Thirty-four days after Senator John Kerry's defeat in the November 2 presidential election, nationally syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell labeled Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, “rich white trash.”

From Sowell's December 6 column, titled “Random thoughts”:

Anyone who grew up in the South is bound to have heard the phrase “poor white trash.” Teresa Heinz Kerry has given us a new category -- rich white trash.

Sowell's December 6 column appeared on The Washington Times website as a “web only” commentary and on the Heritage Foundation's website Townhall.com.

Sowell is an economist and the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. His column is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate, and has appeared in the following major newspapers over the past year (according to Nexis): The Wall Street Journal, The Baltimore Sun, The Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida), The Detroit News, The Tampa Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Columbus Dispatch, The San Antonio Express-News, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and The Washington Times.