O Jackie! For once in her life, though long after her death, Jackie Kennedy has let us see the flesh-and-blood woman behind the black veil, and it’s plain unfair of me—hypocritical and unsisterly, really—to squirm at the sight. In an oral history released forty-seven years after she spoke with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in 1964, she described Charles de Gaulle as “that e (...)
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All Told?
What Jackie Kennedy’s Memoir Says About Her—And Us
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I feel the same way about what I've heard of Jackie's interview with Kissinger, including amazement that Caroline released it. Caroline did say that her own children were stunned at things their grandmother said (her limited view of a wife's place, for instance). But since this interview was done merely four months after JFK's assassination, I had to wonder if she were still in shock. How could she not have been? I doubt she would have made the same replies years later, after RFK's assassination, a remarriage and second widowhood, and after she'd had her own career in publishing. I think jackie's own view of history, and perhaps JFK's legacy, and even the people she dished (especially Martin Luther King) would have been different later in her life. Whatever the case, it seems we are always interested in what Jackie would have to say!