Jackie Kennedy
The New York Times and ABC News got their hands on selections from a series of interviews that Jackie recorded with historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. the year after her husband’s assassination.
In the hours of newly released tapes, the former first lady dishes with scathing wit about her husband’s colleagues, foreign dignitaries, and “violently liberal women in politics.” Here are a few other highlights from the dishy Times report on the tapes:
Charles DeGaulle, the French president, is “that egomaniac.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is “a phony” whom electronic eavesdropping has found arranging encounters with women. Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India, is “a real prune — bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.”
The White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, Mrs. Kennedy tells Mr. Schlesinger, loved to pick up the phone and say things like “Send all the White House china on the plane to Costa Rica” or tell them they had to fly string beans in to a state dinner. She quotes Mr. Kennedy saying of Lyndon B. Johnson, his vice president, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?” And Mr. Kennedy on Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Charlatan is an unfair word,” but “he did an awful lot for effect.”
She suggests that “violently liberal women in politics” preferred Adlai Stevenson, the former Democratic presidential nominee, to Mr. Kennedy because they “were scared of sex.” Of Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of the president of South Vietnam, and Clare Boothe Luce, a former member of Congress, she tells Mr. Schlesinger, in a stage whisper, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians.”
…
Her marriage, she remarks, was “rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic.” Her aim was to provide “a climate of affection and comfort and détente” — and the children in good moods.
A lot changed after 1964. Jackie married a wealthy shipping magnate, moved to New York City, and launched her own very successful career as a book editor. She was independent and brilliant and glamorous. And the interview tapes reveal that she was more involved in her husband’s presidency than either of them ever let on. In fact, she probably would have been suited for politics just fine.
In the hours of newly released tapes, the former first lady dishes with scathing wit about her husband’s colleagues, foreign dignitaries, and “violently liberal women in politics.” Here are a few other highlights from the dishy Times report on the tapes:
Charles DeGaulle, the French president, is “that egomaniac.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is “a phony” whom electronic eavesdropping has found arranging encounters with women. Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India, is “a real prune — bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.”
The White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, Mrs. Kennedy tells Mr. Schlesinger, loved to pick up the phone and say things like “Send all the White House china on the plane to Costa Rica” or tell them they had to fly string beans in to a state dinner. She quotes Mr. Kennedy saying of Lyndon B. Johnson, his vice president, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?” And Mr. Kennedy on Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Charlatan is an unfair word,” but “he did an awful lot for effect.”
She suggests that “violently liberal women in politics” preferred Adlai Stevenson, the former Democratic presidential nominee, to Mr. Kennedy because they “were scared of sex.” Of Madame Nhu, the sister-in-law of the president of South Vietnam, and Clare Boothe Luce, a former member of Congress, she tells Mr. Schlesinger, in a stage whisper, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians.”
…
Her marriage, she remarks, was “rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic.” Her aim was to provide “a climate of affection and comfort and détente” — and the children in good moods.
A lot changed after 1964. Jackie married a wealthy shipping magnate, moved to New York City, and launched her own very successful career as a book editor. She was independent and brilliant and glamorous. And the interview tapes reveal that she was more involved in her husband’s presidency than either of them ever let on. In fact, she probably would have been suited for politics just fine.
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