ann Knowles as an example of President Bush’s failure to ensure adequate health care for all Americans (as if a President can do such a thing). Here is what he said during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last month:

“What does it mean when Mary Ann Knowles, a woman with breast cancer I met in New Hampshire, had to keep working day after day right through her chemotherapy, no matter how sick she felt, because she was terrified of losing her family’s health insurance? America can do better. And help is on the way.”

Thing is, Mary Ann Knowles did not have to work through her chemotherapy to keep her health insurance. In fact, she has great health insurance, which includes 26 weeks of paid disability leave.

Knowles chose to work through most, but not all, of her chemotherapy because her husband was out of a job. (Kerry said she had to work “every day” of her chemotherapy. His campaign chalked that lie up to “a colloquialism.”)

She and husband John did not want to take the pay cut that would have come with disability leave, so Mary Ann kept working. But that is not how Kerry tells the story. He deliberately misstates her situation, saying she would have lost her health coverage if she took a single day off.

When President Bush was given incorrect information, then innocently repeated it, the national press had a field day. In attacking the President, Michael Moore said it mattered not whether Bush knew the information was false before he repeated it; what mattered was that he uttered something that was not true. Well, here we have Kerry knowingly telling a false story in hopes of scaring people into voting for him. Where is the outrage?

Copyright 2004 Union Leader Corp.
Record Number: 10499253C9C7AC5E