Example Python Code showing cURLing data and POSTing data to Elastic Search, but fails with escaped speech marks

pleaseEscape.py

############# My Clusters Health

curl -XGET 'http://127.0.0.1:9200/_cluster/health?pretty=true'
{
  "cluster_name" : "TweetHadoop",
  "status" : "yellow",
  "timed_out" : false,
  "number_of_nodes" : 1,
  "number_of_data_nodes" : 1,
  "active_primary_shards" : 15,
  "active_shards" : 15,
  "relocating_shards" : 0,
  "initializing_shards" : 0,
  "unassigned_shards" : 15
}

############# Works fine for posting data

import urllib
import urllib2

url = 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/22499999'
data = '{"user" : "helenax33","message" : "LIVE: http://www.justin.tv/xxhelenaxx i look like a can read+sound like a man.","pubDate" : "20090705T21:46:34","isAQuestion" : "0" }'

#data = urllib.urlencode(values)
req = urllib2.Request(url, data)
response = urllib2.urlopen(req)
the_page = response.read()


##### Also this works Fine for posting data.

import pycurl
apiURL = 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/22499999'
c = pycurl.Curl()
c.setopt(c.URL, apiURL)
c.setopt(c.POSTFIELDS, '{ "user" : "helenax33", "message" : "LIVE: http://www.justin.tv/xxhelenaxx i look like a can read+sound like a man.", "pubDate" : "20090705T21:46:34", "isAQuestion" : "0" }')
c.setopt(c.VERBOSE, True)
c.perform()


# However, if I want to put a speech mark (") in the message part, then it fails e.g.

import pycurl
apiURL = 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/22499999'
c = pycurl.Curl()
c.setopt(c.URL, apiURL)
c.setopt(c.POSTFIELDS, '{ "user" : "helenax33", "message" : "LIVE: http://www.justin.tv/xxhelenaxx i " look like a can read+sound like a man.", "pubDate" : "20090705T21:46:34", "isAQuestion" : "0" }')
c.setopt(c.VERBOSE, True)
c.perform()

# So I tried to escape the speech mark e.g.

import pycurl
apiURL = 'http://localhost:9200/twitter/tweet/22499999'
c = pycurl.Curl()
c.setopt(c.URL, apiURL)
c.setopt(c.POSTFIELDS, '{ "user" : "helenax33", "message" : "LIVE: http://www.justin.tv/xxhelenaxx i \" look like a can read+sound like a man.", "pubDate" : "20090705T21:46:34", "isAQuestion" : "0" }')
c.setopt(c.VERBOSE, True)
c.perform()

# However, this still fails. Please help :(