Posted on 05/18/2003 6:53:16 AM PDT by kattracks
They say a woman always knows - and Jacqueline Kennedy was no exception.The queen of Camelot was heart-wrenchingly aware of the sexual affairs President John Kennedy engaged in during his years in the White House, a new book reveals.
In "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," author Robert Dallek details how the President tried to satisfy a voracious appetite for sex by bedding a string of party girls and staffers.
In "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," author Robert Dallek details how the President tried to satisfy a voracious appetite for sex by bedding a string of party girls and staffers.
The bio also unveiled John Kennedy's long-secret affair with a teenage intern, unmasked by the Daily News last week as Marion (Mimi) Beardsley Fahnestock, now a Manhattan divorcee.
John Kennedy's glamorous young wife was pained by his flagrant philandering, to the point where she made snide or angry remarks about it in dangerously public settings, the book says.
"Isn't it bad enough that you solicit this woman for my husband, but then you insult me by asking me to shake her hand!" she sniped at two aides after spotting one of her husband's sex partners on a receiving line.
Another day, during a tour of the White House, she told a shocked French journalist, "This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband."
No secret
Edward Klein, author of the 1996 book "All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy," agrees that JFK's extracurricular activities were no secret to his wife.
"It wasn't a mystery to her that all the young, attractive women in the White House were fair game as far as her husband was concerned.
"Jackie was completely aware her husband was a hopeless philanderer, and when he did it privately and without her knowledge, it bothered her far less than when he would fail to hide it in public."
Before he was elected President, John Kennedy could be cruelly blatant about his skirt-chasing.
"At a dinner party, he would often disappear with a woman who was sitting at the table with them," Klein said.
"It caused a lot of heartache and tension, but she [Jackie Kennedy] was accustomed to men who behaved like that," Klein said, referring to her father, Jack Bouvier, a notorious womanizer.
"Jackie came from an upper class where this kind of behavior, though not applauded by women, was widely expected by them," he said. "Nonetheless, it wasn't easy to live with."
Jackie Kennedy's own alleged love affairs may have salved her wounds. Klein says she carried on with Fiat heir Gianni Agnelli; other accounts say she had a revenge romance with movie star William Holden.
In researching his book - a scholarly tome that for the first time reports how ill John Kennedy was in office and how much medication he took - Dallek hoped to see a 500-page oral history recorded by Jackie Kennedy.
Her daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, blocked access to the papers, which are locked up at the Kennedy Library in Boston. She did not return a call from the Daily News.
Dallek did, however, see reams of letters written by a young JFK to his close friend Lemoyne Billings.
He was 17 years old when he boasted in one letter about his success with girls - decades before his rumored romance with Marilyn Monroe.
"I can't help it. It can't be my good looks because I'm not much handsomer than anybody else," he wrote. "It must be my personality."
Dad's dalliances
Dallek suggests Kennedy's Casanova complex was rooted in the infamous infidelities of his own father, Joseph Kennedy, and a rivalry with his older brother, Navy pilot Joseph Kennedy Jr., who died at age 29 when his plane exploded over the English Channel during World War II.
John Kennedy's constant illnesses, and predictions that he would die young, also may have spurred him on - though his frail health didn't interfere with his sex life.
"The nurses here are the dirtiest bunch of females I've ever seen," he wrote to Billings during a 1934 hospital stay. "One of them wanted to know if I would give her a workout last night. ... I said yes, but she was put off duty early."
During another illness, he whined about being in Boston.
"Millions of beautiful misses arrived in Palm Beach daily so I am getting rather fed up with the meat up here, if you know what I mean," he wrote.
He bragged about having sex with one woman in a bathtub, and told how an aide to his father lined up willing dates for him and his football buddies on Cape Cod, Mass.
By the time he was at Harvard University in 1937, he was known as "Play-boy," and had too many girlfriends to remember their names.
As an unmarried congressman, he had a "smorgasbord of women" - mostly one-night stands with flight attendants and secretaries, the book reports.
Election to the Senate, his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier and even the spotlight on the Oval Office didn't deter him. If anything, the presidency whetted his thirst.
"Kennedy's womanizing had, of course, always been a form of amusement, but now it also gave him a release from unprecedented daily tensions," Dallek writes.
During a 1961 meeting with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, he confided that he got headaches if he went three days without sex.
His mistresses included Pamela Turnure, Jackie's press secretary; Mary Pinchot Meyer, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's sister-in-law; two secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, and mob moll Judith Campbell Exner.
JFK & intern
Then there was a 19-year-old "tall, slender, beautiful" White House intern.
Her identity remained a secret until last week, but JFK came close to having several other "other women" publicly named during his time in office - including Ellen Rometsch, a suspected East German spy who romped naked in the White House pool. While Kennedy's tomcatting has long been a source of fascination, Dallek doesn't believe it altered history.
"As far as I can tell," he wrote, "Kennedy's dalliances were no impediment to his being an effective President."
Originally published on May 17, 2003
Dallek calls it "release", I call it wallowing in the mud.
To use the word "snipe" describing Jackie's remarks is odd. "To snipe" carries a negative image of the complainer. It seems she would be justified in her complaint.
Now I'm not one of those diehard Kennedy lovers, but we have to give Jackie credit. She played the role of trophy First Lady and was a good ambassador for America when she traveled abroad. She was also a good mother, devoted to her children. And from articles I've read, she made herself available to Jack on a steady basis, and the White House staff knew to give them privacy in the afternoons. They were considered a loving young couple. I believe Jackie tried hard to keep her marriage strong.
Hillary, on the other hand....well, we all know her story (Barf).
It's all about sex
Can't we move on?
Kennedy we know was for media purposes a show President who behind the wholesome and athletic image of American family, was in fact a mild cripple (Addison, his back, lots of drugs, Marilyn Monroe, Mimi, etc.).
The above combined with the eldest Kennedy male dying during a near impossible WWII mission, Ted Kennedy's Chappaqua, RFK's targeted assassination, and capping it all off in the 90's with a skiing accident and death and a plane crash killing two women on board, would seem conclusive enough proof that the Kennedy legacy was largely fabricated and that Kennedy men carry a gene which predisposes them to self destruction,along with dubious impact on the American culture.
The Myth was made possible by a huge endowment made to American Liberal Institutions which continue to propagate this Myth.
By the way, why are Liberal Democratic Presidents of this era referred to by their initials: RFK, JFK,LBJ and Republican Presidents are not: Ford, Nixon, Regan and the first President Bush.
Thankfully we are doing the liberal historians a turnabout: GWB
"As far as I can tell," he wrote, "Kennedy's dalliances were no impediment to his being an effective President."
So, if it was so insignificant, how come the media gave JFK such a pass? Hmmmmmmm?
They never even alluded to it, let alone name names. If it had been a republican president, you can believe they would have blatted it all over the world, complete with interviews of the women included.
Let's not forget that we could also say, the "long suffering Bill" can be compared with Jackie too, as I'm sure that Hitlery has had as many female romps in the WH -and surrounding areas - as Bill has.
I wonder how much that job pays.
Can't wait to hear what the Hildabeast spewed. Everything should be in her new book.
Rumors have it that he actually married her and when he began his political career, old Joe pulled out all the stops to get that story killed and threatened everybody in Washington, literally.
If I am not mistaken, that very episode is the origination of the phrase "scorched earth policy."
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