To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Sept. 28, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/09/28/nopetue The POTUS who loved me Kennedy squeeze smeared; Ryder Cup bounces Barbara Bush; Melissa Joan Hart bounces bouncer back! Plus: Stephen King on minivan abuse; Sharon Stone on Ellen DeGeneres ... literally. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Sept. 28, 1999 Before there was Monica ... How will history remember Judith Campbell Exner? Was the stunning Elizabeth Taylor look-alike, who died Friday after a long battle with breast cancer, a promiscuous gangster's moll whose claim to an affair with President John F. Kennedy was the stuff of sheer opportunism? Or was she just an innocent Catholic schoolgirl led astray? If former BBC journalist and author Anthony Summers, known for providing a balanced voice to the nutty nattering surrounding JFK's presidency and currently at work on a Nixon bio, has anything to say about it -- and he has plenty -- it's the latter. Summers calls Monday's New York Times obit, which quotes people from the Kennedy camp casting doubt on Exner's "supposed relationship" with the late president "fatuous. It is hard to believe that the Times could really be so ill-informed." According to Summers, ample evidence (including White House logs recording her visits and phone calls) supports Exner's claim of a relationship with JFK from 1960 to 1962. In fact, Summers notes, their names have been publicly linked since the mid-1970s -- when Exner was called to testify before a Senate committee investigating presidential involvement in CIA assassination plots against Fidel Castro -- and not, as implied in the Times obit, only since a paid 1988 People magazine interview with Kitty Kelley. Summers says Kennedy campers then "dirtied her name as much as possible" and the press tagged her a publicity seeker and a party girl, "which was in those days code for 'not quite a whore.'" Summers, who interviewed Exner in 1993, says she was neither, but rather "a very strictly brought-up Catholic girl from private schools," who was reeling from a divorce when she met Kennedy. She was, he believes, deeply, naively in love with the president; her only fault was not moving on with her life after the initial furor. Maybe she should have started an online handbag business ... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Stephen's sweet revenge "I'm going to take a sledgehammer and beat it!" -- Stephen King, telling the Bridgton (Maine) News his plans for the minivan that recently struck and injured him, which he has just purchased. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Golf balls of fire Maybe he didn't recognize the costume jewelry, the coifed white hair or the steely glare? Or maybe he did. When former first lady Barbara Bush tried to sneak into the press area without proper credentials to say hello to golf writer Dan Jenkins at the Ryder Cup on Sunday, she got nabbed by a beefy bouncer named Tiny, who refused to let her in. According to the Boston Herald, Tiny wouldn't budge for blustering Babs until her husband showed up and smoothed things over. Maybe he used that old "Read my lips" trick? Grandma Bush might take a lesson from someone a little younger and feistier -- Melissa Joan Hart. The "Teenage Witch" star tells TV Guide that she's looking into buying a New York nightclub, just to get even with the contrary fellow who works the door. "I hate the doorman," harumphs Hart. "He never lets me in. I got turned away the other day and I was like, 'You know, you're going to be working for me in a month.'" You got to hand it to the gal ... she's got some kinda golf-hard balls. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Livin' la vida loca "Sometimes I find myself calling friends who have jobs, like 9-to-5 jobs, and saying, 'What do you mean, you have to work?'" -- Andre Agassi on the cushy life of a tennis pro. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits The Who's Roger Daltrey is about to reinvent himself as a radio DJ in the U.K., playing what the BBC's P.R. folks say are his picks of "rock 'n' roll greats." What ever happened to that "Hope I die before I get old" thing? Vanessa Redgrave, lesbian? The British actress is set to snuggle into a role in the Anne Heche-directed flick "If These Walls Could Talk II," a film about lesbian experiences that includes a love scene between Heche squeeze Ellen DeGeneres and panty-flashing muse Sharon Stone. "I didn't know if the love scene was appropriate or not," Stone recently confessed, "but it turned out to be beautifully done." So much for progress. Two weeks after announcing controversial plans to drop the Miss America pageant's antiquated ban on contestants who have been married or had abortions, Robert L. Beck, the CEO of the Miss America Organization for the last year, has been given the high-heeled boot. According to David Frisch, chairman of the pageant's board of directors, "A national search to replace Mr. Beck will commence immediately." Do you suppose the CEO screening process will include a swimsuit competition? salon.com | Sept. 28, 1999