Mark Steyn: Sy Hersh's One Brief Non-Shining Moment

Seymour Street and Seymour Hersh are several thousand miles apart, except when it comes to evaluating presidencies. The latter is a Pulitzer prize-winning author, the former is a thoroughfare in downtown Vancouver, where President Bill Clinton was for this week’s Asia-Pacific summit. I don’t know whether his motorcade passed down the aforementioned street but, if it did, he might have noticed the marquee above the Penthouse strip club: “Welcome Prez Clinton, our lips are sealed” — ie, he and the girls are old pals.

It could be. If you’ll forgive a little maple pride, many of the most highly regarded strippers in the United States are Canadian, their whirling tassels extending even unto Little Rock, Arkansas.

But, on balance, I think the ladies were just having a joke. Though the President is said to be fretting about his place in history, on Seymour Street and elsewhere it’s already secure: he’s one of the great comic figures of the age. South of the border and back on the East Coast, Seymour Hersh can only marvel. He’s just published a book about President Kennedy, who, even by the most tactful underestimate, had a sexual appetite that makes Bill Clinton look like Marie Osmond. “You know,” JFK remarks to Bobby Baker, secretary to the Senate Democrats, in the Oval Office one morning, “I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day.”

And it seems he did, even in the White House: society gals, hookers, East German Communists, three-in-a-bed, two-in-a-bath, with a Secret Service agent standing by to shove the girl’s head underwater at a given signal, thereby causing vaginal contractions and thus intensifying the Presidential orgasm. All ass, all the time, regardless of whether it was a quiet day with not much going on or the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

Seymour Hersh – he can’t go wrong, can he? From My Lai to Abu Ghraib, he blows the lid off all the stuff everyone wants to cover up and hits a bullseye every time.

Well, not quite. Hersh put his foot wrong just once – when he made the mistake of writing a book about JFK that roused the ire of the keepers of the Camelot flame. “Scurrilous,” said Ted Kennedy. The Senator’s happy to believe every word of Sy’s about Lynndie England’s sex life, but not about his brother’s. And all the media outlets that denounced Hersh’s “credibility” in 1997 are doting on him seven years later. This piece can be found in Mark Steyn From Head To Toe:

SEYMOUR STREET and Seymour Hersh are several thousand miles apart, except when it comes to evaluating presidencies. The latter is a Pulitzer prize-winning author, the former is a thoroughfare in downtown Vancouver, where President Bill Clinton was for this week’s Asia-Pacific summit. I don’t know whether his motorcade passed down the aforementioned street but, if it did, he might have noticed the marquee above the Penthouse strip club: “Welcome Prez Clinton, our lips are sealed” - ie, he and the girls are old pals.

It could be. If you’ll forgive a little maple pride, many of the most highly regarded strippers in the United States are Canadian, their whirling tassels extending even unto Little Rock, Arkansas.

But, on balance, I think the ladies were just having a joke. Though the President is said to be fretting about his place in history, on Seymour Street and elsewhere it’s already secure: he’s one of the great comic figures of the age. South of the border and back on the East Coast, Seymour Hersh can only marvel. He’s just published a book about President Kennedy, who, even by the most tactful underestimate, had a sexual appetite that makes Bill Clinton look like Marie Osmond. “You know,” JFK remarks to Bobby Baker, secretary to the Senate Democrats, in the Oval Office one morning, “I get a migraine headache if I don’t get a strange piece of ass every day.”

And it seems he did, even in the White House: society gals, hookers, East German Communists, three-in-a-bed, two-in-a-bath, with a Secret Service agent standing by to shove the girl’s head underwater at a given signal, thereby causing vaginal contractions and thus intensifying the Presidential orgasm. All ass, all the time, regardless of whether it was a quiet day with not much going on or the height of the Cuban missile crisis.

Hersh is no right-wing, Kennedy-hating kook. As the man who alerted America to the My Lai massacre and CIA domestic spying, he has impeccable liberal credentials. The sex is in there only insofar as it impinges on national security, defence contracts and White House operations, and it’s well-sourced - the whores and nude pics are confirmed by the gallery owner who framed White House photos for over three decades and by various Secret Service agents - all with names, potted biographies and even photographs. Yet The Dark Side Of Camelot has been denounced as “evil” and “utterly without credibility” by the likes of Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times and even The Spectator’s High Life Correspondent.

Camelot’s “fleeting wisp of glory”, its “one brief shining moment” is proving surprisingly durable: after 35 years Kennedy’s vast army of sycophants is as fanatically loyal, as ruthlessly protective as ever. What are they so steamed up about? Anyone who investigates the Kennedy White House comes to pretty much the same conclusions as Hersh. The British author Nigel Hamilton wrote a cracking account of Jack’s early years, JFK: Reckless Youth, the first part of a two-volume biography. The second half never appeared. Hamilton, a Kennedy admirer, was so disgusted by what he subsequently uncovered about his hero that he abandoned the project. That’s what so riles Hersh’s detractors: this is all the stuff they were too dazzled to spot at the time.

Why is it that Seymour Hersh and even Seymour Street see more than the Washington media? Well, for one thing, most of the press don’t want to see: the grandees of American journalism have a lofty view of their own profession and therefore extend it naturally to the profession they spend most of their time covering. Among the most vociferous trashers of this “evil book” is Hugh Sidey, the veteran Time White House correspondent. So it comes as a surprise to discover that he’s one of Hersh’s principal sources. Presumably, he thought he was contributing to quite a different kind of book. At one point, he relates a meeting he had in the Oval Office with Kennedy: “He looked up at me and says, ‘Come on, Sidey. Let’s go swimming.’ I said, ‘Mr President, that’s the one piece of equipment I never thought to bring when I came over for an interview.’ He said, ‘Oh, in this pool you don't need a suit.’”

Kennedy and Sidey head out to the White House pool, at which point the reporter finds himself facing one of those awkward questions of etiquette on which Miss Manners is silent: “I’m confronted with this problem of who removes his trousers first - the President or the guest?”

But you’ve got to be quick on the drawers to drop ’em faster than JFK. “Obviously a man of practice,” chuckles Sidey - and soon interviewer and interviewee are splashing away like a nude synchronised swimming team. You couldn’t ask for a better image of American political journalism: two members of the same cosy club gliding along side by side.

Needless to say, whatever distinguishing characteristics the President might have had, Time readers didn’t get to hear of them. The American press likes to scoff about Britain in the Thirties, when, if you wanted to read about the Prince of Wales and Mrs Simpson, you had to buy a US paper. Today, the Clinton Presidency has reversed the process. “I’ve just got back from London,” Pat Buchanan told me a couple of years ago. “I can’t believe the stuff you guys are running about Paula Jones.” “They put that in the papers?” said Eleanor Clift, doyenne of Newsweek and Hillary confidante. Not in the kind of papers Miss Clift reads.

History repeats itself - first tragedy, now farce. First, the Broadway company of Camelot, now the touring production of When Did You Last See Your Trousers? For most veterans of the Camelot era, the journey from Kennedy idealism (“One Brief Shining Moment”) to Clinton discussing his underwear on MTV (“One’s Momentous Shining Briefs”) undoubtedly marks a precipitous decline in presidential glamour. But it makes the enduring prissiness of the Washington press seem even more ludicrous. Why should they be so concerned about the dignity of political office when the officeholders themselves aren’t? On the eve of last month’s gubernatorial election in New Jersey, Governor Christie Whitman went on the Howard Stern radio show. He congratulated her on cutting taxes, her pro-abortion stance and - last, but by no means least - her “fantastic breasts”. Thank you, said the Governor. Unconcerned about motor insurance rates (the dominant issue in New Jersey), Howard was interested to know the state of Mrs Whitman’s sex life. It was especially good at weekends, she said, when they were at their country place. Howard wanted her to know what a terrific body she had. “Thank you again,” she said. He then shared with the tri-state listening audience some thoughts on what it would be like to “do” the Governor.

In such a world, it’s not surprising that the Washington press corps now regards itself as the dignified part of the constitution. But, even so, the resilience of Camelot, in the face of all the evidence, is one of the marvels of the modern age. As the slogan puts it, “If you loved his style, you’ll love JFK PT wear”. PT stands for “Patrol Torpedo”, a reference to JFK’s Second World War boat, PT 109. In this exciting new range of leisurewear by Kerry McCarthy, the President’s cousin once removed (though it seems no Kennedy cousin is ever really removed), the clothes are not based on what the well-dressed PT crew member is wearing when the Japs slice his boat in two: that, after all, was one of the few moments in his life when JFK was not thinking about image. Instead, it’s the sort of yachtwear - JFK cap, $19.95 - the President was wont to favour when mooching about off the Hyannis coast in less turbulent waters. Each item in this exclusive collection, however, features a reproduction of the “PT 109” insignia which the young Kennedy sent over to Kerry McCarthy’s mom during the war. “Now you too can wear John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s PT patch,” says the advertisement. “You too can be part of that Kennedy style.” And the Kennedy style can still drown out the Kennedy satyriasis, the Kennedy pill-popping, and the Kennedy underwater orgasm intensification.

If nothing else, Hersh’s book and the sledgehammer condemnation of it raises the question of just how far the Washington media are prepared to take their lack of curiosity. Hersh steers clear of Kennedy’s assassination, except for one passing observation. In September 1963, “while frolicking poolside with one of his sexual partners”, the President severely tore a groin muscle and was prescribed a stiff canvas shoulder-to-groin brace that locked his body upright. “Those braces,” writes Hersh, “made it impossible for the President to bend in reflex when he was struck in the neck by the bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald’s first successful shot was not necessarily fatal, but the President remained upright - and an excellent target for the second, fatal blow to the head.” It’s an interesting theory, borne out by the available footage. If you talk to Kennedy insiders, they say he’d worn a brace on and off for decades due to chronic back pain. On the other hand, his lifestyle wasn’t exactly conducive to mitigating back pain.

“Kennedy may have paid the ultimate price,” Hersh concludes, “for his sexual excesses and compulsiveness.” You don’t have to swallow that whole to reflect on the broader possibilities. In all the flights of fancy the grassy knoll has spawned - was it the CIA? the FBI? LBJ? - for 34 years there’s been a weird reluctance to look for an answer in the pathological recklessness of Kennedy himself.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.