President John F. Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and children at home in Hyannis Port, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

2011/09/26
By Umapagan Ampikaipakan

WE are voyeuristic by nature. We enjoy peering into the lives of others. Minding everyone else’s business but our own. An all too human trait further exasperated by this era of instant and constant expression. It is witnessed by our addiction to social networking, by our fascination for celebrity gossip.

We are busybodies. We find enjoyment in it. A product of our innate curiosity as human beings combined with that all too German — and all too real — notion of schadenfreude. Which is why there is nothing quite like a good bit of gossip to really get us going.

Two weeks ago, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of former United States president John F. Kennedy’s first year in office, the Kennedy family released a set of seven conversations between Jacqueline Kennedy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Recorded in 1964, just four months after the president’s assassination, these conversations — candid, canny and cutting — were supposed to be locked away for 50 years after the first lady’s death, but were released early after careful consideration by her daughter, Caroline.

By way of background, it is important to note that Jacqueline only ever gave three significant interviews after JFK’s death. The first was to Theodore H. White in Hyannis Port, only a few days after the president’s funeral, in which Jackie famously compared her husband’s presidency to the Broadway musical Camelot.

The second set of conversations were with William Manchester who was, at the time, writing a book called The Death of a President. After those sessions, Jackie, who felt she had said too much about Jack’s assassination, sued to keep the content out of Manchester’s book. And while a lot of it did make it into the public sphere, a settlement was reached and the notes of the interviews remain sealed until 2067.

And then there were these seven sessions with Schlesinger.

Make no mistake, this is by far the most important piece of Kennedy lore to be released yet. And while there are no startling revelations contained within these conversations, while there is nothing that would cause us to rewrite — or even revise — history, there is a rich reservoir of anecdotal evidence to both enrich and fortify it.

In the two weeks since their release, these tapes have been the subject of much commentary. For they are conversations that have been unexpectedly unreserved, Jacqueline’s recollections are both pointed and perceptive, both startling and sentimental.

She would feel pity for Adlai Stevenson, a man who would not achieve any of his dreams, while her own Jack would accomplish everything he had set out to do in his life.

She would call Indira Gandhi a “bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman”. She would lay out some surprisingly pre-feminist views about the role of women in politics and in marriage. There are stories about the terror of the Cuban missile crisis.

There are harsh critiques towards Nikita Khrushchev and Charles de Gaulle, towards former presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon.

In the two weeks since their release, Jacqueline Kennedy has once again, 17 years after her death, become the subject of much gossip and speculation.

All of the noise surrounding the release of these tapes, however, have given rise to two very fascinating conversations.

The first being about the decision to publish the interviews in their entirety and without any revisions. Not for the purposes of censorship. And certainly not in order to mould a certain image of the former first lady. But instead to provide context and clarity.

We must remember that these were conversations with a grieving widow, barely 34 years old, who had just lost her husband and her home and two young children to raise by herself.

We must remember that Jackie’s life did not end with Jack’s. She grew up and grew wise in the 30 years that would come. She remarried. She raised her children. She would have undoubtedly reconsidered some of the statements she made in those seven conversations during what had to be the most difficult time in her life.

The second being a question about when such public figures stop being private citizens and become a part of our history instead? How does one balance the wishes of the deceased, to remain that way, with their responsibility to society at large? Because our fascination with the Kennedys goes beyond gossip and scandal. Our need to know more about them isn’t merely the consequence of their celebrity but stems instead from an intense admiration.

But even more than that, don’t the lives and times of our leaders become a matter of open access to government? Surely we have a right to know about every aspect of their public and private lives. Surely their rights to privacy end in the face of historical fidelity.

Be sure to look at the Well Lit. pages in tomorrow’s Life & Times for a full review of Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy by Caroline Kennedy and Michael Beschloss

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