The Kennedy Cult, Truth and Fiction

With apologies to Mr. Dickens, it was the best of times and the worst of times. The best was New York nightlife, Studio 54 and late nights at Elaine’s, all before smart phones and the World Wide Web; the worst was the AIDS epidemic sweeping New York City. Andy Warhol reigned culturally supreme with his merry nocturnal band of gays, his enormous entourage viewing their own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure. Their existence was devoid of meaning except to attain celebrity. Andy himself had given me a column in his magazine Interview, and I was known as the only heterosexual in his employ. I was also a columnist for Esquire, the New York Post, and the New York Observer, the pink weekly that was ruined and put to death by the last owner and the Donald’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (He is now Uncle Sam’s genius diplomat dealing in the Middle East while soliciting billions from the Saudis for his private equity fund)

The Observer was launched by one Arthur Carter, a rich businessman with strange tastes and ideas, but someone who respected good writing and gave leeway to talent. The editor was Graydon Carter, no relation,  back then unknown but working hard to impress his betters. He swung from Orlando Furioso to Uriah Heep, especially where a little man by the name of Si Newhouse was concerned. Graydon was constantly buttering up the Conde Nast boss in print, but was on holiday when in a column I wrote that Si was the only man in the city required to buy two tickets when visiting the New York zoo, one to get in and another to be allowed out. (Si had simian features.) Graydon went bananas, ringing assistants to kill the item, but the owner insisted it stay in—and in it stayed. Nevertheless, Newhouse eventually brought Carter to Vanity Fair, and Graydon finally got to meet and greet many billionaires, his dream fulfilled. 

Back then universities still taught students how to think, not what to think, and a recent grad called Candace Bushnell joined us. She navigated the city, lived the nightlife, and came up with what eventually became known as Sex and the City. She also dated Mr. Big, whose identity she never revealed. She and I got along well, making  mischief. 

The reason I am on about this past drivel is because of a television series titled Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. I have not seen it and do not plan to see it, as I’m allergic to most Kennedys (with the exception of Maxwell Kennedy). The movie has obsessed the young, who view that particular time as one of prosperity and peace, sexual freedom, lack of humbug, and racial harmony. Plus ça change, as they say in cynical gay Paree.  

Seeing the past through rose-colored glasses is hardly new. JFK and his time are seen as a fairy tale, as is his son John Jr. and his. Their good looks help. I met many of them when I was young, but we didn’t get along—especially when I told them I was a loyal and good friend of Richard Nixon. The current secretary of health and human services was the most objectionable. Yet it is almost impossible to grasp how Kennedophilia took hold of a nation, and despite car accidents that caused the death of innocents, terrible drug use, and unacceptable behavior towards the fairer sex, the Kennedy mystique lives on. The idolatry that began with the president’s good looks and personal charm turned into a shared cult of the Kennedys. And now with the movie, it’s on its way to the stratosphere. 

A particularly unlikable old bag writing in the Times makes having “made it to the lawn at Hyannis Port” sound like entering Shangri-La, the mythical kingdom of the James Hilton novel of long ago. Those in the know know differently. The Kennedys were a shabby bunch, with a few exceptions. They were called aristocrats by journalists who wouldn’t recognize an aristo if they bumped into one in the middle of Henry Cabot Lodge’s drawing room. JFK acted like one, hence he was one. I was friends with two of the martyred president’s sisters, Pat and Jean, and dated Lee, Jackie’s sister, off and on for years, but I found the men thuggish. 

Although intellectuals have been predicting the imminent collapse of Western civilization from time immemorial, its influence is growing faster than at any time in history. Perhaps not always in a way our forefathers would have wished—music, movies, TV, media, all on a downward trend, but science, technology, democracy and the rule of law on an upward one.  Love Story may be “larded with falsehoods”, but that’s what people love to see and hear about those they consider heroes. It was the best of times for newspapers and magazines and nightclubs, and for freaks like Warhol and his crowd, with Ronald Reagan in the White House and the Soviet Union about to implode. If the young Kennedy and his wife remind people of those days, more power to them.   

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