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Rebirth of a nation
Iran's burgeoning democracy movement against the power of the fundamentalist establishment is led by students in blue jeans who like American music.
By Daryl Lindsey
[07/23/99]

Reform's raison d'être
Reform Party activists prepare for what could be a showdown between the forces of Ross Perot and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.
By Sarah Keech
[07/23/99]

The Kennedy way of grief
Is the clan's Irish stoicism linked to its history of alcoholism, risk-taking and self-destruction?
By Joan Walsh
[07/22/99]

It could have been me
John F. Kennedy Jr. didn't make any serious judgment errors in his decision to fly to Martha's Vineyard on Friday night.
By Phaedra Hise
[07/22/99]

What's in a name?
Upon the death of the scion of America's greatest political dynasty, a quick survey of American politics reminds us how much it helps to have a famous name.
By Bruce Shapiro
[07/21/99]

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By Joan Walsh

July 23, 1999 | SALON: What was your reaction last week to hearing JFK Jr. was missing and likely dead?

CP: I was traveling and heard a newsflash early on Saturday morning. I was stunned for many reasons. First because I think John Kennedy was a phenomenally personable individual on the cultural landscape, and this cutting down of a promising man who had not reached the peak of his maturity is one of Mother Nature's cruel jokes. Secondly, I was stunned because the heat-related weather problems that appear to have contributed to the accident were a huge part of my life the night before, when I had been touring Staten Island with family friends, who were constantly harping on the haze. This went on with every view that we had from Staten Island -- of Manhattan, Coney Island, the Verrazano Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and then of the increasingly foggy New Jersey coastline that we were contemplating from a wharf-side restaurant while we were eating dinner -- precisely when the Kennedy plane was taking off.

The term "the haze, the haze, the haze" became a kind of litany that struck me even then as rather eerie coming from these lifetime New Yorkers. So to hear that John Kennedy had taken off from a small New Jersey airport at that very moment into that very haze, which no matter what anyone in the media says was very thick --

There's no ambiguity about it to you. People are trying to say, well, it wasn't so bad.

There's no ambiguity. Some people have tried to defend Kennedy's decision to go up by saying he had no way of knowing about how bad conditions would become an hour later in Martha's Vineyard. This is a total cop-out, because there were plenty of reasons, just by driving from Manhattan to the New Jersey coast, to have been concerned. And therefore there is absolutely no excuse whatever for him not being in radio contact with the various air-control towers as he flew -- in view of the relatively few hours of experience he had in this highly powered new airplane. Furthermore, he was flying without his normal instructor, and, to top it off, he had just had a cast removed from his lower leg the prior day.

I believe as a libertarian that people have a right to destroy themselves if they want to -- I defend anyone's right to drive race cars or to bungee-jump or to try to leap canyons with motorcycles or to fly death-defying airplanes. But not when you are a custodian of the lives of two others, as John Kennedy was that night. There was an ethical lapse here, a major irresponsibility on his part to have endangered the lives of those two women.

Therefore, I was all the more enraged as the days went on and publicity -- thanks to that buffoonish biographer, C. David Heymann -- began to turn against the women. Oh, right -- blame the women! -- the passengers, not the pilot. First, JFK's wife, Carolyn Bessette, was declared to be the nag who insisted John fly her sister to Martha's Vineyard. Then we heard that Lauren Bessette delayed the trip when she was held up at the office.

Those investment bankers.

What a crock! There's no evidence whatever that they had any plans to fly earlier in the day than that. John Kennedy, from recent reports, went to his own gym at 6 p.m.

I didn't see that.

My first thoughts at the time also were: What a curse indeed is on the Kennedy clan! Bad, bad karma. Getting close to the Kennedys is hazardous to your health. As a superstitious Italian, I think the curse in this case was on Ethel, whose daughter's wedding was so hideously blighted by this accident. When her son Michael managed to kill himself on a skiing run, we all learned about Ethel's flagrant irresponsibility in refusing to constrain her grown children's obnoxious behavior on the slopes despite complaints to the ski patrol conveyed to her the prior week. As a young heiress in her own right, Ethel was a fast driver who had a long history of challenging the norms that are intended to control ordinary people. That sense of aristocratic superiority to everyone else: Laws are to be obeyed only by the hoi-polloi.

But the "curse," if there is one, seems to predate Ethel, doesn't it? I mean, Kennedys were dying tragically before she joined the family.

What I despise is this religiosity, the constant sanctimonious posing behind the Catholic Church that the Kennedys are always doing, and Ethel is one of the worst here. The quick, aggressive display of priests and Masses and prayer services really turns my stomach, because the Kennedy history is in point of fact not one of ethics. It goes all the way back to the behavior of the father --

Of Joe Kennedy Sr.

Exactly. At every stage, the Kennedy legacy is one of ostentatious public service combined with a lack of ethical scruples.

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