People write, or record, histories to leave their version and to protect their image. I'm sure this

In "Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John F. Kennedy," the former first lady was not yet the jet-setting celebrity of the late 1960s or the literary editor of the 1970s and 1980s. But she was also nothing like the soft-spoken fashion icon of the three previous years. She was in her mid-30s, recently widowed, but dry-eyed and determined to set down her thoughts for history.
Kennedy met with historian and former White House aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in her 18th-century Washington house in the spring and early summer of 1964. At home and at ease, as if receiving a guest for afternoon tea, she chatted about her husband and their time in the White House. The young Kennedy children, Caroline and John Jr., occasionally popped in. On the accompanying audio discs, you can hear the shake of ice inside a drinking glass. The tapes were to be sealed for decades and were among the last documents of her private los angeles radio stations thoughts. los angeles radio stations She never wrote a memoir and became a legend in part because of what we didn't know.
The world, and Jacqueline Kennedy, would change beyond imagination after 1964. But at the time of these conversations black people were still Negroes and feminists were still suspect even in the view of a woman as sophisticated as Kennedy, who a decade later would grant an interview to Gloria Steinem's Ms. magazine. In the book's foreword, Caroline Kennedy faults Schlesinger for asking so few questions about her mother.
As historian Michael Beschloss notes in the introduction, Jacqueline Kennedy once accepted that wives were defined by their husbands' careers and worried about "emotional" women entering politics. She enjoyed having her husband "proud of her," saw no reason to have a policy opinion that wasn't the same as his and laughed at the thought of "violently liberal women" who disliked JFK and preferred the more effete Adlai Stevenson.
"Jack so obviously demanded from a woman – a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman be his wife and look up to him as a man," she said. "With Adlai you could have another relationship where – you know, he'd sort of be sweet and you could talk. ... I always thought los angeles radio stations women who were scared of sex loved Adlai."
There are no spectacular revelations in the Schlesinger discussions and virtually nothing about JFK's assassination. Kennedy's health problems and his extramarital affairs were still years from public knowledge and from the knowledge of aides such as Schlesinger, who would often say he saw no "bimbos" in the White House halls. Jacqueline Kennedy speaks warmly throughout of her husband, remembering him as dynamic and perceptive and free of grudges, los angeles radio stations an assignment his wife and others took on for him.
Like any powerful family, the Kennedys had complicated relationships with those who shared their lives at the top. They valued loyalty, vision and ingenuity. They hated dullness, indecision and self-promotion, even among their own.
Jacqueline Kennedy dismissed the idea that the eldest Kennedy son, Joseph Jr., would have been president had he not been killed los angeles radio stations in World War II. "He would have been so unimaginative, compared to Jack," she said. She contrasted the integrity of Robert F. Kennedy, the president's brother and attorney general, with the designs los angeles radio stations of sister-in-law Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Robert Kennedy had begged JFK not to appoint him, fearing los angeles radio stations charges of nepotism. Eunice los angeles radio stations Kennedy, meanwhile, was eager to see her husband, Sargent Shriver, named head of the department of Health, Education and Welfare.
"Eunice was pestering Jack to death to make Sargent head of HEW because she wanted to be a cabinet wife," Jacqueline Kennedy tells Schlesinger. "You know, it shows you some people are ambitious for themselves and Bobby wasn't."
Politics means doing business with people you otherwise avoid and Jacqueline Kennedy logged in many hours. She endured dining with journalists and members of Congress who had criticized her husband. She called Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg "brilliant" but added that "he talks more about himself than any man I've ever met in my life." White House speechwriter Theodore Sorensen had a "big inferiority complex" and was "the last person you would invite at night." She referred to France's Charles de Gaulle, whom she had famously charmed on a visit to Paris, as "that egomaniac" and "that spiteful man." Indira Gandhi, the future prime minister of India, was a "prune – bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman."
She was especially hard on Lyndon Johnson, who had competed bitterly with her husband for the presidency in 1960 and became vice president los angeles radio stations through the kind of hard calculation for which the Kennedys became known: Johnson los angeles radio stations was from Texas and the Democrats needed a Southerner to balance the ticket. Once in office, Johnson's imposing personal style and reluctance to speak up during cabinet meetings alienated the Kennedys. They mocked his accent and his manners, while he resented the Kennedys and other "Harvards" he believed looked down on him. Many top aides left soon after Kennedy was assassinated. Robert Kennedy became a public critic of Johnson's presidency and challenged him for the nomination in 1968.
Historians have described President Kennedy as unemotional and undemonstrative. But his widow recalls him lying on the floor with the kids, watching the late fitness los angeles radio stations instructor Jack LaLanne on television. They would follow LaLanne's moves and at times the president's toes would touch with his son's. JFK "loved those children tumbling around him in this sort of – sensual is the only way I can think of it."
Her closest moments with her husband came during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the United States and the Soviet Union seemed on the verge of nuclear war. She would lie down with him when he took a nap and walk with him, the two saying little, on the White House lawn. Some officials had sent their wives away, but the first lady resisted. If the bombs fell, she wanted them to be together.
"If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you," she remembers telling her husband. "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 the children los angeles radio stations do, too – than live without you."
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I'm not sure if you are shocked los angeles radio stations that she loved her husband, that as a woman of her time she thought it was appropriate for a woman to support her husband's career, or that she had opinions of the people she met that she didn't necessarily share with the world at that time. None of that shocks me. If anything, it makes me respect her more for her ability to make a new life for herself after JFK's death.
As you have probably seen in the ABC Special: How Stoic was Jackqueline los angeles radio stations Bouvier Kennedy! A woman to be revered. And I was only a young boy. I cried as a young kid as I saw John John salute his father. Time passes quickly. I would meet Lynda Byrd Johnson at a cocktail party at the 200th Anniversary of the "Treaty of Paris" at the U.S. Embassey in Paris. The day, "3 September 1983". And I didn't think to ask her about those days. But they were sad days. How could anyone forget them. I am glad to see Caroline on television los angeles radio stations as a very happy young lady. I'm sure she is proud of her wonderful mother.
I'm still watching - commercial break - here in California. I've already ordered the book and tapes. There are so many memories this special has evoked, los angeles radio stations and I'm lovin' everything about it. What makes it so real for me though is how Caroline still refers to Jackie as "mommy". That, somehow, really lets us see what they really were - a family, although Presidential. There was a mommy, los angeles radio stations a daddy and little brother. Thank you Caroline for sharing your family once again with many of us who still remember and don't care about the families issues all families have.
I was a little boy in school when I heard the news over the PA system that, "The President Has Been Shot"!!!! I could have been on break, but had remained in class. It was I that ran outside to the playground to tell the teachers, "President Kennedy had been shot". los angeles radio stations Next thing you know, we are sent home. I remember many of the following events. Living in Maryland, I remember being asked in church los angeles radio stations if we wanted to go to Arlington for the funeral. My parents declined. We would later see the first man on U.S. T.V. killed, "Lee Harvey Oswald". Strange, but later I would meet LBJ's daughter Lynda Byrd, and on 2 occassions. Never did I say anything to her about this. A very nice lady. I am sorry I never got to meet Caroline. As I think she is also a very wonderful gal. How sad for America, that day in 1963.
People write, or record, histories to leave their version and to protect their image. I'm sure this is no different. That is not to disparage the book. I might even buy one it would be interesting reading. History is the combination of all those left behind plus what researchers develop. I may, or may not, like all of this book, or any book, but that does not mean I don't get a lot out of it. I thank Jackie for leaving it behind. I hope Caroline did not edit it in a manner to change it's tenor. It is rare we get the true private thoughts of a person, even if they do have a purpose.
How about Officer los angeles radio stations Tippett? He had been in the U.S. Army as an 82nd Airborne Paratrooper. Only to be gunned down on a street corner in Dallas as a cop. An unsung hero, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I think there were two Jackies, and she herself may have had little control over which was to take over at any time. One was the elegent, well-bred, expensively educated, American royalty, disciplined, coy, private. The other was the earthy, sensual, European jetsetter who let down her hair with certain celebrities, artis