#The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

revolution-john · 3 years

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My Childhood Trauma PTSD as Triggered by the Following Movie Montage

by BENJAMIN DREVLOW

That scene in American History X. You know the one. Or maybe it was Higher Learning, I always get those confused. That curb stomp scene always reminding me of the time I tripped and face-planted in the barn while corralling bull calves, to get castrated, my two front teeth chomping down on all that jagged concrete and manure, it adds a different flavor to the recurring nightmare I have, though in my case, usually nothing to do with race relations. I wonder if everybody else who watched that movie also missed the whole point of it. Except the Curb Stomp. Everybody remembers where they were when their stoner friend with big ideas about ending racism across the world made them watch the movie with the Curb Stomp.

Mel Gibson getting drawn and quartered in Braveheart. You may take our lives, but you will never take… our… FREE-DOM!

Mel Gibson ripping his shoulder out of its socket in Lethal Weapon.

Mel Gibson torturing the shit out of Jesus, then blaming the women and Jews for everything, including his drunk-driving and plummeting career options.

Fuck pretty much any Mel Gibson movie. Except maybe that one with him and James Gardner and Jody Foster and all their comedy hijinks. It’s the gambler one but not The Gambler. But now that I think about it, isn’t Jody Foster a big Mel Gibson apologist? So I guess fuck that movie too.

Any movie where somebody gets shot or stabbed or thumbed in the eyeball or has one or both of their eyeballs squeezed or ripped out, which always reminds me of that time I got elbowed right below my eye but also on the eyeball and it literally pushed in my eyeball a millimeter and I still get double vision to this day whenever I line up a shot playing pool or line up a screw to hang a photo on the wall or sometimes re-hang the toilet paper dispenser next to the toilet. I’d been playing pickup basketball and my buddy who was like four inches taller than me elbowed me on a rebound and like I say I went down and lay there on my back and then all the blood started pooling in my eye socket and I couldn’t see anything and my friend couldn’t see my eyeball and he kept hissing through his teeth grossed out by it but then telling me it would okay and the whole time lying there thinking I’m thinking about my eyeball I’m thinking of the scene in Any Given Sunday where the guy’s eyeball is just lying there on the football field. I’m thinking of that closeup all the way to the hospital when they unwrap the mummy gauze from around my head and the ER doctor breathes a sigh of relief after peeling off all the dried blood to reveal that I needed fifteen stitches and I’d broken my orbital bone, but I still had my eye.

Any movie where somebody’s sitting there reading a book before bed, watching TV, gossiping with girlfriends, when the camera pulls back only to zoom back in on the dark night window behind them—cue the string section.

If I had to choose one, I’m thinking of that one zombie movie, something 28 Days something but not the one about Sandra Bullock finding love with Viggo in rehab. It’s not even about the zombies. It’s about the dark night window, not to be confused with the Dark Knight window, sorry that was a shitty pun for no good reason whatsoever, but also maybe not completely random with the guy from 28 Days also having played the scarecrow in Batman Begins where he sprays people with a drug and makes them see their worst fears, which never really did it for me, at least not like the secluded house with the zombies lurking around. I grew up in a big old farmhouse out in the barrens of northern Wisconsin. Lots of windows, no shades. In so many ways I grew up in the dark. It wasn’t the zombies I worried about. It was the methheads. Which, sure, I guess if you’re getting technical about it, same thing, fine, you win, I’m scared of zombies.

The Zapruder film, but as replayed by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s fever dream of a conspiracy theory. The magic bullet, back and to the left, back and to the left, back and to the left. How it gets stuck in my head, JFK’s exploding head replaced with my brother’s exploding head, sometimes my own, except unlike my brother and JFK, my head’s still mostly intact. Back and to the left, back and to the left. Sometimes I think about that too with that one Seinfeld episode with Keith Hernandez and the magic loogie, but usually the loogie gets replaced with a bullet and Kramer’s head gets replaced with my brother, mine, back and to the left.

The sound of the gun shots in the final scene of that Tom Hanks movie where he plays himself again, a good guy, a family guy, a sly sense of humor, but this time a mob hitman with a strained relationship with his oldest son. The look on Tom Hanks’ face walking back to the house from the ocean—having survived it all, the hit that his old mob boss Paul Newman had put out on him for putting a hit on his old mob boss’s son as played by James Bond who also played Ted Hughes in that movie about Sylvia Plath killing herself. But this is past all that, it’s the happy ending. They’re on beach somewhere, white sand, somebody’s house that Tom Hanks and his kid are going to live in now. The silence before and after. Jude Law! It’s Jude Law’s face, his eye all fucked up, how did it happen, I don’t really remember the specifics but I remember the specifics. Bang, bang, bang. I think it might’ve had something to do with Jude Law being a photographer, like one of those where you pose with your kid or something or say you get promoted to head CEO or godfather of the family. Smile. Click, click, except in this case with a gun.

The gunshot at the end of American Beauty, pretty much the same thing, different movie. Chris Cooper confusing Kevin Spacey as gay but before Kevin Spacey actually came out as gay and a sexual predator. Not that the latter necessarily had anything to do with the former. Neither in the movie nor real life, well not really, but sorta. You get the point.

Jared Leto as Angel Face getting his face smashed in by Ed Norton as Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden’s split personality in Fight Club. Not so much Jared Leto, but the wet mushy sounds of it. That part on the audio commentary where Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher defend the violence of the movie, Fincher pointing out that he was not glorifying violence, he was making it realistic. That’s what it sounds like to punch your opponent into the concrete, Fincher says and Palahniuk laughs and agrees. Don’t worry I’m not going to make any puns about the first rule of fight club.

That part of that one weird depressing Robin Williams’s movie where Robin Williams’s kids get killed in a car accident while backing out of the driveway on the way to school. The one where Robin Williams later on gets plowed over by a truck going the wrong way while Robin Williams is out trying to help another couple who’d been injured in a different car accident, but before all that his wife kills herself because she can’t take it and then Robin Williams goes to the suicide afterlife to save her. But then there’s fucking Cuba Gooding Jr. who—spoiler alert—turns out to be the ghost/angel of his dead son who then explains to Robin Williams that his wife/Cuba’s mother can’t be saved because she killed herself. It doesn’t matter that she had a pretty fucking good reason too, she’s still stuck face down floating around in that black swamp of bodies of everybody else’s killed themselves and nobody’s getting to heaven. That shit really messed me up—not the car accidents, but the afterlife for selfish losers like me who kill themselves. And/or my brother.

The bulging vein in Tom Cruise’s head from Magnolia. Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy, Respect the Cock and Tame the Pussy. I think probably my therapist would have some thoughts about all this, and some questions. Questions and thoughts.

That one version of A Christmas Carol where the Ghost of Christmas Past undoes his robe to show off the alien children living under his robe.

I got the worst set of blue balls you could imagine while taking my best friend’s girlfriend to Baz Lurman’s remake of Romeo and Juliet. That Romeo and Juliet. I missed most of it, I kept having to go to the bathroom to masturbate in agony and to no avail. Leo and Claire Danes are hot and heavy on an acid trip, and every time my best friend’s girlfriend reaches for a handful of popcorn she makes sure to wipe the butter off on the inside of my upper thigh. This is what I get for being the good guy of falling on the grenade for my best friend, the grenade in this case being Shakespeare and my best friend’s hatred of literature.

Mark Wahlberg’s flaccid rotten dick in Boogie Nights.

The Secret of the Crying Game but not in a transphobic way. No, it’s the smallness of it what got me back when I watched it as a teenager. The tenderness. The growing tent in my pants at its sudden appearance on the screen. Maybe you don’t believe me but I was a naïve podunk kid from off the farm. I didn’t have cable. I didn’t have access to the internet. His/her (now their) secret opened up a lot of questions for me. I often dream of dressing up in drag and someone sucking my little bitty dick and if that makes me a little bit gay or maybe bi or what’s it called, body dysmorphic. I mean I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, it’s the new millennium, we’re all a bit sexually confused aren’t we?

This one porno my friends and I watched at somebody’s uncle’s cabin up in the U.P. for a three-on-three basketball tournament. The Snapping Pussy. The sound her vagina made, like somebody really dramatic at clicking their tongue and slurping a half-empty malt the same time. The scene of us boys all sitting there with our boners watching a porn and wanting to masturbate but not because we were all boys and we were afraid we’d be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a little bit gay.

There was this made-for-TV movie, me six years old and home alone while my big brother, supposed who’d to’ve been baby-sitting me, the only time he ever babysat me that I can remember, maybe because his one time—that time—he didn’t actually babysit me. He went out to a party, while I watched the made-for-tv movie about some kid who’d watched his mother get murdered, and then goes mute, keeps drawing these pictures of Peter Pan and Captain Hook. The kid’s grandfather, one of those big hooks, like the one in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but this was long before that, though I’m not sure it was before the book. Did you know that there was a book I Know What You Did Last Summer? I mean this isn’t about the book or the movie, this is about that kid whose grandfather had molested his daughter for years and then as an adult gutted her with a fishhook and then how he’d then come back to finish the job with his mute grandkid, I don’t know how this movie ever got green-lighted (green-lit?) for TV, but then it’s weird to even think about those made-for-tv movies and if they actually existed or if I’m just making this whole thing up, but then my brother, we had a walk-in basement at the time, this being before I’d accidently burned that house down with two space heaters stolen from the barn, before my brother’d killed himself, he’d come back late, or probably it was only eight or nine, but I was young and alone out in the woods where we lived, and he’d come back through the basement, which was attached to the family room, where I’d been watching and then all of a sudden that kid on TV was being stocked by his granddad with a fish hook and the door to the basement was opening, and for god knows why I’d turned off all the lights to watch the scary movie by myself, and it turns out it was just my brother who’d go on to kill himself in like a year, maybe six months, and he was just playing a little prank on me, or maybe he’d just come through the basement for some reason, he was always hanging out down there and tinkering around with things, but in my mind, I can remember that exact look on his face, that smirk, even in the dark, the light from the television in a blacked-out room, a blacked out house, reflecting off those pop-bottle glasses of his, the shiny too-big-for-his-face silver frames. My mother always tells me I should try to remember the happy times I had with my brother, and honestly, I can’t, I can only remember that smirk, those glasses, the handle turning a moment before he appeared.

Any and all sequels where it turns out that the dead character didn’t actually die at all, or maybe it’s magic, or maybe there’s time travel.

Any happy ending ever.

Every ending in my worst nightmares involves everyone I’ve ever loved or hated, their faces turning to snake faces. Snakeheads, snake arms, snake butts. Snakes snakes snakes. They slip out of their clothes and come up from under my bed, slither under my covers. They bite me, they kiss me, poison me, they consume me whole and regurgitate my bones. That’s how they always end. Me dead and abandoned.

That scene in the first Indiana Jones with Indiana Jones and getting trapped in the cave with all the snakes. I hate snakes. All my worst nightmares turn to snakes. Fuck snakes. This all might have something to do with my undersized penis. If you want to go down that path. The Secret of My Crying Game.

Has Mel Gibson ever made a movie with snakes? I don’t know, you tell me, but fuck that movie if he did. Mel Gibson is snakey enough on his own.

BENJAMIN DREVLOW is the author of Bend With the Knees and Other Love Advice from My Father, which won the 2006 Many Voices Project, and the author of Ina-Baby: A Love Story in Reverse, which was released by Cowboy Jamboree Books in 2019. Buy his books here. He is currently at work on a novel, a novella, and a collection of story-poems. He serves as the Managing Editor of BULL Magazine (@BULL_magazine_) and is a lecturer at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia.

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afzdsfdz · 3 years

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The priests denounced him, the lords rose against him

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johnfkennedyjunior · 5 years

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Favorite Son

It was madness, even by Bloomingdale’s standards. The customers that late-November lunchtime were possessed by an urgency that transcended mere pre-Christmas shopping lust. Suddenly, TV lights came on and cameras started snapping like piranhas as the day’s hottest item, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., the son of America’s thirty-fifth president, stepped onto a platform. Women screamed.

“It was mass hysteria,” one store worker says. “Poor man. I don’t think he had any idea.” Kennedy looked amazed and none too happy. “Oh, dear,” he said as he joined cousins Ted Kennedy Jr. and Willie Smith, Willie’s mother, Jean Kennedy Smith, and Lauren Bacall on the store’s loge level.

Very Special Arts, a Kennedy charity, was behind this sale of boxed Christmas ornaments produced by the retarded in Third World countries. But the TV crews and the screaming women and the pushing paparazzi didn’t care about that. They didn’t care about Betty Bacall, either, or the other Kennedy cousins — all associate trustees of the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation who had funded the program. Says the Bloomingdale’s employee, “They wanted John.”

Kennedy took the microphone. “I hope you’ll all buy a few boxes,” he said. “I’m here to sell boxes, and that’s what I want to get to do.” Of course, by doing that-or, more precisely, by autographing boxes for a few minutes-he got the ornaments mentioned on seven local news shows and Entertainment Tonight. Jill Rapaport, a perky Channel 2 News reporter, even got a brief interview. “It’s really the boxes they should be coming for, not us,” Kennedy told her. Then he got boxed in himself as Rapaport asked how it felt to be one of the world’s most eligible bachelors. “C’mon,” Kennedy pleaded, eyes and hands turning upward. “1 dunno.” He glanced away from the microphone hopelessly. Finally, visibly embarrassed, he said, “It feels okay.” Cut to Rapaport happy-talking in the studio later. “Kinda cute, huh?” she said to the camera.

Although Bloomingdale’s sold almost $50,000 worth of ornaments that day, John Kennedy, 28, considered the appearance disappointing. “We didn’t want it to turn out the way it did,” says Kathy Walther, a Very Special Arts executive. “It was very obnoxious from the second he walked in. John hoped it would be more substantive.”

Unfortunately, substance isn’t ‘the first thing that comes to mind when most people think about John F. Kennedy Jr. First, of course, comes the awful, indelible memory of the little boy in a blue coat and short pants, saluting his father’s bronze coffin.

That image alternates with others not so sober: Kennedy pumped-up and shirtless as People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” Kennedy linked in the columns with an enviable parade-Brooke Shields, Madonna, Daryl Hannah, Molly Ringwald, Princess Stephanie of Monaco.

Those images melded at his political coming-out party, last summer’s Democratic Convention-where John F. Kennedy Jr., tabloid celebrity, was transformed into the living embodiment of a nation’s not-quite-impossible dream: that it will wake up one morning with another JFK in the White House. Uncle Ted Kennedy passed the torch himself when he had John introduce him to the delegates, and though the nephew’s speech didn’t rattle the rafters, there was a surge of emotion in the hall. This was the first time John had ever acted the part of “a Kennedy” on a national stage. And the moment suggested that he could become the ultimate postmodern politician-a blank canvas for fantasies of national destiny.

* * *

The boy in the blue coat is grown up now, and, whether he likes it or not, people still have their eyes on him. He doesn’t like it at all, and friends insist that his life is a quest for anonymity and normality. He may never find privacy (“He’s never known life any different,” says a friend), but he’s won the battle to be normal. Aggressively normal. “Disgustingly normal,” says a friend.

He is also understandably reluctant to give anything away, having already given so much. Kennedy “is trying to have an open life,” says Faith Stevelman, who met him on their second day of law school, in 1986. “He sure turned out to be completely different than I expected. The press makes him out to be a narcissistic celebrity brat, but he’s not. People want to see him that way, because of his father, because of his name, because he’s handsome, but-praise to him-he has a life that’s much more real than that. He likes being in the world.”

He doesn’t like publicity, though. “It curtails his freedom,” Stevelman says.

So, aside from lending his name to good causes, he’s done nothing to attract attention to himself. He’s given only one print interview in his life, to the New York Times, and it wasn’t particularly revealing. Not speaking to reporters “has always been a habit,” says his aunt Lee Radziwill. “We’re not going to start now.”

One former family intimate describes the Kennedy attitude as “a conspiracy of silence, mandated from above. But when they want to get the message out, they do.” John Kennedy declined to be interviewed for this story. But there’s a message his friends want to get out, so many of them cooperated, as did former coworkers and bosses and a few Kennedy-family members.

They are setting the stage for what a Kennedy Foundation executive describes as “John emerging into the public sphere.” After having worked for New York City, a nonprofit developer, the Reagan Justice Department, and apolitically connected Los Angeles law firm, the man who is perhaps the most famous presidential child of the century is about to become one of about 400 assistant district attorneys in the office of Manhattan prosecutor Robert Morgenthau.

Like a favored candidate’s spin doctors before a big debate, Kennedy’s friends are trying to lower expectations. “The most extraordinary thing about him is that he’s extraordinarily ordinary,” says one.

Public appearances to the contrary, friends seem convinced, and want to convince others, that John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. — JFK II — doesn’t really exist. “He wants to be perceived as his own man,” says Peter Allen, a friend since grade school. Says Stevelman heatedly, “He’s not John F. Kennedy Jr. He is himself. It’s `Hi, I’m John.’ ” Just John.

John doesn’t share the problems of some of the other Kennedy cousins of his generation. “Monsters,” the former family friend calls them. A friend of John’s agrees: “They might as well have the name emblazoned on their sleeves.” John does share many traits with his father, though-and people want to believe he shares even more. Just like his father, he is bound up with his immediate family. “All of our lives, there’s just been the three of us — Mommy, Caroline, and I,” John said at his sister’s wedding. Besides them, he’s got a coterie of intensely loyal friends-some of whom go back through prep school just like his father’s. At Brown University, where John earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1983, his friends literally surrounded him, shielding him from the 14,500 spectators during their mile-long graduation processional. John’s also got his father’s charisma. “Even if he wasn’t John Kennedy,” says his cousin Cecil Auchincloss, “people would notice him at a party. Even as a kid.” Though he seems to disdain Kennedy competitiveness (when he was a child, the cousins called him “Mama’s Boy”), John shares his father’s love of athletics. An active outdoorsman, he skis; rafts, snorkels, hikes, and goes camping. “He’s an overenergetic, can’t-sit-still type,” a friend reports.

Also like his father (and like his mother’s father, Black Jack Bouvier, who had an affair on his honeymoon), John’s got serious sex appeal. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” says a young woman who knows him. “Girls come and go.”

In fact, only with women does John act as if he wanted to be noticed. “It’s no wonder rumors start,” says one woman he’s flirted with. Adds another who encountered him on the street, “He was begging for attention.”

He doesn’t always have to beg. Madonna, this generation’s self-styled Marilyn Monroe, set her cap for John. “He and Madonna were good friends,” says a fast-crowd friend of the Kennedy cousins. “She was obviously the aggressor.”

Friends of John’s also believe that their contacts were all initiated by Madonna. “I think they met when [John's cousin] Bobby Shriver made his Special Olympics album,” says one pal. “Then Madonna invited John to her concert at Madison Square Garden. She also works out with the same trainer. I don’t think that’s chance.” Though some insist that John has had “dates” with Madonna between rounds in her marital bout with Sean Penn, a close friend of the singer’s sighed when I asked her if the duo’s rumored relationship was real. “If only,” she said.

Many of John’s supposed assignations turn out to be fictions. Another Kennedy “date,” identified in some papers as Molly Ringwald, was actually John’s steady girlfriend of four years, actress Christina Haag. “A good thing,” a friend jokes. “Christina would have believed it.”

Haag, the daughter of a retired businessman, grew up in Manhattan. She is not the blue blood she’s sometimes made out to be; she’s an actress struggling to make ends meet. A graduate of Juilliard, she has played Ophelia at Center Stage in Baltimore, acted in A Matter of Degrees, an independent film about college students, and played the public-relations woman for a hospital in The Littlest Victim, an upcoming TV movie about a doctor who treats children with AIDS. Between jobs, she has checked coats at Elio’s and worked as an assistant to Seventh Avenue designer Christine Thomson.

Luckily, both John and Christina know Daryl Hannah and knew it wasn’t true when, late last year, Suzy said he’d proposed to the star. Says a Kennedy friend, “They’ve all known each other for years.” A gossip item once appeared saying that Hannah, the daughter of a Chicago real-estate magnate, had followed college-age John down a beach on St. Martin. “They were twelve at the time,” says the friend, “and I bet he followed her. If she’d been following him, he would have stopped.”

Then there are the models. Kennedy has met some through Richard Wiese, a Phi Psi fraternity brother at Brown who is now a Ford model. Audra Avizienis, a Click face, told People she had dated John. Now she claims the magazine misquoted her. People’s reporter denies it. So has she gone out with him? “That’s beside the point,” Avizienis snaps.

An older friend of the family considers this all par for the course. “Kennedys love beautiful people, winners,” she says. “They like movie stars, like everyone else. But everybody else isn’t moving in those circles all the time. Kennedy men are intensely, highly sexed. There’s a lot of activity. But the women they marry are solid gold. They need both and they get it. Why not have the cream of the crop?”

There are two other traits Kennedy shares with his father: wit and a penchant for pranks. While working for the city after he graduated from Brown, he kidnapped a secretary’s beloved teddy bears, sent her a ransom note (“We have the bears”), and then executed them in a mock mass hanging. He also sent a stripper to meet with a co-worker who was interviewing prospective secretaries. “I thought she was a good candidate,” the co-worker says. “More articulate than most.”

* * *

Carried to extremes, pranks can reflect an underlying carelessness. But “there’s an incredible amount expected of John,” a friend points out. “He has to sacrifice what a lot of us would consider routine.”

John has had several minor run-ins with the law. Last year, he paid $2,300 in parking tickets. “I later learned the reason [he paid them],” says J. Bertram Shair, the administrative judge who heard Kennedy’s case. “He has to clear himself of all judgments in order to qualify for the D.A.’s office. I don’t think he enjoyed writing the check. He said in view of all the tickets, perhaps he ought to get free parking in the future.” Shair gave him “a gratuitous little lecture. I told him he’s going places. He should take care how he’s perceived.”

The blackest mark on Kennedy’s record is one that will be understood by anyone with a passing knowledge of the habits of 24-year-old men. Between 1984 and 1986, he and a friend sublet a co-op apartment on West 86th Street. According to someone close to the deal, Kennedy was often late with his rent checks and could never remember his keys. “He rang everyone’s buzzer,” the source says. “He drove the super crazy. He had a water bed, which was against the rules. The board was within inches of evicting them.”

Finally, their sublease ran out and the owner returned. “It looked like a herd of yaks had lived there,” the source says. “Somebody had clearly put their fist through the wall. The carpet looked like they’d had cookouts on it. Every surface had to be sanded, spackled, and patched.”

The current president of the building’s co-op board is forgiving, though. “People tend to be tougher on personalities than on the rest of us,” he says.

An older and presumably wiser Kennedy now lives alone in a two-bedroom apartment in the West Nineties. He keeps his keys tied to his belt. Though his new apartment has been “nicely done” with his mother’s decorating help, a friend says it is often “kind of messy.” Christina Haag lives nearby. Kennedy often has breakfast at a health-food restaurant on Columbus Avenue. Then he bicycles 90 or so blocks south to the Village, where he spends his days completing his third and final year at the New York University School of Law. He also works in Brooklyn Family Court, where, as a member of NYU’s Juvenile Rights Clinic, he defends minors accused of felonies.

Late last year, after a series of interviews, he got the $29,000-a-year A.D.A. job, which friends say he coveted. Morgenthau’s office will not confirm Kennedy’s appointment, but friends say he will start work in August.

John and his sister seem to be remarkably solid young people, given the circumstances of their lives, and everyone directs the credit to their mother, Jacqueline Onassis. Under unbearable scrutiny, she raised them amazingly well.

John was known at the three private schools he attended as bright but more rebellious and troubled than Caroline. His most embarrassing teenage moment involved drinking. He and Caroline celebrated their birthdays (his eighteenth, her twenty-first) with a bash at Le Club, arranged by their mother. At five in the morning, as the party broke up, Kennedy and his school friends fought with a National Enquirer photographer. “I opened the door and John was lying in the gutter,” says Patrick Shields, the club’s director, who dusted Kennedy off and deposited him in a taxi. “Jackie’s comment to me the next morning was `I’m walking on a cloud.’ ” Adds Shields, “I don’t think she’d seen the paper yet.”

* * *

John Kennedy has been a public curiosity since he was conceived. He gave out a “lusty cry” at birth, according to the obstetrician who delivered him by cesarean section on November 25, 1960. Seventeen days before, his father had been elected president. As the first White House baby since 1893, John Jr. made front pages around the world. After his christening, his 31-year-old mother imposed a press blackout. The publicity-conscious president fought it with mixed success by sneaking photographers and the kids into the Oval Office when Jackie was out of town, but still, no photos of John were released for a year.

Tidbits about him did leak out, though. In May 1963, he sucked his thumb while meeting astronaut Gordon Cooper but took it out long enough to say “Cooper, Cooper.” And in November 1963, at a Veterans Day program at Arlington National Cemetery, John-John, as he was called, upstaged the troops by performing acrobatics while dangling from the hands of his father and an aide. A few weeks later, the president boarded a helicopter at the White House for a flight to Andrews Air Force Base and then to Dallas. It was the last time he saw the young son Jackie said was “his real kin spirit.”

As a child, John would talk about his father proudly. “He was fascinated,” says a family friend, “and he enjoyed hearing how people responded to that little boy.”

Friends say that now, though John rarely brings up his father, he is gracious when others do. Nevertheless, awkward moments do occur. “One time he was hanging out in somebody’s room,” recalls a fraternity brother, “and they were playing the Stones’ `Sympathy for the Devil’ ” (which contains the lyric “I shouted out, `Who killed the Kennedys?’ / When after all / it was you and me”). “Everyone realized, `Uh-oh.’ But at some point, he’d just walked out and then he walked back in again. He just avoided the situation.”

Friends are careful with him. “It’s never come up and I wouldn’t bring it up,” says Stevelman. “It can’t be an easy thing. During the week of the [twenty-fifth] anniversary [of JFK's assassination], I was worried for him. Who wants to be exposed to that? But he’s incredibly together about it. I’m sure it moves him. How could it not? But he’s integrating it into a sane life.”

“I think he’s very proud of what his father did,” adds another,

Aristotle Onassis died in Paris on March 15, 1975. Jackie’s $26-million settlement with his estate, negotiated with Christina Onassis, added to established Kennedy trust funds and left the children without financial worries.

During the mid-seventies, John was listed in the Social Register, regularly saw a psychiatrist, and changed schools again, transferring to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. After being held back a year, he finally graduated in 1979. “He certainly wasn’t at the top of his class,” says a longtime friend.

John also. spent some time at Xenon, the club owned by Howard Stein, who calls himself a “disco uncle” to the Kennedy cousins. They were treated like kings by Stein’s partner, Peppo Vanini, who considered them “the closest thing to royals in America,” Stein says, “and made overtures to induce them into our world.”

Robert Kennedy’s children became Xenon regulars, but “John-John was special,” Stein says. “He was less a disco baby. He was shier, ingenuous. He didn’t leverage his name off the way kids of the famous do in my world. He had star quality. So every time he was there, he got his picture in the papers. It took a scandal for the other Kennedy kids to be photographed.”

* * *

In the next half-dozen years, John would be photographed often in discos with a steady girlfriend, Sally Munro, who was in the class ahead of his at Brown. Kennedy, ever the prankster, identified her to photographers as “Lisa, my fiance.”

Nightlife wasn’t the only temptation. Girls slept outside the door of his dorm room when he was a freshman. He later moved into the Phi Psi house and then into a house off campus that he shared with several students, including Christina Haag. Kennedy was also attracted to the stage, appearing in campus productions of Volpone, Short Eyes, and In the Boom Boom Room. Producer Robert Stigwood even offered John a part in a film, as his father. He was interested. His mother, reportedly, was upset.

The professional offers kept coming after he left Brown “bad things, because of who he was,” says Peter Allen. “He thought it would be fun, but he didn’t want to trade on his name.”

Show business remained alluring, though, and in the summer of 1985, Kennedy finally appeared on a Manhattan stage, starring in six invitation-only performances of Winners at the 75seat Irish Arts Center. The show was a workshop mounted by friends from the drama set at Brown. Christina Haag was a costar.

Kennedy and Haag played star-crossed lovers in Northern Ireland. Leaving the theater one night, John told a reporter, “This is not a professional acting debut. It’s just a hobby.” And reports vary on his talent. A Brown critic once took exception to his “prep-school voice.”

Sometime after the short run of Winners, John’s relationship with Sally Munro ended amicably and Christina Haag stepped into the role of girlfriend. “John had had a secret crush on her since he was five,” says a friend. “Actually, I don’t think it was secret. He asked her out every week and she said no every time.”

Friends say Haag is whimsical, stylish, and quite serious about her career-and that her relationship with John has not always helped it. She never trades on him, they say. Indeed, she avoids publicity that might help her. “They make her sound like a hanger-on,” a friend says. “The fact is, her boyfriend takes away from her craft.”

Friends admit that John and Christina have had some rough sledding. For a while after college, John “was playing around a lot,” says a former co-worker. “He got along well with girls. He enjoyed it, like anyone would.” But now, according to friends of Christina’s, the relationship is strong. Haag even refers to herself as his “law widow.”

* * *

Until now, no one has asked much of John Kennedy. But quietly, off the gossip pages, he has built an impressive resume for a young man just starting his career. The summer before he went off to college, he attended National Outdoor Leadership School with students from the United States and Africa, studying mountaineering and environmental issues at 17,000 feet on Mount Kenya. The next summer, he met government and student leaders in Zimbabwe, and worked briefly for a mining company in Johannesburg. Maurice Tempelsman — Jackie’s diamond merchant companion-probably had a hand in planning the trip.

After his sophomore year, he worked for Ted Van Dyk at the Center for Democratic Policy, a Washington-based liberal think tank. Again, Tempelsman suggested that John apply for the student internship. Living with the Shrivers, Kennedy immersed himself in political organizing, advance work, research, and working the room on a fund-raising trip to Hollywood. That summer, he saw for the first time the power he had. “He began to realize he was a celebrity,” says Van Dyk. “He had his first contact with clutchers and grabbers. He handled it.” John even talked back to Norman Lear, who, says Van Dyk, “went on about what close friends he was with the president,” then said he was saving his money for his own lobbying group, People for the American Way. “You’d be better served giving the money to us,” Kennedy said.

John was “genuinely undecided” about his future, and Van Dyk was sympathetic. “You get a churning stomach thinking about all those Kennedy kids in politics,” he says. “You’re pleased to see them respond as several have, yet relieved when any of them decides to do something else. An expectation hangs over them. I don’t think John feels compelled.” Still, back at Brown, John worked for the University Conference for Democratic Policy, which sponsored disarmament forums on northeastern college campuses.

The summer after his junior year, Kennedy and his cousin Tim Shriver tutored underprivileged children in English as part of a University of Connecticut program. Finally, after he graduated, he stopped for some fun, signing on as first mate on the Vast Explorer, searching for the pirate treasure ship Whidah in the waters off Cape Cod.

Following the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco, where he helped Van Dyk raise more money, Kennedy came home and took a job with the city. In his $20,000-a-year position in the Office of Business Development, he worked to attract and keep business in New York. “His references were extraordinary,” says his boss, Larry Kieves. “He worked in the same crummy cubbyhole as everybody else. I heaped on the work and was always pleased.”

John “wasn’t overly sophisticated,” a co-worker adds. “He was one of the few young people there who acted his age.” She fondly recalls how he would change from his bicycle clothes into a suit in the office, but often leave his shirttails hanging out. (Though he still sometimes dresses that way, he was named to the International Best Dressed List this year.)

In 1986, Kennedy switched jobs, moving to the 42nd Street Development Corporation as acting deputy executive director, conducting negotiations with developers and city agencies. Jackie was on the nonprofit company’s board. “John was an intelligent bargain,” says Fred Papert, the corporation’s president. “Salary was not of grave concern to him. He knew his way around the city. He’s unpredictable in a good way. He was both orderly and passionate-a rare combination.”

Kennedy entered law school that fall. The following summer, he worked for William Bradford Reynolds, the Reagan Justice Department’s civil-rights chief, making $358 a week as one of seven interns. Last summer, his salary improved when he became a $1,100-a-week summer associate at Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg & Phillips, a Los Angeles law firm with strong connections to the Democrats, and worked for his uncle Ted’s lawschool roommate, Charlie Manatt.

* * *

At last summer’s Democratic Convention, major speakers chose the people who would introduce them. Ted Kennedy asked, and John was delighted. So was a party that was “trying to reach out to the younger boomer crowd,” according to a Democratic National Committee official. Backstage, John “was nervous as hell,” reports an observer. He needn’t have worried. “Stars are born at conventions,” the official says. “He certainly came out as a Democrat everyone will be watching for a long time.”

Does John want that? Friends and former employers say that he seems committed to some kind of public service. “He has a great way with people,” says Andrew Cuomo. “He’s as comfortable with homeless kids in a playground as he is at the Democratic Convention, and that’s truly a gift.” In between law classes, he works with Cuomo’s HELP program, the Fresh Air Fund, the Kennedy Library, and the Kennedy Foundation’s associate trustees. The foundation is behind his latest project: working with the City University of New York on a plan to assist the mentally handicapped. “He’s not doing it to get recognition,” says Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, who is working with John. “He’s a real mensch.”

His enthusiasm falters, it seems, only in academia. One of his NYU professors judged him “unremarkable. Given the opportunities offered someone so blessed, one would have wanted him to give more evidence of ambition, drive, and vision. But maybe my course didn’t inspire him.”

Kennedy has apparently found something to inspire him in criminal law. And it isn’t really surprising that a man whose father and uncle were both murdered should choose to become a prosecutor. The A.D.A.’s job is “tough work,” says his law school friend Stevelman. “It takes someone who really wants to get down and deal with real people’s needs. I don’t think John likes things easy or false.”

“His interest in criminal law is marketable and useful,” adds a fellow law student. “He’s not doing it for money reasons. He’s very curious. He’s interested and open. He’s much more comfortable with black people, for instance, than your average kid of his world.”

Before John ever appeared at the Brooklyn Family Court as a student lawyer, Joseph A. Esquirol Jr., the supervising judge, worried that the court would come to a stop. He recalls thinking that “every woman will leave her desk to come see him. “I couldn’t have that,” Esquirol says, so he called his court staff together. “Don’t make it any worse for him,” he told them. “Try not to drool till he’s gone. I want to give the young man a chance to grow in his profession. He has a right to that.”

* * *

Drooling stenographers aren’t the only obstacle Kennedy faces. “How would you feel, if you were a thirteen-year-old arrested for a chain-snatch, if the son of a president was your lawyer?” asks Esquirol, who has presided over three designated-felony cases in which Kennedy appeared. Says a fellow law student, “[Who he is] comes up all the time. John presses it away and goes on.”

NYU officials and teachers will not discuss Kennedy’s grades, but Esquirol gives him high marks. “I don’t know that he’s the best or the worst,” the judge says. “I don’t envy him one minute. I think he can cut it if he’s allowed to practice without pressure. He’s got the innate common sense, ability, anti presence. He knew what he was doing and why he was doing it.” Esquirol pauses. “If I was a father, I wouldn’t be disappointed to have him as a son.”

John’s work with the underprivileged and disabled, his experience bridging the public and private sectors, his inquisitive mind, sense of obligation, and determination to avoid the obvious, a quick run for elective office, reveal a commendable sense of purpose. “He makes good decisions, not facile ones,” says Stevelman. “He makes a point not to make broad decisions about life.” It’s not that he won’t want our votes eventually. He just doesn’t want them now, when all he would be is JFK II. But John F. Kennedy Jr. will always be America’s son, and that’s a hurdle he’ll face for the rest of his life. “I honestly think,” says one friend, “in 100 years, they’ll say that whatever he did, he succeeded not because he was John F. Kennedy Jr. but in spite of it.”.

By Michael Gross Originally published in the March 20, 1989 issue of New York Magazine

#articles

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darcyckennedy · 5 years

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☆— HEY UPPER EAST SIDERS, SPOTTED: d who looks just like kendall jenner. according to an anonymous source she is perfect contour, wild after parties, & teddy coats to make up for a lack of cuddles. she was last caught listening to miss you by louis tomlinson. the cisfemale is from the upper east side and attended constance billard. DARCY COX KENNEDY still lives in the city at twenty three and is currently a socialite & philanthropist. let’s see what she is going to do next. xoxo, gossip girl. ( admin tamia. nineteen. est. she/her. )

WOW okay, hi there ! i’m tamia, the admin of the group...can i just say i love you all already for applying and applying with such amazing character’s that i cannot wait to start plotting with. a little about me i guess, i’m a nineteen year old college student who lowkey doesn’t wanna be a college student...the dream is the be an actress but my mom’s all “go to college” “the only way to make something of yourself is through college” so yeah. i’m a part-time waitress at the OG aka olive garden so i make alot of Bread jokes that are really bad, i get them from the guests honestly. but that’s enough about me, let’s get to my lil peanut here who is truly a mess, i apologize in advance for her guys.

darcy was born to two elite heavy weights. her mother, georgina cox, is a american billionaire heiress the great-granddaughter of james m. cox the founder of cox enterprises. her father, john f. kennedy jr, was a american lawyer and the son of president john f. kennedy. yes, she’s a kennedy guys.

one month old. her parents broke up after a six year relationship. staying amicable to co-parent although she mostly lived with her father. staying with her mother a couple days of of the week. as her mother was often off in atlanta, with darcy’s grandmother. it was clear from infancy that she was daddy’s little girl, so the fact that she was with him more only made sense.

one year old. her father and carolyn bessette got married. darcy was the flower girl, and truly adored carolyn. the wedding is one of the few days she vividly remembers with her father.

four years old. her mom decided to bring her down to georgia with her for a family event. her dad and carolyn decided to go out to martha’s vineyard during this time where they inevitably crashed the plane and were lost at sea. she was supposed to be picked up by her father three days after but was instead brought back to manhattan by her aunt caroline.

two months later. her aunt kept what happened to her parents a secret for months, initially telling her they couldn’t leave massachussetts due to bad weather conditions, then they suddenly went to africa for philanthropic work. before she knew it darcy had become a completely different child, starting to project her her anger and fear that her father had abandoned her onto others.

the truth. during this time her mother finally stepped forward, brought darcy on a trip to martha’s vineyard and told her about her father and stepmother’s death. it became clear that the trip was specifically meant for darcy to say goodbye to them at their burial.

the aftermath. darcy was distraught for months, it was hard for a young child to wrap her head around the sole person she had attached to being gone forever. her mom immediately found her a psychiatrist who darcy saw twice a week. instead of moving back in with her aunt she moved in with her mom, the two never got close but her mom was the only person that darcy felt she could trust because she was the only one who told her the truth about her father.

ten years old. her attitude became worse. she had truly turned into the stereotypical ues child. it had become too much for her mother to bear and so darcy moved in with her great uncle ted kennedy at the kennedy compound in cape cod. he was possibly the best thing to ever happen to her, he told her endless stories about her father and grandfather which helped her feel closer to both of them. this was when she really started to grow back into the young women her father would have wanted her to become.

thirteen years old. ted and darcy set up a memorial service for her father, at the same cathedral in washington d.c that her grandfather’s service was held. the whole family was invited and because of this it became extremely publicized but darcy didn’t care, this was meant for her to say a proper goodbye to her father and nothing could ruin that for her.

fourteen years old. her great uncle had been diagnosed with brain cancer fifteen months prior, she had stayed with him throughout the whole journey, refusing to leave his side, he had become the closest thing to her father over the years that she lived with him. he died at the kennedy compound in the summer and darcy reluctantly had to move back to manhattan and live with her mom. his death affected her nearly as much as her father’s and it’s a death she carries with her everyday.

psychiatric state: upon her return to the ues her mom once again immediately put darcy into counseling a different and more renowned psychiatrist this time. darcy quickly started to feel like her mother stuck her with a psychiatrist so she wouldn’t have to talk to her daughter about everything that’s gone on, her mother instilled this idea that you don’t talk to anyone about your troubles but a psychiatrist, to everyone else you need to come off happy and content with life no matter how hard it gets. her psychiatrist dr. hill has helped her through alot but she still struggles everyday feeling like she’s a victim of the infamous kennedy curse.

return to the ues. darcy’s return to the upper east side was a whirlwind to say the least. she came back right in time four the first day of highschool. it was a big day to say the least as no one expected her arrival. she reuniting with old friends, was swarmed by paparazzi once again, and made new friendships. she was different this time though, poised, friendly, and charismatic unlike the blair waldorf-esque self she was as a child.

constance billard. during school she was very academic. history was possibly her favorite, maybe because her family was apart of it. she participated in debate team and lacrosse, which she became captain of both by her senior year. she graduated constance with a 3.9 gpa and was accepted into columbia, harvard, and brown. she was tempted to attend brown just to feel a bit closer to her dad but decided to opt out of college all together.

socialite & philanthropy. coming out of school she decided to dive head first into some charity work, from working with unicef to the national brain tumor society. by twenty she became a unicef ambassador and started her own foundation, the darcy kennedy foundation, a nonprofit organization focusing on finding better treatments for cancer patients as well as helping children who have lost their parents due to any sort of fatal event. and of course being who she is she’s been paid to attend events, galas, and parties since she was about fifteen years old, a true american socialite lol.

publicity. as much as everyone tried, it was an impossible feet for a kennedy to stay out of the lime light, especially when you’re the daughter of jfk jr. despite the attempts made by her parents and other family members darcy was often spread across magazine covers, and webpages. as she grew older it only seemed to get worse.

personality. today, darcy is kind, caring, and charismatic. she’s the girl who walks around with a resting bitch face but will walk up to you with a bright smile and compliment your head to toe and genuinely mean every word. to piggyback off that she is extremely genuine and because of this she is also rather loyal, if she cares for you, you never have to worry about her doing something to hurt you or that could hurt you int he slightest. she is rather mature due to everything she’s gone through in life and because of this is often the voice of reason, a total mom friend but don’t think for a minute she doesn’t know how to have fun, because darcy can truly be the life of the party and is always down for an adventure; she is loud, witty, and just overall a good time think, imari stuart.

romantic life. when it comes to relationships the girl is a mess. she dated a brooklyn boy during sophomore year, but she never got past the lust phase with him and so she broke things off with him six months later (wanted connection *cough* *cough*). during junior year she started dating a guy who was everything she was looking for in the last, she fell head over heels for him almost immediately, which was really her downfall in the end. he’s broken her heart more times than one, but she can’t seem to let him go even six years later. she’s had hook ups and short lived relationships sprinkled in between while her and sawyer aren’t together but no one compares in her eyes; she’s been with girls, guys, and everyone in between in an attempt to find someone to get her mind off of her ex but nothing works.

fun facts. her first car was a used 1994 saab that was not in style or cool by any means it was her dad so she didn’t car, but now she owns a few cars that could genuinely put most cars to shame lmao (found here), loves all kinds of music and you never want to put her on aux unless you want to listen to a whole lot of classics/throwbacks like queen, frank sinatra, usher, the beatles, and britney spears, she’s slept with leonardo dicaprio (weird flex i know), she moved out when she was 18 and currently lives at 12 east 88th street (found here), if you’re ever looking for her you can probably find her at a bar with a burger in one hand and a glass of sangria in the other, she is 5′10″ and has a tendency of wearing high heeled boots with give her even more height, she’s never done a narcotic a day in her life but will drink anyone and their father under the table, her great-uncle left most of his belongings to his widow but he did leave darcy 50million dollars for her trust fund, while her father left her everything from material assets to 100million dollars that also went to her trust, when she was 18 she was given her trust found including 100million from her mother.

#upper:intro #death tw #cancer tw #« 𝕒𝕓𝕠𝕦𝕥. // become stronger and you wont need an easy life »

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mermaidsirennikita · 7 years

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Have you seen the movie Jackie? What did you think of it?

This is about to get REAL nerdy up in here anon. I had such a painfully obvious boner for Kennedy!history and legends for like... my last year of high school and most of freshman year of college that my mom gifted me with a first edition copy of Profiles in Courage by (but not rlly, he was too busy politicking to write a whole book) JFK for my birthday. And like, that wasn’t even the only Kennedy-related birthday present I got that year.

I have seen it! I think it could have been better as a story about Jackie and a Kennedy-oriented history fan (I hate myself for identifying with that) but as a movie it is a Work, imo. And I mean that in a good way, there were bits of the movie where I was like yeah I’m watching something really intentionally artistic here and it’s pulling it off.

The thing is that while the movie is OVERALL accurate (I’ll expand on my criticisms of accuracy later lol) the history isn’t the point, aside from when it relates directly to our perception of Jackie vs. the Real Jackie, and though obviously I don’t know the woman and I wouldn’t say this movie covers her entire personality (it spans over just a few days, it can’t) it nails certain aspects of her that we don’t discuss often, imo.

Jackie is as iconic as Marilyn Monroe, exactly because she was the antithesis, or so it seemed, of Marilyn. Marilyn was sex; Jackie was love (romantic love, maternal love, patriotic love). Marilyn was dirty, but in a touchable way that made you want to touch her; Jackie was clean, but in a way that made you want to put her behind a pedestal and maybe never even get to know her because that might ruin the image you have in your head. You don’t want her to be human. You don’t want to fuck her. You want to love her.

The thing is that just as with Marilyn, the image was really, mostly, a lie. Jackie actually had a lot in common with Marilyn--she probably wasn’t faithful to Jack, though he started it, I’m sure. She struggled with loving a man who could never really open himself fully to her (Marilyn chased these types like craaaazy). Hell, they both even had fertility issues (Jackie had multiple miscarriages and actually lost a two-day-old son less than a year before Jack died). She was saddled with legacy, and like Marilyn she really couldn’t be herself. Even their interviews, ESPECIALLY if you listen to them (as a MASSIVE DORK I really recommend listening to those, like, 18 hours of interviews with Jackie done after Jack died, which this movie definitely pulls from). She was never as raw, imo, as she even is to the interviewer in the movie. More vulnerable than usual, maybe, but never Raw. Like, the movie has her saw really honest shit and it’s probably what she was thinking but then she’s like--strike that from the record. Imo, the real Jackie slipped up and struck things from the record, but she never slipped up and was as honest with a reporter as she is in the movie.

Listen, I’ve got issues with Natalie Portman, but she NAILS those aspects of Jackie Kennedy that the movie is interested in, and I don’t like her as a person but she was robbed of a second oscar tbh. She wiped the floor with Emma Stone. There is more nuance to a single scene of her in this movie (the one where she’s sort of drunkenly dancing about the white house, as one example) than Emma conveys in all of La La Land, case closed.

The Jackie in this movie is an inner part of Jackie that I am certain existed. She’s constructing a legacy for Jack as soon as he dies, because he never got a chance to make that legacy for herself. She understand the myth of this family, of her, and she’s making sure that the myth lives on because that’s all they’ll have. He’ll never get to his second term, which some historians opine would have been much more groundbreaking than the first, as is often the case (first term presidents don’t want to offend because they’re thinking about reelection; second term presidents can lay it all out on the table). She’s been indoctrinated into this myth of this family (and the movie never covers this, but she was apparently Joseph Kennedy Senior’s favorite daughter-in-law, and maybe he was just being a creep and thought she was hot but I think he recognized in her a similar ability to go along and play for the cameras that his wife possessed, except better--she elevated the family, the Bouvier blood was much bluer than that of the Kennedys at that time) but she’s also making it what she wants it to be, because this is her greatest act as First Lady. As much as Jack and Joe Sr. and Bobby and Ted adored Jackie, she didn’t get along with the women of the family because I think tbh there was some intimidation going on within both sides and she never fit in, but damn, in this moment, she gets to MAKE the family.

The movie also both embraces and shies away from Sentimental Jackie, which we so often see. Jackie is usually either a bitch who didn’t really love her husband but is annoyed with his embarrassing infidelities and is in it for the glory, or a weepy messy who’s always on prescription drugs to dull the pain and going “Jaaaaaaack” whenever he comes home after fucking some lady. This Jackie is ABSOLUTELY played as deeply in love with her husband, and in some ways more sure of his love for her than I think most fictionalized Jackies are, in a very period-appropriate way. Sure, her husband has mistresses. But he’s also a brilliant man in her opinion, and he puts her on a pedestal and she’s the one he comes home to, she’s the First Lady, she’s the mother of his children, so... The infidelities are painful, but not the end of the world. There’s a line she says to a priest in possibly my favorite part of the movie where he sort of broaches another part of her pain they’ve only alluded to--the affairs. And she fucking SNAPS, it’s one of the only times she really loses control, being like “I was the goddamn First Lady of the United States, don’t you dare pity me” and it’s GREAT.

Now. If you’re looking for a biopic, this isn’t it. It’s a study in grief (grief for a beloved husband, trauma over how he died which is very graphically portrayed, grief for everything that will never be) and a character study of Jackie. The entire Kennedy story isn’t as delved into as it should have been. And to be honest, the biggest gap here is Bobby Kennedy. If you’re going to tell a story of Jackie Kennedy’s grief, you gotta feature more Bobby. I mean lbr I’m fascinated with the relationship anyway, but they completely turned to each other immediately after Jack died. Literally nobody else understood how they were feeling. Jackie devoted her life to this man, giving up so much to make his dreams come true... and so did Bobby. Shit, Bobby and Jackie could finish each other’s sentences, and both professionally and personally they were hugely codependent in the last years of Jack’s life. And Bobby, like I said before, worshiped Jackie at one point in his life. They were both into literature and poems (especially after Jack died, she got him into poetry to help him grieve) and they’d visit the graveside just them two. Bobby’s first concern after Jack died was Jackie; he immediately took up a more paternal role with Caroline and JFK Jr. But this wasn’t just because Jack died, they were genuinely best friends--when JFK was away on a yacht or something after Jackie’s first miscarriage, Bobby was in the hospital with her. Whether they ever crossed that line is irrelevant; if you’re doing a good “Jackie grieves Jack” moment you have to have a good Bobby and vice versa. This guy... has none of the literally insane grief Bobby had (people thought he was gonna lose it for real, including Jackie). He isn’t as acquiescing to Jackie as he reportedly was irl after the shooting, and yes he did resist the massive funeral she wanted from what I’ve read, but this is played a bit less like Bobby Is Going Into Guilt-Driven Paranoia and Is Worried His Niece And Nephew Are Gonna Be Assassinated and more like... ooh, this man is trying to put Jackie down, but she’s gonna have a Feminist Moment and fight him on it.

It’s the one big weak point of the movie, ESPECIALLY SINCE HE ISN’T DOING THE ACCENT AAAAAGH THE ACCENT EMBODIES THE FAMILY LINGUISTS HAVE STUDIED IT AND IT’S SO INDIVIDUALIZED THAT NOBODY ELSE REALLY EVER HAD IT THAT’S HOW RICH AND “YOU CAN’T SIT WITH US” THEY WERE. This is especially glaring because JFK doesn’t have an accent for his little speaking role either which could be fine bc he’s barely alive in the movie but theeeeeen Natalie is WRECKING the Jackie voice, she got it just right. Like fuck, I know this is a Portman Project but you’d think someone would want to not phone it in and maybe get some best supporting actor noms because Bobby Kennedy is a meaty role. Look at Barry Pepper, he was in a legit not great at all miniseries but he killed the role of Bobby and did the accent so well (and I admit Bobby’s is apparently harder to do bc his voice was also super distinct without the accent) and the awards just came rushing in.

Basically: this is a very, very good movie that should have won Natalie Portman an oscar, I think it got so much right about Jackie but it wasn’t quiiiiiite as fucking nerdy as I’d like. Also, I say this as someone whose favorite Kennedy is very obviously RFK (he was shady AF like all of them but he had good ideas and was viciously effective when he wanted to be, tbh his assassination is one of the great “what could have beens” of American history imo). But yeah, I think this is a really impressive, well-directed movie if not necessarily the movie I would have made about the family.

#jackie kennedy #i will... affectionately call her jackie o sometimes but aristotle was a waaaay bigger jerk than jfk by all accounts #so i think of her as a kennedy #Anonymous

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calmingbreese · 7 years

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Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas Robert Kennedys biography by Evan Thomas may be one of my favorite nonfiction books. It has good style, is extremely detailed, uses and lists a wide variety of sources, and is focused on a man who I have come to admire. For the most part, I was a bit indifferent towards politics before starting the book. I wanted to follow the law so that the government didn’t bother me. However, since I’m approaching voting age, I need to recognize the bit of responsibility that my government and society have given me. It would be both irresponsible and immature for me to not make use of my ability to vote, and the life of Robert Kennedy strengthened this resolve to participate in government both responsibly and ethically because of his good character. The book begins with a sort of in media res, talking about Robert F. Kennedy (I’ll just use RFK) but then returns to his childhood. RFK was the third son of Joe Sr., after Joe Jr., John F. Kennedy, and before his younger brother Edward “Ted” Kennedy. As a child, he was shy and mostly excluded from the many family dinnertime debates. Joe Sr., who was an ambassador under Franklin D. Roosevelt, kept his children informed and thinking about politics (mostly Joe Jr. and JFK in the early years). RFK was mainly excluded from such debates, and was frequently called his mother’s “pet.” He would eventually go to Harvard – likely because of Joe Sr.’s bootlegging money and political relevance – although he had lacking grades (RFK later mentions that he got a D in economics). These same low grades would get him into the University of Virginia for law. RFK was much more religious than his elder brothers. He served as an altar boy and was required to go to mass three times per week (but often went more). Once, he prayed for more than three hours at a time, as mentioned in the biography. Coming from a church that seems less devout and zealous on a wider scale, RFK’s devotion was inspirational for me and made me reconsider how I structured my own spiritual life. RFK would soon be employed under Senator McCarthy, who is now a famous anti-communist and had ties to Joe Sr. RFK would join the Rackets Committee, where he pursued organizations like the Teamsters and the Mafia, who held control of local governments with relatively little resistance. Kennedy made lots of enemies, such as Teamster Jimmy Hoffa and his friends. The two were almost comedic in their restless pursuit against each other. Hoffa, however, would eventually be on the losing side and be placed in jail. Robert Kennedy had an amazing work ethic. Throughout his career, and more so in his 1968 campaign, he would constantly operate with four hours of sleep. There was always something for RFK to do: research on the gangsters in his time in the Rackets Committee, connect with businessmen and politicians to aid his brother’s campaign, plotting to overthrow the communist Cuban government, advising his brother, discussing with civil rights leaders, meeting with the poor and needy, battling with J. Edgar Hoover, reading. He was rich, but he was always working, and willing to work. I respect that. After his brother was elected, RFK reluctantly became the attorney general and gained power over the CIA. He came in more contact with the African Americans, who were still struggling in the south with Jim Crow. RFK could be especially harsh to his coworkers and strangers, but would express his compassion through the blacks, migrant workers, and the poor. RFK would be the man to send U.S. marshals to protect an African American student enrolling in Ole Miss, in a crazy riot where citizens who shot at U.S. Marshals. He warily supported the Freedom Riders and occasionally provided protection for Martin Luther King Jr. Among the most touching parts of the book include Robert Kennedy’s visit to South Africa, where he gave confidence to the anti-apartheid blacks, and his interactions with Cesar Chavez. Robert Kennedy showed that he was a compassionate man and conscious of how easy his life was. Returning from a visit to a poor community in Mississippi, he said, “You don’t know what I saw! I have done nothing in my life! Everything I have done was a waste! Everything I have done was worthless!” It makes me worry when I think about myself, you know? The good that I do personally won’t reach the poor and starving who need it more, especially those in other countries. I think I love RFK simply because we share so many ideals. As the attorney general and aide to the president, RFK would grow much closer to his brother. Seeing Thomas’ description of their mutual support and differences in character was amazing. RFK would express things that would be overly aggressive or taboo towards other members of the cabinet if said by the president, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis. After JFK’s death, Robert Kennedy entered a period of despair and depression that would continue until his eventual assassination in 1968. Robert Kennedy turned to literature for consolation. So, including RFK’s works, those of the biographer, and authors RFK admired, here are some quotes. “I took better care of my kids because I saw how he took care of his.” San Roman, a Cuban involved with the Bay of Pigs invasion (pg 179) “Kennedy saw nothing incongruous about a millionaire’s meeting beside the pool on his Virginia estate with former policemen and ill-paid lawyers and accountants to set traps for a Teamster from the Indiana Coalfields.” (pg 84) “Segregation offended his [Robert Kennedy’s] natural sense of justice.” (100) [Describing the Cuban Missile Crisis] “On the tape recordings of the ExCom deliberations, one can almost hear the blending of their complementary talents, JFK steady and reasonable, RFK urgent and probing. Given the stakes and the pressure, their performance was remarkable. Some myths are true: this was their finest hour.” (pg 233) “A few days after the Baldwin confrontation, he told Ed Guthman that if he had grown up a Negro he would feel as strongly as the Baldwin group.” (pg 245) “God calls men to a heavy reckoning/For overwhelming pride.” Herodotus/Aeschylus (pg 286) “In agony learn wisdom!” Aeschylus (pg 287) “Tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry” Edith Hamilton (pg 287) “The fullness of life is in the hazards of life.” Edith Hamilton (pg 287) “Communities would have to be rebuilt by the people who lived there, he argued, or not at all.” (pg 317) “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples to build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance…” from RFK’s speech in South Africa (pg 322) RFK listed the four barriers to progress as “futility…expediency…timidity… and comfort.” (pg 345) “What we need in the United States is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.” RFK (pg 367) “Americans were afraid in 1968, and they eventually voted their fears and elected Richard Nixon. But Kennedy offered a different vision: of honest courage, the willingness to face up to that which is most troubling – social unrest, racial inequality, war. His life and bearing showed a willingness to keep on trying while knowing that real answers to hard problems are not easy and may never be found. We will never know what kind of President Robert Kennedy might have been… Nonetheless, Kennedy’s life story suggests that had he failed, he would have failed trying his utmost to lift up the poor and weak.” (pg 390) “Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream of things that never were and say, “Why not?” (pg 393) “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life… [he should be] Remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it/ saw suffering and tried to heal it/ saw war and tried to stop it.” Ted Kennedy (pg 393) I loved this book. I plan on giving away lots of my books, but I’m going to keep this one. Robert F. Kennedy was a great man, and Evan Thomas portrays it spectacularly. This essay doesn’t do it justice. You need to read it for yourself.

-Red Octopus

#books and libraries #writing #jfk #jfk assassination #rfk #robert kennedy #biographies & memoirs #review

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helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog · 7 years

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JFK's Only Grandson Jack Schlossberg Makes First Live TV Appearance With Mom Caroline Kennedy

Could John F. Kennedy's grandson, Jack Schlossberg, follow in his footsteps?

That's what many are thinking after the 24-year-old's appearance on the Today show on Friday.

WATCH: Robert De Niro, Cindy Crawford and More Remember John F. Kennedy Jr. in 'I Am JFK Jr.' Trailer

Schlossberg appeared with his mother, Caroline Kennedy, on the morning program, for his first live TV appearance, where he discussed his future in politics.

“I’m inspired by my family’s legacy of public service. It’s something that I’m very proud of,” said Schlossberg, who plans on attending Harvard Law. “But I’m still trying to make my own way and figure things out. So stay tuned -- I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The only grandson of JFK also opened up about the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award, for which he serves on the committee. The honor has been awarded since 1989 to someone who shows an act of political courage, and this year, it will be given to President Barak Obama, as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of JFK's birth.

“In 2008, I was inspired by President Obama’s vision for America and all the promises that he laid out for our country,” Schlossberg shared. “This award really recognizes that he made tough choices over the last 8 years to execute on that vision -- to give people health care, to get serious about climate change, and to reach out to international partners and really improve America’s standing in the world. And that takes political courage.”

WATCH: Caroline Kennedy Shares Two Holiday Videos That Are Delightfully Bizarre

“I think we’re seeing today it’s pretty easy to criticize without offering solutions,” he continued. “And President Obama did not do that. He really had the courage to govern responsibly.”

“President Obama really brought in a new generation just like President Kennedy did,” Kennedy added. “Certainly the generation that was inspired by my father transformed this country in civil rights, the peace core space, etc. And I think that the generation that president Obama brought into public life, my children among them, are going to go on to do great things.”

As for whether her son will go into politics, Kennedy played coy.

“I love my son Jack, I’d support whatever decision he makes,” she revealed.

Schlossberg said the same of his mother.

“I will support my mother in anything she does, I love her so much,” he shared. “But that’s her decision, I’ll leave it at that.”

WATCH: Oliver Stone: 'JFK' Changed My Life 'Forever'

Whether or not Schlossberg follows his grandfather into politics, he admitted that he's still inspired by the late president's words.

“My favorite speech of his is his speech she gave at Rice University explaining to America we should go to the moon,” Schlossberg explained. “And in that speech he said that great challenges are actually great opportunities. I think that’s a really important thing to remember today for my generation when it seems like things couldn’t be any worse and we’re going to inherit a world where’s there’s a lot of unsolved problems.”

“When it seems like things couldn’t be any worse, it’s important to remember those are opportunities and we can rise to the occasion if we choose good leadership,” he said.

WATCH: Jackie Kennedy's Lookalike Granddaughter, Rose Schlossberg, Launches Comedy Web Series

brightcove

#_revsp:new_provider_with_logo_342 #_lmsid:a0VK0000001yfWcMAI #_uuid:d1f3ae4f-9abb-3d0a-b2f4-ac4a2c42bf91

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marjaystuff · 4 years

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Elise Cooper interviews Stephanie Marie Thornton

And They Called It Camelot by Stephanie Marie Thornton brings to life one of America’s iconic figures, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. Although much has been written and told, readers who think they know everything about her legacy will find that there are actually new and meaningful true revelations with this intimate portrait.

The former First Lady was glamorous, strong, intelligent, politically savvy, charming, and stylistic. She was able to adapt to the many difficult situations thrown at her. This legend was full of grace, dignity, with a potent strength to survive.

Although billed as a novel it is more like a memoir, with Jackie telling the readers her thoughts and the events of her life. There is a glimpse of her upbringing in a broken home with a harsh mother, to becoming a debutante, horsewoman, and journalist. But the real story begins after she met Congressman John F. Kennedy, marries him, and they begin their journey, becoming America’s royalty. By telling the story in Jackie’s voice, readers are able to feel her pain and to celebrate her triumphs. They grieve with her over three of her children’s death, the many painful episodes of JFK’s infidelity, and that bloody day in Dallas when Camelot ended. But they will also cheer as they see her formidable ways, not shying away from her husband’s philandering, but confronting him head on. The last few years of their marriage they became partners where both recognized their love for each other and how they respected, needed, and depended on one another.

The last part of the book explores the close relationship between Bobby Kennedy and Jackie, how each gained solace and strength from one another as they tried to cope with President Kennedy’s assassination. Then there was the marriage to Aristotle Onassis, mainly to protect her children. The novel ended on a positive note with Jackie Kennedy Onassis just becoming “Jackie,” making a career for herself as an editor. The story concluded in 1977 with the dedication of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

John F. Kennedy wrote a book entitled Profiles In Courage about historical figures, acts of integrity, bravery, and mental toughness. After reading this fictional account by Thornton, it becomes apparent that had Profiles In Courage been written today, Jackie Kennedy would have been included. Throughout her life she showed the most noble of human values and a formidable spirit with incredible strength and resilience.

Elise Cooper: Why Jackie Kennedy Onassis?

Stephanie Marie Thornton: I knew I wanted to do another famous American of the twentieth century. Although there were shelves of books, enough to fill a library, there were not any fictionalized accounts. I also taught history and realized from my generation (I just turned forty) to the current generation they are not aware of what she did. Jackie lived an incredible and tragic life. I wanted to show how she was more than a pretty face married to an assassinated President.

EC: Is a lot of the events and thoughts fictionalized?

SMT: I would like to think my version is lightly fictionalized because there was a lot of research I did to make it as authentic as possible. I tried to put most everything in that was true, but if not, I wrote it in the author’s notes. It was not necessary to embellish their lives.

EC: Why write it in the first person?

SMT: I did it in order to put the reader there and in her thoughts. I wanted them to be a fly on the wall and see her amazing life through her eyes. I think it was a more powerful story because people could realize what it was like to be Jackie Kennedy and experience all those events.

EC: Were the nicknames true?

SMT: Yes, she called JFK bunny, Joe Kennedy Sr. Poppy Doodle, Caroline bunny, and she was called either Jacks, kid, or kiddo. BTW: John-John was not a nickname the Kennedys called John Jr. The media heard JFK calling his son, John, and after he did not respond the President said it again. So, the media dubbed him John-John.

EC: How would you describe Jackie?

SMT: Elegant, classy, dignified, and poised. She was very private. She was the essence of what a First Lady should be. She has a persona of being a scholar and loner, but also a free-spirit and spontaneous. Because she played so many different roles, she called on these different aspects. She exceeded what her predecessors had done by restoring the White House, all her good will trips, even some without the President. I put in a scene during his 1960 campaign for President where she showed her worth by speaking to a New Orleans crowd in French. There were even times she was not politically correct. For example, she and JFK cursed like sailors, but in my book, she only cursed in French.

EC: How would you describe JFK?

SMT: There were two book quotes that typified him. “Jack holds everyone in the palm of his hands,” and “The potency of Jack’s allure, his ability to make you feel as if you were the only person on earth who mattered to him, even if it was only a façade.” He did make people feel like they were the most important people in the room, until he moved on to the next person. He is a war hero, a man of action, who had great ideas including the Peace Corps and going to the moon. I think he liked to compartmentalize. He was terribly charismatic.

EC: Yet, he also had affairs?

SMT: The hardest part of the book was to walk the fine line of why Jackie stayed with him. She obviously loved him very much, but there were times he was such a dismal husband. She had two miscarriages and he was not at her bedside. She did think about divorcing him over his infidelities considering her mother had done it. Yet, she stayed with him, something I had to grapple with.

EC: It seems around 1962 the marriage took a more positive turn?

SMT: I agree. He was there after Patrick was still born and then there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. They got much closer. In fact, JFK gave her the same gift he gave all the ex-comm team that handled the Cuban Missile Crisis; although hers was engraved JBK + JFK. Maybe he realized this woman he married was very impressive. What was very heartfelt is when he had picked out a Christmas present for Jackie, and she received this beautiful ring after his death.

EC: Marilyn Monroe was a mess?

SMT: I will never be a Marilyn Monroe fan. The way she sang Happy Birthday Mr. President was bad enough. But then she actually called the White House. She also dressed up in a photo shoot as Jackie, while the First Lady was away on a good will trip. She kept claiming she was going to marry the President. I think at this point she was not mentally stable.

EC: What was Jackie’s relationship with Bobby Kennedy?

SMT: It was intriguing. Both of them were so broken after the assassination and became incredibly close emotionally. They leaned on each other. He was her anchor, friend, guard, and comforter. She became his advisor and confidant who encouraged him to pursue his ideals even though she had hesitations.

EC: Jackie was the one to pull the plug on Bobby?

SMT: Yes. After he was shot she flew immediately to his bedside and was the one to sign the paperwork to take him off life support. For me, this was heartbreaking. Of all the Kennedys in that room at that time she was the one who signed the paperwork to let him go.

EC: What was her relationship with Joe Kennedy Sr.?

SMT: He was a father figure to her. Initially he saw her as someone who could further Jack’s career. But after JFK had his back surgery he came to appreciate her. Once she came into her own, she was the Queen of the family.

EC: Her marriage to Onassis?

SMT: She knew that people would hate it, but did it anyway. I am not convinced she would have done it had Bobby not have been assassinated. I put in a line in the book, “They are playing ten little Indians with the Kennedys and my kids are next.” Everything she did was for Caroline and John Jr. She was a great mother. I think she made her way out of the depression after both assassinations for her children. Because Onassis was filthy rich and could provide security to keep them safe, I think she was willing to go to the ends of the earth for her children.

EC: Your next book?

SMT: It will be out next summer. Very few people know about Elizabeth Bentley. She was an American spy and member of the Communist Party who served the Soviet Union during WWII. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and worked with the FBI.

THANK YOU!!

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seniorbrief · 6 years

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This Was Jackie Kennedy’s Incredible Mark on History

AP/REX/Shutterstock

This article was originally written by Carl Sferrazza Anthony and first appeared in the June 2001 issue of Reader’s Digest.

“I’m sixty-two now, and I’ve been in the public eye for more than thirty years,” Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis told a friend in 1991. “I can’t believe anybody still cares about me or is interested in what I do.” How wrong she was.

When she stepped into our lives, she was just 31, the youngest First Lady of the 20th century. She lived in the White House only from 1961 to 1963, yet remained an object of admiration, and even obsession, until the day she died. Part of the fascination with Jackie was due to timing: television exploded as a mass medium at the precise moment she and JFK and their beautiful children became the First Family. We could see them on TV, we loved what we saw, we wanted to see them again. Later, after the assassinations of JFK and RFK, she provided a place to focus the national grief.

She was more, though, than a pretty face on the small screen or the queen in a sad fairy tale. As a modern Supermom, she raised Caroline and John into exemplary adults, avoiding the potholes many of their cousins hit. Just as feminism arrived, she went to work as a book editor, brown-bagging her lunch and sitting in a windowless office until she earned her way up the corporate ladder. She kept on trying at romance, too, marrying Aristotle Onassis and, after he died, settling into a comfortable relationship with financier Maurice Templesman. This spring a tribute to Jackie Kennedy— modern American woman plus some spectacular clothes she wore in the White House—will be on exhibit at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, before traveling to Boston. “It’s an opportunity,” says guest curator Hamish Bowles, “to explore the style and the substance of a woman who defined a generation.” Here, a fresh look at Jackie, and why we still admire her.

Underwood Archives/UIG/REX/Shutterstock

Although she called it Camelot only after JFK’s assassination, Jackie began working on an image for the Administration the moment she and the President moved into the White House. She thought everything through, especially how things looked.

Take, for instance, the many photographs of the family at play, which appeared in magazines like Life, Look and The Saturday Evening Post. Seemingly casual, some of them were in fact professionally lit, and the people in them styled, made-up and posed. Photographer Richard Avedon shot a breathtaking series of photographs of Jackie and baby John. The pictures are as crisp and alluring as the fashion-magazine covers for which Avedon is best known. “She was aware of what the camera did for the children, and for the family,” says Jacques Lowe, another photographer who worked with Mrs. Kennedy.

All of her efforts at creating a Kennedy image came together in the 1962 television tour of the White House. One-third of the nation was watching that night—56 million people. The special, which won Jackie an Emmy Award, displayed her meticulous restoration of the Executive Mansion. But it was the First Lady, not the glorious Empire style of the revitalized Red Room, that riveted the nation. “I remember watching and listening to Mrs. Kennedy more than thinking about the White House,” Barbara Bush later said in an interview. See these rare photos of John and Jackie Kennedy.

Creating Camelot also meant that bad habits were discouraged, at least in public. A lifelong smoker (Marlboros, Salems), Mrs. Kennedy did her best to veto photos that showed her with a cigarette in hand. Her press policy was “minimum information given with maximum politeness.” Her unavailability, in the end, only heightened her mystique.

Palmieri Tony Machalaba Nick Traina Sal/Penske Media/REX/Shutterstock

“I feel as though I have turned into a piece of public property,” Mrs. Kennedy told an acquaintance in early 1961. During the Presidential campaign the previous summer and autumn, the press and the public focused intently on the young Mrs. Kennedy. And small wonder: no candidate’s wife in living memory had looked so good. The blunt cut of her hair, the clean, simple lines of her brightly colored clothing—American women craved the Jackie Look.

Partly it was the sheer novelty of her. Jackie was a new woman for a new time—the ’60s. She waterskied, she danced the twist, she listened to the bossa nova on her White House hi-fi.

Department stores began using models and drawings in ads that looked like Jackie. A movie magazine offered advice on “How to Be Your Town’s Jackie Kennedy,” with penny-wise advice on copying her look. The subject of all this attention left her somewhat bewildered. “What does the way I wear my hair have to do with my husband’s ability to serve as President?” she asked.

The scrutiny became so intense that Jackie realized she needed help from a professional. She turned to New York designer Oleg Cassini, a family friend who had once been one of Hollywood’s top costume designers. As she wrote him, “I refuse to have Jack’s Administration plagued by fashion stories of a sensational nature—or to be the Marie Antoinette of the 1960s.” Cassini recalled his initial meetings with Mrs. Kennedy, when they worked out what she would wear at her husband’s swearing-in:

“She asked me to come meet with her in her Georgetown University Hospital room just days after she gave birth to John], two months before the Inauguration. All the other women [ would be wearing] furs, looking like bears. My concept was to make her look divinely simple in a beige coat and hat. She came out, and was instantly distinct.

“Immediately a style was established. It was not a French look, not an American look, but a Jackie Look. She said to me, ‘You dress me perfectly for the role.’ For the role! And what was the role? First Lady of the country. And First Lady of the world, really, at that moment.”

(You’ll want to steal these 7 timeless fashion tips from Jackie Kennedy.)

CONSOLIDATED NEWS SERVICE/REX/Shutterstock

On Friday morning, November 22, 1963, Jackie put on a Chanel suit in the rooms she shared with the President at the Texas Hotel in Fort Worth. The President, Mrs. Kennedy told friends later, had chosen the suit for her. Within hours, the pink wool jacket and skirt had become a part of history. Mrs. Kennedy wore the suit through LBJ’s swearing-in ceremony, on the long, sad flight back to Washington, and finally for the return to the White House.

On the plane coming East, she began to reflect on how she wanted the White House prepared for the return of the President. As White House usher Nelson Pierce recalled: “That afternoon was spent looking up the details so that we could have things as near as possible the way they were at the time Lincoln was assassinated. It was 4:20 Saturday morning when Mrs. Kennedy came with the President’s body, and at 4:10 we had finished putting up the last pieces of crepe.”

Everyone had an opinion about the funeral details. Catholic Church officials in Washington wanted her to hold the ceremony in the grand Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. She held out for St. Matthew’s, which was smaller—but was where the President had often attended church. Some members of the President’s family wanted him buried in the Kennedy plot in Massachusetts. She decided on Arlington National Cemetery. The Secret Service questioned her decision to walk behind the caisson from the White House to the church.

Jackie stood firm. Familiar as it is, footage of her long walk behind the riderless horse, Black Jack, a pair of boots tucked backward into the stirrups, has lost none of its awful majesty. Recalling Mrs. Kennedy, and the dignity she showed, French President Charles de Gaulle said, “She gave the whole world an example of how to behave.” This is the last thing JFK said to Jackie before he died.

Traina/Penske Media/REX/Shutterstock

Even while attending her husband’s burial, Jackie never forgot her obligation to Caroline and John. Just hours after the funeral, the widowed former First Lady hosted her son’s third birthday party at the White House.

From the time they were toddlers until they left home, Mrs. Kennedy’s children were her priority. Caroline and John drew nearly as much curiosity as their parents. “I think it’s hard enough to bring up children anyway, and everyone knows that limelight is the worst thing for them. They either get conceited or else they get hurt,” Jackie said. “They need their mother’s affection and guidance, and long periods of time alone with her. That’s what gives them security in an often confusing new world.”

She relished the role of everyday mom. For Caroline and her classmates, Jackie managed to get ahold of a pregnant rabbit so that the children could all anticipate the arrival of a litter of bunnies. Recalled Kennedy friend and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., “On Halloween evening in 1962, the doorbell rang. When my fourteen-year-old daughter opened the door to the trick-or-treaters, she found a collection of small hobgoblins leaping up and down. After a moment a masked mother in the background called out that it was time to go to their next house. It was, of course, Jackie.”

After the assassination, Mrs. Kennedy and the children moved into a house in Georgetown. To her dismay, crowds of gawkers still showed up daily for a glimpse of John and Caroline at play or on their way to school. The next year Jackie moved to New York, hoping the big city and an apartment high above Fifth Avenue would offer a refuge. “I want them to know about how the rest of the world lives,” she told the New York World Journal Tribune in 1967, “but also I want to be able to give them some kind of sanctuary when they need it, someplace to take them into when things happen to them that do not necessarily happen to other children.”

Through the ’60s and ’70s, Jackie made JFK as much a part of her children’s lives as she could. They visited some of his favorite places, such as the ranch of an Argentine family friend, where JFK had spent a spring vacation as a teenager. On that trip, John Jr. was too young to grasp what the visit was about, but Jackie said she believed it would all fall into place for him later. “I want to help him go back and find his father,” she said.

Said family friend Fred Papert: “She raised her kids so that all three locked onto each other in a way that families almost never do. They needed one another. They all came through for one another. She really liked them as friends, and they her.”

AP/REX/Shutterstock

Many people reacted with astonishment when Jackie married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis in October 1968, just four months after the assassination of Robert Kennedy. She was 39. He was in his sixties. What was she thinking?

In fact, Onassis had been a Kennedy family acquaintance for years. Rose Kennedy, JFK’s mother, gave Jackie her blessing. As she later wrote, “I told her to make her plans as she chose to do, and to go ahead, with my loving good wishes.” Jackie later said: “When I married Ari, she of all people was the one who encouraged me—who said, ‘He’s a good man. ‘”

One thing Onassis also offered was security. “He was a source of refuge and protection,” said her brother-in-law Sen. Edward Kennedy. “I think she felt safe with him.” Jackie married Ari on his private island, Skorpios, and had at her disposal homes in Paris and Athens, helicopters, a yacht and Olympic Airways—all of it heavily guarded.

Transformed from the Widow Kennedy to Jackie O, she became a sort of irreverent, naughty figure in the American imagination. She withdrew, but people still wanted to see what she was up to. Paparazzi from all over the world obliged, once even photographing her sunbathing with no suit on.

The marriage grew cooler as the years went on, and Onassis went into a slump after the death of his son, Alexander, in 1973. Two years later, he was dead. Jackie and Ari were together for just seven years. For her, it was a healing interlude. ”Aristotle Onassis rescued me,” she said, “at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows.”

Peter Simins/Penske Media/REX/Shutterstock

The period that began in September 1975 was perhaps the happiest time of Jackie’s life. She was doing exactly what she wanted––and not what parents, husbands, family, friends, and the public expected. Now 46, she took an editing job at Viking Press. She had no previous professional editing experience. She was assigned a tiny office, which was what she also got when she moved to Doubleday as an associate editor in 1978. “Like everybody else,” she said, “I have to work my way up to an office with a window.” She finally got a view when she was promoted to senior editor in 1984.

She was an intense, hands-on editor. Colleagues could tell when she was pleased—she would rub her hands together and say, “Hot spit!” Variety was the only consistency of her projects: photography books like Egyptian Time by Robert Lyons and Allure by Diana Vreeland, biographies of Czar Nicholas II and Jean Harlow, recollections by friends of Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, and even a collection of articles from Rolling Stone. Says Doubleday colleague and friend Lisa Drew:

“Part of the joy of publishing is that you learn from every book. Much was made in the press about how she got her own coffee and did her own xeroxing. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was written about as if a miracle had occurred. It amused us how people outside were dazzled by this celebrity. Brighter, funnier, nicer than many, yes—but she was just another person.”

In February 1994, when she was 64, it was announced that the former First Lady had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, often a treatable form of cancer. Five years earlier, she had responded to my written questions and then corrected the manuscript for one of my books, First Ladies: The Saga of the Presidents’ Wives and Their Power, 1789-l990. Judging from her notes, I sensed she was able to view the notion of being the world’s most famous woman with detachment. In the middle of a sentence that read “If there was one sphere where Jacqueline had great influence, it was fashion,” she scribbled, in blue ink, ‘Much to her annoyance!’”

She was pleased with the book because she felt it would move people’s opinions of her beyond mere style: “I hope now that people will realize,” she said, “that there was something under that pillbox hat.”

Now, take a look at these rarely seen photos of Jackie Kennedy.

Original Source -> This Was Jackie Kennedy’s Incredible Mark on History

source https://www.seniorbrief.com/this-was-jackie-kennedys-incredible-mark-on-history/

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15andmeowing · 7 years

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It's Monday! What Are YOU Reading?

It’s Monday! What Are YOU Reading?

Hi everyone! We are joining Book Date’s It’s Monday! What Are YOU Reading? and Comedy Plus’ Awww.. Mondays Blog Hops.

Joanie has today off with pay because Phoebe told her that last Monday was a holiday and she should have gotten twice as many treats for working. They threatened to report me to NUCAT.

I just completed The Good Son: JFK Jr. and The Mother He Lovedby Christopher Anderson. My mom…

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johnfkennedyjunior · 5 years

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The Good Son: JFK Jr. and the Mother He Loved.

Book by Christopher Andersen

A New York Times Bestselling Author At the heart of The Good Son is the most important relationship in JFK Jr.'s life: that with his mother, Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Andersen explores JFK Jr.'s reactions to his mother's post-Dallas depression; how Jackie felt about the women in her son's life; and the senseless plane crash that took his life. This riveting, bittersweet biography offers new insights into the intense, tender, often stormy relationship between this iconic mother and son.

Released: October 28, 2014

#books

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usaemporiumllc · 7 years

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via Twitter https://twitter.com/usaemporiumllc

#IFTTT #Twitter

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bangkokjacknews · 3 years

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Who, or What, Killed Marilyn Monroe?

The fourth of August 1962 seemed an ordinary Saturday in the life of Marilyn Monroe, in so far as her life could be called ‘ordinary’ at this stage, the world-famous actress now beset by depression and paranoia.

Despite daily therapy with her personal psychiatrist Dr Ralph Greenson, who lived nearby, Marilyn’s anxiety attacks and bouts of depression had worsened and she had accidentally overdosed, and her stomach had been pumped, on more than one occasion. Marilyn had become increasingly dependent on Dr Greenson and she consulted him constantly about her troubled love life that, by this time, had included relationships with both Kennedy brothers, Frank Sinatra, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, playwright Arthur Miller and scientist Albert Einstein. She also believed both the Mafia and the FBI, not to mention the CIA, were keeping an eye on her in the wake of the Profumo scandal that summer, where Russian spies had compromised English cabinet minister John Profumo by fixing him up with a young prostitute. And she was right to worry, because Monroe’s relationships with both JFK and Bobby Kennedy – right in the middle of America’s crisis over the Soviet plan to base nuclear missiles in Cuba, within striking distance of the mainland – had led to her being considered a serious security risk. Marilyn had spent the previous evening at home, and in good spirits, with her press agent and best friend Pat Newcomb, who had then stayed over. But when Pat arose the following day, Marilyn appeared ‘grouchy’ and claimed not to have slept very well. Her housekeeper Eunice Murray later called in Dr Greenson after Monroe asked her if there was ‘any oxygen in the house’. As the afternoon progressed, Marilyn’s condition deteriorated: she appeared increasingly drugged and lethargic. Greenson had been trying to break Monroe’s dependency on Nembutal, but knew she had received a new prescription the previous day. He knew, furthermore, that supplies of her favourite barbiturate were stashed around the house and that she could have taken these at any time. Pat Newcomb left at 6 p.m. After another session of therapy, Greenson left at 7 p.m. At 7.15 Joe DiMaggio Jr, her ex-husband’s son, dropped by; Marilyn was happy to learn he was breaking off his engagement to a woman she did not like, and DiMaggio Jr later confirmed the actress was in high spirits by the time he left, as did Dr Greenson, whom she had rung shortly afterwards to inform him of the good news. Then Eunice claims to have woken at 3 a.m. to see a light shining under Marilyn’s bedroom door and a telephone cable leading from a socket in the hallway into the bedroom, both of which were highly unusual. Finding the door was locked, the housekeeper telephoned Dr Greenson, who rushed over, broke into the bedroom via a window and, at 3.50 a.m., found the Hollywood actress lying naked, face down and clearly dead. However, the veracity of their account began to seem more questionable when it emerged later in the investigation that, not only would Monroe’s deep-pile bedroom carpet have ensured that no light could have escaped from the room, but that the door had no working lock. Then the plot appeared to thicken further when it was revealed that Arthur Jacobs, Monroe’s publicist, had been informed of her death at between 10 and 10.30 p.m. the previous evening: he could confirm the time as he had to leave a musical performance of another client to arrange the ‘press issues’. So we know that before poor Marilyn’s body was even cold, a tissue of lies had already started to be spun. The autopsy, carried out by Dr Thomas Noguchi – who was later to conduct the high-profile autopsies on Natalie Wood and Robert Kennedy – concluded that Marilyn had died as a result of acute barbiturate poisoning. This led the psychiatric experts involved with the inquest to a conclusion of ‘probable suicide’. But Los Angeles County Prosecutor John W. Milner – who had attended the autopsy and who was privy to all the facts surrounding her mysterious death – was furious. He didn’t believe then that Monroe had taken her own life, either deliberately or by accident, and today, over forty years later, he still doesn’t. So what really did happen to the celebrated Hollywood actress? Norma Jeane Mortenson arrived in the world at 9.30 am on 1 June 1926, at Los Angeles County Hospital. Her mother, Gladys Pearl Monroe Baker, had already walked out on Norma’s father (well, according to the birth certificate at least), ostensibly because he had become ‘boring’. Gladys was later diagnosed with hereditary paranoid schizophrenia, a mental condition that also afflicted her mother and father and which had contributed to the deaths of two of her grandparents. When Norma Jeane was only seven years old, her mother was committed to a ‘rest home’ and the little girl was then moved around various foster parents and institutions. With nowhere to live – her latest foster parents were moving to the East Coast and couldn’t take her with them – she got married, to James Dougherty, just two weeks after her sixteenth birthday. When America entered the war in 1941, her new husband joined the navy and Norma Jeane went out to work. At just seventeen, she was already drinking heavily and suffering from depression. As a little girl, she had dreamed of stardom: ‘Even as a child I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night that there must be thousands of little girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But, I thought, I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.’ It must have seemed a faraway dream when she was clocking in at the munitions factory every morning at 7 a.m. During the summer of 1944, Yank Magazine commissioned a feature on young American women at work for the war effort. Private David Conover had been moving along the assembly line taking pictures of the most attractive employees when he came upon a young blonde who was busy fitting propellers. Although her face was covered in dirt and grease, he stopped in his tracks, stunned by her unusual beauty. Private Conover immediately offered Norma five dollars an hour to model for him, and the resulting pictures attracted the attention of the Blue Book Modelling Agency. Within a year, Norma Jeane had featured on the front cover of no less than thirty-three national magazines, catapulting the young lady towards national stardom. Her first marriage proved an early casualty of her obsessive, meteoric rise. In July 1946, one month after her twentieth birthday, Norma Jeane secured a contract with 20th Century Fox. The studio wanted her to have a more glamorous name and, after a few duff suggestions, the casting director Ben Lyon came up with ‘Marilyn’, after his own favourite actress, Marilyn Miller. Then Norma Jeane offered her mother’s maiden name. The studio director wearily asked what it was, but his eyes lit up when she replied ‘Monroe’. There then followed four years of success and failure in both her career and love life leading to, after the sudden death of a lover, her first real suicide attempt when she swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills. Throughout the 1950s, Marilyn became more and more ubitiquous, appearing in hundreds of films, TV shows, musicals and radio broadcasts. By the end of the decade, Norma Jeane had become Hollywood’s golden girl, mixing with the rich, famous and powerful. But the recognition she craved didn’t make her happy. Her marriages to two much older men, each highly acclaimed in his field, clearly illustrated her search both for security and a father figure. Her short union with baseball star Joe DiMaggio was quickly followed by her third marriage, this time to America’s most celebrated playwright, Arthur Miller. It was after her divorce from Miller, in 1961, that things began to go badly wrong. Was it really a coincidence that this was when her affair started with the most powerful man in the world, President John F. Kennedy? After the divorce, Marilyn, increasingly dependent on alcohol, barbiturates and Dr Greenson, became friends with English actor Peter Lawford and his wife Patricia, the sister of JFK. It was at one of their parties that she first met the Kennedy brothers. Unsurprisingly, this drew the attention of the FBI, whose head Edgar J. Hoover was obsessed with building a file on the growing sexual adventures of the President and his brother, the attorney general. The Mafia were also taking a close interest in the actress. The FBI among others believed that the Kennedy brothers’ father Joe had been a partner of the infamous Mafia don Frank Costello during the Prohibition years. It was said that decades later, when JFK stood for President, the old man had called on the Cosa Nostra to help buy votes. Some Mafia members believed the Kennedys then owed them a favour or two and expected a close, lucrative relationship with the Kennedy administration once John had taken office. So they were furious when Bobby Kennedy, the newly appointed attorney general, made it his personal crusade to crack down on organized crime, making the wrong sort of enemies in the process, many of whom vowed revenge. Even so, most Mafia members realized the Kennedy family, the biggest mob of all of them, now had public opinion firmly on their side, not to mention all the state police forces and the US military at their instant beck and call. Any act of revenge on the Kennedys would have to be carefully thought out, more carefully than the customary sort of mob hit on a rival family member. In 1962, exposing their many infidelities to the press was thought the best tactic to diminish public support for the Kennedy brothers. Monroe had found herself in bed, so to speak, with some of the most dangerous people in the world, and still didn’t realize it. Instead she was naïvely dreaming of becoming America’s First Lady. Marilyn’s love affair with the President became common knowledge among the American power set during the first six months of 1962, but remained unknown to the public. Edgar Hoover’s FBI were busily building a file detailing Monroe’s movements and had even, some believed, placed listening devices inside her home. Increasingly worried of her ‘chattering’ about their relationship, the President was even more alarmed by his brother-in-law’s discovery that she kept a detailed diary of their sexual encounters and what they had discussed. JFK abruptly ended the affair in July, using his brother Bobby as the messenger. Unfortunately for the administration, Bobby too then fell under the actress’s spell. Marilyn, still bitter from her rejection by the President, did not reciprocate his feelings but she embarked on a love affair with him nevertheless. Marilyn had no intention of marrying the smitten younger Kennedy, however, even on one occasion asking Dr Greenson, ‘Oh, what am I to do about Bobby?’ Greenson was more concerned about the psychological damage such affairs were having on his client and about her personal safety. The international threat to America was from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the domestic problem was coming from the Mafia. And Marilyn knew too much about too many people, mobsters and politicians alike, and more than one group was worried that she might spill the beans. Her increasingly erratic behaviour had turned her from a trophy blonde to an outright liability. When Bobby unceremoniously broke off their affair by having the private telephone line he had installed for her disconnected, Marilyn was devastated. She bombarded the White House switchboard with telephone calls but was never connected with either Kennedy. Distraught, she had told friends – including Peter Lawford, JFK’s brother-in-law – that she planned to ‘come clean’ about her relationships with both brothers in revenge for the way she felt she had been treated by the pair. However, in July 1962, during the final two weeks of Marilyn’s life, there were reports that she was feeling more positive about the future than she had been. She had received several new offers of film parts, her friends were many and supportive and, despite everything, she was still optimistic of reviving her relationship with the President. In this frame of mind, she happily accepted an invitation from Frank Sinatra to a weekend at Cal-Neva Lodge on Lake Tahoe, believing the Kennedys to be behind the invitation. Accounts of this weekend differ but they are all highly coloured. One goes that she was taken aback to discover the brutal gangster Sam Giancana was there, apparently to warn her against creating problems for the brothers. Another version has Joe DiMaggio arriving unexpectedly at the lodge and becoming furious with both Sinatra and the Kennedys for luring his ex-wife there, plying her with drugs and alcohol and taking compromising photographs to be used as blackmail should she ever threaten to expose her affairs with John and Bobby. The following weekend Marilyn was found dead at her home in Brentwood, California, having apparently committed suicide, and the undisputed facts reveal mystery and intrigue involving some of the best-loved and most influential people on the planet. According to the official version of events, after Joe DiMaggio Jr left at around 7.30 p.m., Peter Lawford then phoned Marilyn at 7.45 p.m. to invite her to a party. He testified Monroe sounded heavily drugged – somewhat contrary to the upbeat mood reported by DiMaggio – and that she failed to respond several times before shouting her own name repeatedly down the phone. Lawford then quoted how Marilyn had ended the conversation: ‘Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the President and say goodbye to yourself because you are a nice guy.’ She then hung up. The next official evidence we have is the statement of Eunice Murray, the housekeeper, who claimed to have seen the light on under the bedroom door at 3 a.m. and telephoned Dr Greenson. He then confirmed he arrived and broke in through Marilyn’s bedroom window at 3.50 a.m. to find the actress dead, at which point he telephoned the police. At 4.25 a.m. Sergeant Jack Clemmons of the Los Angeles Police Department received a phone call from Dr Engelberg, Marilyn’s personal physician, who told him his patient had committed suicide. Given what we know about the evidence today, it would have been quite impossible for Engelberg to diagnose suicide at that stage, although Clemmons is adamant that that is what he was told. When the police officer arrived at the scene, he noted three people with the body, Eunice Murray, Dr Greenson and Dr Engelberg, who led Clemmons to the body and made a point of bringing to his attention the bottles of drugs on the bedside table. Clemmons noted: ‘She was lying face down in what I call the soldier’s position. Her face was in a pillow, her arms were by her side, her right arm was slightly bent. Her legs were stretched out perfectly straight.’ The policeman’s immediate reaction was that she had been placed in that position. Having been at the scene of numerous suicides, he knew that, contrary to what most people believed, the victim of an overdose of sleeping tablets tends to suffer convulsions and vomiting before they die, often ending up in a contorted or twisted pose. The testimony of the three witnesses convinced Sergeant Clemmons that they were lying. Publicly all three witnesses maintained their original story that the body was found at 3.50 a.m.; privately they stated the body had been discovered four hours earlier but they had been ‘not allowed’ to contact the police until 20th Century Fox had given them permission. Clemmons then noted that no light – let alone the telephone cable reported by Eunice Murray – was able to pass under the bedroom door and that it had no working lock. Crucially, there was no drinking glass in the room, or indeed any kind of receptacle that could have contained the water or alcohol Marilyn would have needed to swallow so many pills. The police officer took a closer look at the window Dr Greenson claimed to have broken to gain access to the room, and found broken glass on the outside, consistent with the window having being broken from inside the room and not from the outside. The autopsy conclusions were that, judging by the high level of sedatives – 8 milligrams of hydrate and 4 milligrams of Nembutal in her blood count and a much higher concentration, 13 milligrams of Nembutal, in her liver – and the absence of any foul play, Marilyn had taken her own life. These findings were soon disputed by some key forensic experts, however, who pointed out that no traces of Nembutal had been found in either her stomach or intestinal tract. There was also no evidence of the yellow Nembutal capsules, which would not have fully dissolved by the time the autopsy took place. An injection was ruled out because no needle marks were found and because such a high dose would have caused instant death plus residual bruising around the site of the puncture mark. So, as Marilyn appeared to have taken nothing orally and nothing directly into the veins, forensic experts concluded that the drug had been administered by way of an enema. This was consistent with the bruising on the victim’s lower back and would account for the ‘abnormal discoloration of the colon’. In other words, the drugs that killed her must have been introduced anally. Now, I’m no expert, but I think that most people would agree that to prepare a fatal cocktail of drugs and then push it up your own backside is an unlikely way to commit suicide. So despite Monroe’s famously erratic behaviour and ongoing depression, suicide has been ruled out by every mental-health professional reviewing her case. Indeed, it is alleged that detailed notes made of taped conversations with her psychiatrist only a week before her death reveal her as anything but suicidal. But those tapes, along with other vital evidence and statements, have all gone missing. John W. Milner has been consistently clear in his views: ‘Marilyn Monroe bears the stigma of suicide. This is wrong and must be corrected.’ So, if we are to rule out suicide then there are only two other possibilities for us to consider: accident or murder. But if Marilyn did die as a result of a rectally administered barbiturate enema, then it is hard to see how that could be an accident. Let’s be honest, who could claim that they pushed a poisonous drug up Marilyn Monroe’s rear by accident – and surely she would have noticed? Marilyn’s psychiatrist Dr Greenson and doctor Dr Engelberg were working together to reduce the insomniac actress’s Nembutal dependency by substituting it for chloral hydrate, but taken together they are a powerful and dangerous mixture. One suggestion is that Engelberg had given Monroe a further prescription of Nembutal and forgotten to inform Greenson. As Engelberg was having serious marital problems at the time, other, more personal, matters may have occupied his mind. Perhaps Marilyn – who once commented, ‘Yes, I enjoy enemas, so what’ – had been taking Nembutal throughout the day, explaining its presence in her liver and blood. Without knowing this, Dr Greenson could then have prepared a chloral hydrate enema to be administered by Eunice Murray, which became deadly on interaction with the Nembutal. Read the full article

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