oh, jackie

.

note:  whenever reading anything mkf ever writes about any kennedy, please keep in mind it's always a conflicted collaboration between a young idealist who once viewed them as gods, and the world-weary cynic who now knows better.

*     *     *     *     *

when i first found out that (a) not only had the new widow sat down with arthur schlesinger back in early '64, sloshed some scotch over the rocks, lit a cigarette and recorded hours and hours of recollections of her white house years, but (b) choice excerpts of same were gonna be featured in their unexpurgated form in a two-hour ABC special years before she had intended their release, i sprung a lil' historical boner in spite of myself.

because this was the woman who had famously dubbed lyndon and ladybird "colonel cornpone and his little porkchop", so i was expecting some good shit.

what i shoulda remembered was, this was also the woman who had not only retroactively invented camelot, but had on very short notice managed to research, script, art direct, choreograph, stage-manage and star in the most spectacularly successful state funeral in recorded history.

in other words, i shoulda known from the get-go the whole thing would be nothing but an artful perpetuation of the kennedy myth--but still, i had high hopes.

so i DVR'd it.  and tonight, i watched.  my favorite quote [from her fevered account of the cuban missile incident her husband turned into a crisis and which is a subject for another day]:

Please don't send me away to Camp David ... Please don't send me anywhere.  If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you ... even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House ... I just want to be with you and I want to die with you.

and all i could think was, "really?  then hold still, dammit."