The NY Times offers some excerpts from a series of interviews Jackie Kennedy granted Arthur Schlesinger in early 1964, just a short while after her husband was assassinated. The content of those talks has been sealed all these years, but if the Times article is any indication, the about-to-be-released recordings and book about them will generate a certain amount of soundbite chatter and not a whole lot else.
The excerpts are puzzling. Not because in talking to the trusted Schlesinger Jackie makes some observations that seem petty or catty, or because she is careful to mention her marriage only in glowing terms. After all, she was a 34-year-old woman who had recently undergone a profoundly stressful and traumatic—even searing and bloodcurdling—event. The puzzlement is that Jackie ever wanted some of the more gossipy parts (example: calling Indira Gandhi a “a real prune — bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman”) made public, even a half-century later. She constructed her public image as carefully as she coiffed her hair, and whoever she was when among friends and family (and all indications are that she was bitingly witty, entertaining, and charming), she seemed an intensely private person who guarded her public persona and clothed it in dignity for the majority of her life.
Maybe she just wanted to let her hair down and cut loose, even if this side of her would only air posthumously. And yet the tapes seem carefully crafted: nothing about the assassination, nothing about her husband’s affairs, nothing about his Addison’s disease. We don’t even know how much she knew about those last two things, but it’s probably safe to assume she knew something, and perhaps a great deal. But whatever she knew, she seems to have taken it to the grave.
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely 
September 12th, 2011 at 8:39 am
The whole Kennedy thing was so damned silly.
Way back then, the media was telling us how brilliant and incredible were their wealthy darlings.
Camelot! Royalty!
Bow down, you dirty peasants!
And, Jack and Jackie were just a pair of pinheads.
Remember… Republicans are stupid!
September 12th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Shouting Thomas:
The whole Kennedy thing was so damned silly. Way back then, the media was telling us how brilliant and incredible were their wealthy darlings.Camelot! Royalty!Bow down, you dirty peasants!
Indeed. I had a Kennedy poster in my childhood bedroom, so I was one who bought into the Kennedy myth. The Kennedy myth was shattered for me after a childhood friend worked at the Hyannis compound one summer. Suffice it to say that while the Kennedys presented themselves as rich people with a conscience, they were merely rich people.
I read somewhere that Caroline released them before her mother wanted them released.
September 12th, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Gringo, that’s probably why so many wealthy families nowadays have a non-disclosure agreement for even part-time staff.
I remember watching a video of a Kennedy speech in the ’90s and remarking to my parents, “He really wasn’t handsome.” My mother said that the handsome Kennedys had been Bobby and Teddy, and the most exemplary Kennedys were actually in the Shriver family. My father said the “Camelot” mystique came from, of all things, a musical of the time! (So maybe Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” could be the theme song for the voters who elected Obama?)
BTW I used to bring up JFK when people made fun of Bush’s accent.
September 12th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Forgot to add:
The quotes pulled from the interview make her sound as catty, image-conscious and dated as the ex-wife from Mad Men. The condescending bit about her husband’s Catholicism makes him sound like a fool who couldn’t quell his “superstitious” nature. I laughed aloud at the “lesbians” remark and the painting of Joe Sr. as a disciplinarian. (Discipline = Can’t control your drinking, but beat your kids!)
September 12th, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Eh — my parents were old-line Republicans and never bought into the Kennedy mystique for a moment, and so neither did I. In fact, about the only damn thing about the Kennedys that wasn’t a fake and a fraud was Jackie’s fantastic dress sense and all around good-taste. I’ve often wondered if she wasn’t secretly rather appauled by the Kennedy clan.
September 12th, 2011 at 7:09 pm
I’m as conservative as they come and what I will always remember about Jackie is that after JFK’s death, she kept her children out of the spotlight and raised them very privately. I always admired her for that. I used to live on W77th Street in Manhattan, and would see young John arriving at Collegiate School every morning on my way to work. He was a polite and affable young guy who didn’t know me from Adam but never failed to say “Good Morning” or wave hello to me. So say what you will about Jackie, she did a damn good job protecting those kids. Caroline turned out a bit off kilter, but even she remained very private until recent years. And more than anything else, Jackie had class, with a capital C.
September 12th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Jackie Kennedy: Martin Luther King Jr. “phony”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/12/earlyshow/main20104707.shtml
Jacqueline Kennedy spoke skeptically of King.
She called him “tricky” and a “phony” after hearing about FBI tapes of him and a woman in his hotel room, while noting that JFK had urged her not to be judgmental. (JFK’s own adulterous affairs weren’t yet widely known.)
She said King had mocked her husband’s funeral and Cardinal Richard Cushing, who celebrated Mass at the funeral.
“He made fun of Cardinal Cushing and said that he was drunk at it,” she said. “And things about they almost dropped the coffin. I just can’t see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man’s terrible.”
September 12th, 2011 at 8:52 pm
“I think women should never be in politics. We’re just not suited to it,” she told Schlesinger at one point.
She recalls her husband’s disappointment when he finally met his hero, Winston Churchill, as a senator in the late 1950s.
“Jack had always wanted to meet Churchill. Well, the poor man was really quite ga-ga then,” she said. “I felt so sorry for Jack that evening because he was meeting his hero, only he met him too late.”
September 12th, 2011 at 8:52 pm
John in Dublin, CA.
Jackie might have had class originally, but she lost a lot of it when she married Aristotle Onassis. It was obviously a marriage of convenience for them both. She acquired a boatload of money, and he had the famous widow of an extremely popular US president. It broke Maria Callas’ heart, altho’ I believe she and Ari managed to reunite sometime later.
September 12th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
This is probably off-topic, but back in the early 1980s, I worked for a couple of years in the booth of a self-service gas station in the Philadelphia suburbs.
I worked the evening shift, and I had a semi-regular customer who came in late in the evening, maybe every week or two. He paid with a credit card that had the name John Kennedy. He definitely was not JFK, Jr. I’m pretty certain of that. But he sure as hell did look like a member of the extended family. I think he resembled RFK more than anyone.
As I recall, he had blond hair (or maybe brown; my memory is sketchy in the best of circumstances) and was slightly younger than me (I was in my mid-20s). I was always curious but never said anything. I treated him like any other customer, saying, “Thank you. Have a good evening.” He was quiet and polite. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I sort of got the impression that he was grateful that I didn’t ask.
September 12th, 2011 at 9:41 pm
OK, I just checked Wikipedia, and I couldn’t find any other Kennedy offspring named John. So maybe it was just a weird coincidence.
September 12th, 2011 at 11:06 pm
back when we first moved into the new house my parents bought moving out of the city, we sat at the dining room table for family dinner. i look out the sliding glass doors, over the deck, and down the hill to the neighbors yard and lo ELVIS was walking around the property.
now remember we had just moved from an inner city area, we did not expect to see elvis in nj our first week.
we later found out that the neighbor was a divorced woman with one son, and a fetish for dating elvis impersonators.
September 12th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
oh, and elvis had already been dead
September 13th, 2011 at 4:40 am
I remember reading that Jackie rehearsed John-John over and over to make that touching little salute at his father’s grave, which was of course the cover shot on LIFE magazine. But at the time, it was taken as spontaneously done by the little fellow.
When Jackie married Ari Onassis, by all accounts a seriously vulgar, gross man, I thought, “well, she’s married for money/power again.” She knew JFK was an out-of-control lecher when she married him. She never showed me too much.
Except for one big thing: she did save Grand Central Terminal! Thanks for that, Jackie O!