Forget the Bush daughters: How cool was Amy Carter?

I think Vanessa Kerry's pretty great

Nice anecdotal story about Amy Carter -

Supposedly she had some difficulty coming up with a substantially sized essay for the question "What were the central causes of the Industrial Revolution?", and so she asked her father if he could help. The president sent out a request to some agency or another, expecting a brief response. The agency came back two weeks later with a 1100 page document.

haha

That story's a little too good to be true. It comes from a Washington Post article dated February 8, 1981 (though the net circulates a paraphrase of same, from Campus Life May '81). Trouble is, the Associated Press did a followup two days later, and found one big hole in it:

From AP, February 10, 1981:

The Labor Department says it has no record of spending what a published report described as up to "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to help Amy Carter do her homework while her father was president.

The Washington Post, in its "VIP" column, reported that an unnamed New York publisher had said Amy had a problem one unspecified Friday with a question on the Industrial Revolution and she went to her mother for help.

"Rosalynn Carter didn't understand the question, either, and told one of her aides to call the Labor Department for the answer," the article, printed in Sunday's editions, said.

Thinking the inquiry was a serious presidential request, the Post said, the Labor Department kept a computer team working overtime during the weekend and delivered a truckload of computer printouts to the White House.

"A horrified Rosalynn Carter was told the research 'had probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime,"' the newspaper said.

But a spokesman for the department said Monday that a search of its records had uncovered no such request or any record of such work being done by computers or the overtime to go with it.

Amy's paper, the Post said, earned her a "C."

Vanessa Kerry's for gay marriage, and openly disagrees with her dad, which is cool.
http://www.mtv.com/chooseorlose/features/vanessa_kerry_040104/

My favorite semi-related story (which isn't really about Amy, but it still good):

Amy was very involved with the anti-apartheid protest at Brown, too; while I don't think she got arrested there, the arrests that did happen got lots of press because of her presence. My friend Dana was also at Brown at the time, and also heavy into the anti-apartheid actions. Simultaneously, Brown was in the news because of a student prostitution ring that had just been discovered and broken up. So...one day Dana's mother is talking to a friend on the phone. Friend says: "Did you hear the news about all the arrests up at Brown?" Dana's mother (thinking, of course, the woman is talking about the protests) says" "Oh yes. Dana's mixed up in that. She got arrested herself recently." Friend: "Oh my God. How are you taking it?" Dana's mother: "We're quite proud of her, actually."

(I'm waiting for someone to bring up the suitcase story. It'll happen eventually, I'm afraid.)

Though that one, too, seems a little too great to be true:
http://ngro_obsrvr.tripod.com/articles/forcedexposure.html

From a Forced Exposure Interview with the Butthole Surfers, 1986 (excerpt):

FE: Is there any truth to the rumor that Amy Carter was one of your fans down there [in Georgia]?
KING: Yeah, She was a huge fan. We met her.
PAUL: Yeah. Jimmy as well. Jimmy and Rosalyn came to pick her up. It was a pretty touching experience. I didn't touch him, though. Gibby touched his penis to Amy Carter's suitcase which was, five minutes after that, touched by Jimmy Carter, so...
FE: Was she staying with the band?
PAUL: No. She was staying with this girl who invited us to her parents' house while her parents were out of town. Her brother was the boyfriend of Amy Carter at the time. She was staying at the house and they came to pick her up one time after a show. At four o'clock in the morning, believe it or not, Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter and secret service men pull into this driveway to pick up Amy. We had just gotten through smoking out on hash and we were all drinking beer. We were like trying to wave away this cloud of smoke and look at Jimmy who's looking back at us lookin' at him. As soon as Amy turned her back, Gibby jumped up and rubbed his dick all over her purse and suitcase.
KING: The President of the United States' finger was touching Gibby's pubic hairs. Amy was pretty cool. She walked into the room wearing a Psychedelic Furs t-shirt. [longest sustained general laughter of the night]
PAUL: We always wanted to do an interview with Amy Carter.
KING: Supposedly she really wanted to see the Psychedelic Furs when they played this free outdoor show in Rockin' Athens or somewhere, but it was too big of a security risk. so she saw the soundcheck and took off.
FE: So does she wander around now in a Buttholes shirt?
KING: I don't think she has one. But supposedly she was kind of upset that she didn't get introduced to us 'cause she knew who we were and had one of our records. She's really into the Meatmen.
FE: Tesco will dream of a video.
KING: But her freinds shoved her out of the house as we totally filled the place with hash smoke. The secret service was all arond and we put her in the garage to wait 'til her parents showed up.
FE: Where were you based in Georgia?
GIBBY: Winterville. It's right near Athens.

Not to mention completely incoherent...

My wife was a young animal activist. She wrote a letter to Amy Carter asking her to stop selling tuna sandwiches to White House visitors and Secret Service agents (something she was kinda famous for, I dunno), because the tuna nets caught dolphins also. Amy Carter read the letter and stopped with the tuna; I think she may have written back to my wife, too.

update: it was the press corps that AC sold sandwiches to, in 1976 down in Plains, GA. and yes, AC wrote back too.

haha, we lived in a duplex with Amy carter when I was a kid. her ironic 60s frames weirded me out for some reason. one time Jimmy carter came by and gave me and my brother cookies.

My wife was a young animal activist.
Puppy? Kitten? Cub? Awwwww.

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16800-2004Jul26.html

...And Alex Kerry's infamous voyage down the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in May came up. "Yeah, the dress was completely see-through. Not intentionally, mind you. I wore a very conservative dress that did not withstand the impact of 3,500 flashbulbs. . . . Because of the dark world of the Internet, I'm told there are now entire Web pages dedicated to my breasts. So that was cool," she quipped. "You gotta love the Internet."

Yeah, you do.

http://forum.offshoregamblersdigest.com/index.php?showtopic=18804&st=0&

In cool contrast:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Amy_Carter/

Hanna Rosin compares the Kerry/Edwards/Gore girls to Sleater-Kinney (!) and the SATC women and beats MoDo at the convention-analogy game.