I’ve been nursing a passing, passive interest in Ryan Murphy‘s Love Story (FX and FX on Hulu), a nine-episode saga of the turbulent relationship between the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. and the tragically deranged Carolyn Bessette.
It popped on 2.12 (last Thursday) and, God help us all, is nine episodes long. I’ve been reluctant to watch this perversely-mistitled miniseries (John and Carolyn were off and on at best, and half-despised each other) but my interest is…uhm, simmering.
Spurred on by this, last night I bought Maureen Callahan‘s “Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed” (Litte, Brown & Co., 7.2.24) and tore though several chapters.
Callahan, a truly excellent prose stylist and a blunt-minded, well-sourced reporter, strikes me as a feminist disciple of James Ellroy (“American Tabloid”). She certainly seems possessed by an anti-rich-and-entitled-male agenda the size of a house. Not that the Kennedy-male tradition isn’t soaked with chauvinism, cold manipulation, blase indifference and a lack of sensitivity toward women, but Callahan really hates these guys. She totally trashes all the significant Kennedy bros (principally Joe, Jack, Ted, Senator Bobby and today’s HHS Bobby Jr., John Jr., Michael Skakel).
I was searching, naturally, for the rage, the spilled milk, the dirt, the jizz, the “oh, my God!” raw stuff. Two excerpts stand out…excerpts that have been burned into my brain and will remain there for all eternity, even beyond my death.
“Jackie Bouvier Kennedy“, page 41:
“Carolyn Bessette Kennedy“, page 283:
