High life
All the way with JFK
Taki
his may sound crude, but I'm willing to bet my last devalued you-know-what that the sharks that run Hollywood and the TV studios are thanking their lucky stars there was an Oswald. Monday is the 30th anniversary of JFK's assassination, and the frenzy is on. There are documentaries and docudramas, Kennedy family home movies, countless dramatisations of that fateful day in Dallas and even a film based on the life of Oswald with Helena Bonham-Carter playing Marina, the long-suffering wife.
Needless to say, in the forefront of all this is Oliver Stone, a man who is about as confined by strict fact as Dr Goebbels. Stone happens to be a friend of my buddy Chuck Pfeiffer and I've had the bad luck not only to dine with him but even to play tennis against him. He has Hollywood manners, i.e. crude, rude and oleaginous, and his face is so bumpy that in a full moon astronauts try to land on him. Hollywood pinkos adore him, in fact they think he's a true intellectual for having portrayed America and the FBI-CIA as worse than Nazi Germany. Stone has been going around giving non-stop interviews about how JFK's murder ruined the lives of mil- lions of young Americans. Yes, and it also ruined it for some Euros like Fergie and Marie Christine.
I only met JFK once, when he was run- ning for the presidency. It was in Alice Topping's house, during a small dinner dance. He and Jackie arrived after dinner and even then, long before the Camelot myth had begun, he was a star. I guess it was this star quality that made him first President and then a legend. Kennedy's timing was perfect. He stole the 1960 elec- tion just as the American people were emerging from hard times: the Depression, the war and the hard-working Fifties under the no-nonsense Ike. He and Jackie played the media like the proverbial fiddle, while academics turned groupies quicker than you can say Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
However easy it is to say it 30 years later, the poor little Greek boy was never fooled. I had seen the Kennedy clan in action one night at the French embassy in Washing- ton, and it was not a pretty sight. A young girl at the party had been a sacrificial lamb for the new President. The trouble was the lamb fell for the wolf and wouldn't let go. The French ambassador, Herve Alphand, asked me to help, but before I could exer- cise my Greek charm I saw Bobby and Steve Smith go to work on her. She was bundled out in a manner that Al Capone would have approved of, and the Greek hero did nothing.
Bobby Kennedy I saw again and, unlike the rest of America, I thought he got worse and worse. He was aggressive, like a terrier not a lion, and he was a bully, like all Kennedys. JFK was the one who had all the charm, RFK had all the bile. People forget, but it was Bobby who tapped Martin Luther King's telephone and blackmailed the black leader over the latter's sex life.
Bobby's children lack his drive but know how to hate like him. Steve Smith was the best of the lot, but then he was not born a Kennedy. William Smith has Kennedy blood, and proves it periodically. Next year Teddy Kennedy will have served in the Senate longer than any other man from Massachusetts, and that includes Daniel Webster and Henry Cabot Lodge.
In my not so humble opinion, history will judge the Kennedys harshly, if there will ever be a history. There will be Kennedys running for office well into the year 3000, or until hell freezes over, which would be just as bad because the ones down there will be preserved. Mind you, although it's not saying a lot, JFK was the best by far, and even I, a Kennedy-hater, will feel a lump in my throat come Monday.
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