Front-runner John Kerry arrived in Los Angeles on Thursday ready to debate his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination but unsure about the city's latest controversial production, "The Passion of the Christ." "I don't know," he said when asked if he would see the Mel Gibson film about the last days of Jesus' life and its particularly harrowing focus on his crucifixion.
Kerry, a Catholic, said he was worried about the movie's potential anti-Semitism. Some critics have complained that Gibson portrays Jews as responsible for Jesus' death.
"I am concerned," he told reporters. "I don't know if it's there or not but there's a lot of it around now. I think we have to be careful."
The four-term senator from Massachusetts hasn't had much time to see movies lately. He has been running for president virtually since the beginning of last year.
In fact, the last movie he saw in a theater was another Mel Gibson flick released in 2002 called "We Were Soldiers," set in Vietnam where Kerry commanded a Navy Swift boat and was decorated for heroism.
Relaxed and chatty -- so long as the topic wasn't politics -- Kerry conceded aboard his campaign plane that he had enjoyed on video the special effects in "Terminator 3," starring California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger .
Having declared the press cabin of his Boeing 727 a politics-free zone for about 10 minutes, the ever-cautious Kerry batted away questions about the state of the presidential race, his major rival Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, and even how he was adjusting to life with Secret Service protection.
But he appears to have had a seamless transition to the protective bubble, slipping easily in and out of black SUVs, working and making phone calls from the back seat.
In New York on Monday, his motorcade of about a dozen vehicles, including three press buses, shot through red lights in Manhattan. In Ohio and Minnesota, state troopers blocked highway on-ramps and intersections.
Despite what Kerry called "a great adventure," so many months on the campaign trail have taken a toll.
"We haven't sat down to a family dinner since maybe pre-Christmas," he said. "But I'm having a great time."
He misses his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, who has mostly stumped for her husband separately. The couple will see each other for the first time in 10 days when she joins him to await the results of Super Tuesday's 10 primaries and caucuses, including the big states of California, New York and Ohio.
Kerry's daughters from a previous marriage, Vanessa, who is studying medicine at Harvard, and Alexandra, a film student in Los Angeles, campaigned with their father during the holidays.
He acknowledged that he and Alex had had "some fights" but refused to say what about. Those in the know say it was probably involving politics. Alex has declared herself more liberal than her father.
The issue is certainly not boyfriends.
"I never fight about that," Kerry said. "I'm a very good dad. I listen about their boyfriends."
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