Posted on 05/20/2003 10:20:09 PM PDT by Utah Girl
The story featuring the grandmother in New York City who at age 19 sported about with President Kennedy is attracting about as much attention as the proverbial "Small Earthquake in Chile." There is this difference: When small earthquakes are reported, they aren't met with smiles and half-giggles. — There goes Talcahuano again! is met with fatalistic acceptance of fractious acts of nature. What we got in the matter of the grandmother was Tee Hee time, led by Nora Ephron in the New York Times.
The tone of her op-ed tells it all, the accepted view of presidential intern-sex by worldly Americans. Ms. Ephron begins her story by saying that there was no desk, in the presidential press office of Pierre Salinger, for her to sit at. She repeats that several times, to suggest the aimlessness of her mission in the White House. But did she spend any time with him? Just 15 seconds in the Oval Office, when introduced. Ten seconds outside the Oval Office when JFK was heading for the helicopter. What he said in greeting, as he passed by, she couldn't hear, for the noise of the rotor blades. It was not, as far as she could tell, a summons to his bed that night. Indeed, Ms. Ephron wondered why she hadn't been invited to a stall in his harem, wonders whether it's because she was Jewish: " — don't laugh. Think about it, think about that long, long list of women JFK slept with. Were any Jewish? I don't think so."
Maybe that suspicion should have been explored by one of the civil rights acts, demanding that presidential concubinage not discriminate by race, color, creed, or religious affiliation.
But there is just a hint of misgiving in the press. Writing in Time magazine, Hugh Sidey almost edges into wondering whether such exercises in the White House might end as subjects of moral scrutiny. Mr. Sidey was close to the Kennedy circle and he is one of the sensible intelligences in town. The story about the grandmother, back when she was l9 years old working in the White House as a sexual stimulant for the president (she didn't even know how to type), brought Mr. Sidey to reminisce. He met with some old-timers upon the disclosure of the grandmother. They remembered that particular lady, though this took hard concentration, there being so many who passed by. "Some gossip out of an earlier summit in Nassau," Sidey wrote, "was that Kennedy told Macmillan he had to have sex once a day or he would get a headache. This story has been largely discounted, but now" — Sidey the moralist shows signs of life — "but now it has new currency." Are there any consequences to the successive revelations of presidential debauchery? "The steady procession of scandal is nibbling away at his credibility as a leader. The excess, the recklessness of his actions stuns almost everyone. Old gossip gets new legs. . . . [There's] the one about a friend's alluring wife, whom he propositioned at a reception. When she said, 'I'm married,' he replied, 'So am I. What of it? '"
Well, if word of these excesses is really out there nibbling away, herewith my own contribution to that cause.
What John F. Kennedy did was despicable.
Never mind his abstract indifference to adultery. What he did was to seduce a l9-year-old girl working in the White House under his command. A Great King, seeking that day's vessel for his runaway appetite. The commander in chief opportunizing on his rank in order to overwhelm a teenager who, as Sidey reports, was once spotted in the presidential limousine in Bermuda, "sitting on the floor of the car like a child playing hide-and-seek." It is simply disgusting, to use a word which, like virtue, has lost its license.
When Clinton did it, the excuse made its way to dominance that, well, it was his private life, and in any event hardly sufficient grounds for impeachment. In fact (remember?), it was rather fine of him to deny under oath having done it; anybody out there ever heard of noblesse oblige?
It will be interesting to see if there are in fact any consequences to that loss of credibility Hugh Sidey cites. Will they change the name of Avenue John F. Kennedy in Paris? Well, that may be going too far. Change the street's name in . . . Monaco? Vatican City? Rename the airport?
Just how will the touted reduction in reputation reveal itself? Not in historian Robert Dallek's book, which blew the grandmother — he is the most indulgent Camelotian in town, going so far in his book as to express certainty that if JFK had lived, Vietnam would never have happened.
It's bad stuff. Sidey goes all the way, with his mix of disgust and forbearance and a little exploitation of his own, giving as title to his page in Time, "All the Way with J.F.K." You can't go much further.
That's what I thought too. But my local morning DJ's were heaping scorn on Kennedy this morning, with a song parody of Mimi and JFK. Their strategy may be backfiring. In stead of rehabilitating Clinton, they're just dragging Kennedy down to his level (which is apparently where he deserves to be).
Well said. The Soviets perceived Kennedy as weak and attempted to exploit that weakness at every turn. The USSR would never have dared to put missiles in Cuba if Nixon or Eisenhower were in the Oval Office. Conversely, the Soviets perception of Reagan was the opposite--they knew he would not back down.
"Curse from Satan" more appropriate?!
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