High life
Hypocrite
Taki
New York Imagine what the vultures of the press would have written if Richard Nixon had decided to leave Patricia after the gubernatorial race of 1962, the one he lost to Pat Brown, the present Maharishi's father. Imagine also the amount of vituperation that would have been aimed at Nixon had he decided to announce his divorce on, say, 24 or 25 November 1963. Finally, imagine to what levels of vitriolic abuse the Fourth Estate would have stooped had it discovered that Nixon had cheated at school, been thrown out and eventually reinstated because his father had close friends in high places, or that he had driven off a bridge while drunk and, after pretending that nothing had transpired, had taken nine hours to confess that a young woman had drowned.
Friends of Ted and Joan Kennedy are blaming the couple's decision to divorce on the Senator having 'conned' his wife once too often. It seems that when he decided to offer himself as a candidate against Carter, he visited the long-suffering Joan — who was drying out in Boston — and promised her that he would turn over a new leaf: no more public humiliations, no more grimacing when she came into the room, no more open affairs with various groupies. Joan, a fool if there ever was one, believed him. And, like a dutiful wife, she campaigned tirelessly and conscientiously all round the country. After the Ayatollah had rescued Carter from the Kennedy threat, and Teddy had finally withdrawn, Joan came in for the nastiest surprise yet. Kennedy stopped visiting her two-bedroom flat in a Beacon Street condominium, and, worse, stopped telephoning her. She once again became a non-person; she had had enough and she decided to divorce him immediately. That was when Teddy began calling again. Think of the children, he said to her, while he was busy thinking of' the publicity and his political future. When Reagan — a divorced man — made mincemeat of the flim-flam man, and when during the former's inauguration the hostages were let out, Teddy, ever the opportunist, decided to act. The announcement of the divorce was buried under the avalanche of news about the hostages and the Inaugural.
Edward Curry, the superintendent of Joan Kennedy's building in Boston, has gone on record as saying that Teddy 'hasn't been around in months' since his defeat in the campaign, Joan was angry at his neglect, but she should have known better. Her husband's extra-marital affairs have been the bane of her existence for most of their 22 years of marriage. She once talked about them, saying that 'rather than get mad, or ask questions, it was eas,ier for me to go and have a few drinks and calm myself down as if I weren't hurt or angry.'
I know Joan Kennedy. She was a pretty girl when she was Joan Bennett, but soon after her marriage the Kennedys got to her. She was not very competitive, or tough, for that matter. To be a Kennedy woman you must have the hide of a rhinoceros,. or of Jean Smith or Pat Lawford or Eunice Sh river.
I will not list the names of the girls that Kennedy has been associated with, as all the American papers have already done so, especially the ones owned by the future proprietor of The Times. I don't think that chasing girls is a bad thing. What I dislike is Kennedy's hypocrisy — like the timing of the announcement, like his promises and solicitous attitude to Joan when he needed her, like his support for bussing children for miles to integrated schools while his own go to expensive private ones, like his contempt for civil rights when his women are involved.
I was proved wrong when I predicted that Kennedy would win the Democratic nomination. But I am still convinced that he will one day be President — unless a real feminist gets him first or, unless, more improbably ,the media start investigating, as thoroughly as they did Watergate, the alleged financial connection between Kennedy and a big Japanese car manufacturer. There have been charges that Kennedy's associates interceded to get a lucrative area franchise with the Japanese for a friend and fund raiser of Teddy's. If the rumours are true, I wonder what America's redundant cars-workers will have to say about the working man's champion.
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