August 12, 2009. Hot and sunny in New York.
It’s been speculation for a couple months now but I was told by a very good source that Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President William J. Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be getting married this summer to her boyfriend Mark Mezvinsky in a ceremony to take place at the home of Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson on Martha’s Vineyard.
Now, it is the middle of August, and so the summer’s not exactly over, but it ain’t got that far to go. So we’ll soon see, won’t we?
Birthdays. Lunch at Michael’s with Diana Feldman and Hilary Califano. Hilary’s birthday was August 3rd and Diana’s was yesterday.
The talk was about the new Jackie/Bobby book by David Heyman. Did they or didn’t they? In New York, these kinds of conversations often have contributions from people who actually knew the people which can make it a little more interesting.
Hilary, whose father was the late William Paley, met Jackie several times. There was even a rumor going around that Jackie and Paley were going to marry (totally false). Hilary liked Jackie but she liked Ari a lot more.
The question was/is: do you believe Jackie had an affair with Bobby Kennedy? as Mr. Heyman proposes. The answer was: both Diana and Hilary were surprised by how many affairs Jackie had (I don’t know if it’s in the book since I haven’t read it). The opinion was: it is possible but if it were so, in all likelihood it was carried out very discreetly for many many reasons -- all of them obvious to even the dumbest cluck.
Both Robert Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were well aware of their public images. That they were drawn to each other especially under the dire and hideous circumstances, was natural. That they were lovers was perhaps more than possible. If that were so, we will never know what transpired and what it was like for either of them. They took that information with them when they departed.
Someday, maybe, someone will write a biography of Mrs. Onassis that will articulate and demonstrate all the various (known) aspects of her personality and character of this remarkable woman. It would be difficult to pull off because few (including writers and publishers) really understand the importance of biography in terms of the culture and history.
Many who were witness would withhold, in the name of privacy, or their own book (which will never be written). Instead there is phony moralizing that’s attached to some kind of guilt, religious or otherwise. So instead history will pursue the characters and have to wade through the swill of falsehoods produced by the withholding of facts or truth.
My candidate for a biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis would be Amanda Vaill. Mrs. Onassis was a major historical figure in the last half of the 20th century. Her role during those 72 hours in late November 1963 had a profound influence on the psyche of the country at the moment. Whether guided by instinct or shrewd intelligence, she led the nation brilliantly, and all the while never infringing on the incoming President’s place.
She was the last generation of the great female icons who were just there. In her dotage, had she lived, she would not have become a grande dame because they were retired by the feminist movement. But she might have become more of what she had fashioned for herself: a modern unmarried, independent woman living a private and public life as a mother, someone’s lover, a book editor, and eventually, possibly a writer -- about herself. Although she might not have had guts to put it out there in print. The story was complicated and not necessarily something she could have kept under her control.
Jackie was a Leo also (her birthday was July 28).
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