[beckett]

I don't necessarily doubt what you say, but I've heard these charges proffered quite often over the years and yet I have never seen a actual woman's name associated with them. No Judith Esner, no Kate Summersby, no Paula Jones---none of the names of these supposed dozens of babes that LBJ bedded have ever made their way into print. Why is that?

[gusopol3]

may I ask you a question slightly off the subject? As I sit here I'm looking at Hamilton's Reckless Youth on my shelf, a book I half-read about 10 years ago. I remember marveling at the time at the paucity of JFK biography that had been produced over thirty years. I had read a book by a U. of Wisconsin Stevens Point Prof a few years before (title had the word "Character" in it but I don't really remember either the title or author), who talked about the cloak of secrecy that the Kennedys had been able to throw over even the tape of Marilyn Monroe's MSG Happy Birthday in 1962. To that point, c. 1987, he believed the public had never seen it, nor had he (subsequently, of course, everybody has seen it). Reckless Youth traced the savage contempt old Joe had dumped on Rose for years, etc., etc. (having made, or at least renewed those revelations in that book, and then adopting the views in this piece makes Hamilton look strangely David Brockish) and, I think, was considered a potentially iconoclastic blockbuster (of course Seymour Hersh subsequently mined that vein, only to find how little difference it made.) Shortly after, Richard Reeves produced his book, almost as though a Kennedy lapdog sent into the fray to deflect attention from the Hamilton book. Do you think the Kennedys had that kind of power over the publishing industry for that long, to hold off any disruptors of the Manchester woven Camelot for thirty years?