The Kennedy Curse: WI JFK Jr had lived?

[dcharles]

“Now we can’t say that the aircraft has even crashed. We don’t know that. What we do know, it’s been missing now for quite a long time, because it was due to arrive in Martha’s Vineyard--according to the best available information--sometime before midnight last night. So it has been missing on the order of eight hours...What was the flight plan? So far as is known, they didn’t file a flight plan. They were not required to file a flight plan for this kind of flight--that is, in ostensibly clear weather, noting that it was hazy--but, clear weather. And you’re supposed to keep airports sort of informed about where they are, but no flight plan as such was required, and so far as we can make out, none was filed. This was a line of sight kind of flight, and that’s why we keep coming back to these hazy conditions...That haze could--could--have been big trouble, particularly if a relatively inexperienced pilot was at the controls. But keep in mind, we don’t know who was flying the aircraft. Was it John F. Kennedy, Jr...was it the flight instructor? There’s simply no way to know...right now we’ve got the FAA, the Air National Guard, and the Coast Guard searching for the plane, a single engine Piper Saratoga... It is believed that there were four people on the plane, John F. Kennedy, his wife, his sister in law, Lauren Bessette, and his flight instructor and--excuse me, excuse me--getting an update...and it does appear that there was at least one survivor. I repeat, I am getting reports from the Coast Guard that they have recovered one survivor. Now, we do not have the identity of that survivor confirmed yet, as of this moment--no, excuse me, excuse me now--excuse me, I can now confirm--and this is breaking news--that John F. Kennedy Jr. has been recovered, and he appears to be the lone survivor at this time. As to what his condition is, we do not know, but we can assume it is serious…”
--Dan Rather, reporting on the morning of July 17th, 1999.

“Listeners, I think I’m gonna get in trouble for this one. Really! No joke--I had a woman call in the other day--longtime listener, big fan--and she said had heard us do Ted Kennedy’s rendition of ‘The Philanderer’ (you know, like ‘The Wanderer’). And she said--get this!-- ‘you can’t saaaay things like that about the Kennedys in public! You’re gonna get arrested.’ And folks, she believed it. Now, it got me thinking, she’s just a common citizen, but she really thinks that you can’t say anything about the Kennedys in public without getting arrested for it, or at least paying a price. But the thing is, folks, I exist outside of their little ecosystem. They can’t touch me! They know that if they come for me, they’re gonna have to deal with all of you folks.

“So the other day--I know you all saw--but I saw JFK Jr., little John-John, with the neck brace on. And didn’t it just remind you--I know it did me--of ‘69, after Chappaquiddick, when Ted Kennedy was skulking around with that little neck brace on. He must have been wearing that thing from July until October. And the thing is, Chappaquiddick happened exactly thirty years --to the day-- before John-John took his joyride.

“Now, I hear you saying 'Rush, that’s just a meaningless coincidence,' and I hear you. But you know...Sherlock Holmes didn’t believe in coincidence. And Rush Limbaugh says, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But even if--even if--you want to play Devil’s Advocate, you have to say, there are some similarities. Questionable driving skills. Dead girls. And I wonder about John-John’s blood alcohol--or am I not allowed to bring that up because he’s a Kennedy? Because he’s supposedly grieving? You know who else is grieving? The Bessette family! And if I’m the Bessettes, I’ve got a lot of questions that I want answered. Mark Twain used to say that ‘history didn’t repeat itself, it just rhymed.’ And this is some Shakespearean level rhyming…”
--Rush Limbaugh, September 17th, 1999


Watch this space, y'all.

 

[PickledFish]

Great start! I’m keen for this. Also fuck Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Nazi Space Spy]

Did he swim away like Uncle Ted?

 

[CalBear]

Great start! I’m keen for this. Also fuck Rush Limbaugh.

You WILL NOT pull current poltics into this forum.

 

[dcharles]

August 12th, 1999
Camp David, Maryland


Anthony died three weeks and three days after the crash.

John was convalescing at Walter Reed when he passed. John had been there for the whole thing, in a bed not six feet away from him. Anthony had been close enough for John to talk to, and would have been close enough for him to see, if John hadn’t been too injured to turn his head. He supposed it was a good thing--or maybe it was just supposed to be a good thing--that he’d been with Anthony when he’d died. John had told him he would be there, all those months ago when they’d found out Anthony was finally, actually terminal. That it was for real this time. John had said he would be there, and he had been. He’d kept his word, and that was supposed to be good.

He knew, though, what he’d been thinking in the moment--that he was thankful for the injury, because it meant that he didn’t have to look at Anthony’s face--and he knew he had nothing to congratulate himself for. Carole, Anthony’s widow, had said that it was peaceful, but she was the widow, and he was...John-John the widower. What else was she going to say? With Carolyn, Lauren and Ed, Anthony made four. Four people dead in three weeks. That seemed like a lot.

It felt like a lot.

But he was lucky, he told himself. That’s what you were supposed to tell yourself, wasn’t it? It was true, in a way. He was luckier than them. He’d survived, and the President’s own doctors were looking after him. He’d gotten to be at his best friend’s side when he died. That was a certain kind of luck, he supposed. It was fortune of a kind. It was just that whenever he told himself that he was lucky, an echo always answered back: A lot of his luck was mostly bad.

“Call me Bill” had made it all happen--the good parts, anyway--and Kennedy reminded himself to focus on that. The President was coming by soon, and John didn’t want to seem ungrateful, even if ungrateful was exactly how he felt. Even if gratitude seemed more like a novel theory than an emotion he’d felt hundreds of times before. He pushed the thought away. Tried to.

He’d just have to pretend. He’d just have to act.

Act as if ye have gratitude, and gratitude will be given.
Focus. Focus on Clinton.

Clinton. He was the one who had insisted that John be transferred to Walter Reed to recover, and put his doctors in charge of John’s recovery. When Mario had mentioned that Anthony only had weeks, and John would be in the hospital at least that long, it was Call-me-Bill that had a room prepared at Walter Reed for the both of them. And finally, when he was due to be released and he’d told Clinton that he was dreading Hyannisport, that he couldn’t imagine going back to New York right now, Clinton had offered up Camp David without hesitation. And even if he wanted to be alone right now--as alone as you could be at a place like Camp David, which was basically a resort staffed by the military--he could grin and bear it for a little while.

A soft knocking at the door. One of the staff came in before John said anything.

“The photographer’s here, sir. Let me tidy up a little bit.” The man, whose name Kennedy could never quite remember--Sergeant Collins, or Connor, something Irish--came in and started to straighten a room that didn’t need straightening.

“How many times do I have to tell you you don’t need to call me ‘sir’?” Kennedy meant to sound affable, but the doctors had given him a lot of Oxycontin, and he thought that he might have sounded bitchy. Who knew? Who cared?

“Sorry Mr. Kennedy,” said Something Irish.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Mr Kennedy’ either--could you hand me that crutch?”

He set the crutch down next to John gently, as if one of the two was going to break, and headed for the door. “Mr. Kennedy, you’re crazy if you think I’m going to call you ‘John,’” he said with a half smile.

The sergeant left as the photographer came in. She was a skeptical looking woman about ten years older than John, dressed in jeans and a black button up. She wore thick glasses, and her wispy but plentiful brown hair was pulled back.

Of course they got her.

“Annie Leibovitz,” said John. He tried to whistle. His mouth was too dry. “Christ...This is what I’ve gotta do to get you away from Anna Wintour? I wish I’d known.”

She smirked.

“Wouldn’t have done it, but at least I’d have known to stop trying,” he said. He tried to shrug. It hurt.

She chuckled for form’s sake. “You couldn’t afford me, John,” she said as she walked to a window and opened the blinds. She just stated it like it was a fact like any other. “Or at least you wouldn’t. I’m shooting this in black and white. So, natural light.”

“Better for this, at least.” John gestured to his eyes. The black eyes he had from the crash were fading, and they’d taken the stitches out of the gash on his browline. His face didn’t look as much like a parody of itself as it had a week ago, but living color wasn’t likely to do him any favors, either.

“You can hardly tell,” said Annie without even the flicker of an eyelash. “You just look tired, which you are. I’ll make you look good.” She pressed her lips together, making that half smile, half frown kind of face that people make when they don’t know how they should be acting. John had seen a lot of that these days. “It won’t be hard,” she added hopefully. “Can we lose the neck brace though?”

Annie did her thing. It was for the best. Her comment had irked him--he knew she was just trying to be nice--but still. He wanted five minutes without someone reminding him that he was just so handsome, and after all, so very fucking lucky.

Soon the Vice President arrived, wearing an off the rack suit that was a half size too tight. Kennedy was wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt--they were easy to get over his cast--and felt oddly underdressed for the position of jolly good invalid. He wondered why Gore was wearing a suit at Camp David, was going to say something witty about it, but the Oxy was making it hard to keep up with the conversation. Or maybe it was just Gore. He always seemed to say the right things, but like an actor who’d forgotten his lines and was trying to hide it, he just came across as awkward and halting.

Then Clinton came in--khakis and a button-down, naturally--and the room seemed to get smaller. Secret Service details had a way of doing that.

Elvis has entered the building.

The thought made John smile. It’s what Mom had called Clinton when she’d heard someone compare him to JFK senior. She’d said it was like someone comparing Elvis to Sinatra. She’d hated Elvis. Not her kind of thing. Never got the appeal.

John got it.

Annie took some snaps of Gore and John and Call-me-Bill praying together around the coffee table, and then a few while they all shot the shit, and then Gore left, and Annie got some shots of just Clinton and Kennedy praying, and then some of Clinton looking concerned and John looking wistful, and then she was gone, too, and it was just Bill, John, and the Secret Service.

“Any word on Carolyn?” asked John.

Clinton bit his lip, his expression grave but compassionate. He shook his head sadly and placed his hand on John’s. “You’ll be the first to know,” he said.

Kennedy sighed. “It’s been weeks, but...You know. Can’t give up.”

“We’ll keep looking. Every day, long as we can.” Clinton took a deep breath and sucked his teeth. “Long as we can. There’s actually a storm system--NWS has it strengthening over the Bahamas today. Listen---and it might not--but there are some projections that have it hitting the New York area within the week.”

“Ah.” John nodded and took a deep breath. He’d been expecting something like this, already told himself that they couldn’t just keep looking forever. But he’d been hoping. Hoping secretly, the way you do when you know it’s probably a lost cause, but hey, there’s still a chance.

Clinton nodded along with John. John could tell he was sizing him up, trying to see if it had sunk in. “Realistically, the chances of recovery are...slim. Getting slimmer. She was probably--the currents do unpredictable things. If she had been strapped in like the other two--”

“Ed and Lauren.” John held up a hand, asking for a moment. He tried to rub his eyes, but his face was still sore. His neck was just fucking killing him. “So you’re telling me that if I hadn’t tried to save my wife, she’d have gotten to have a real funeral.”

“You did the right thing, John.”

“Are the Bessettes okay with it? Calling off the search?”

Clinton smoothed his khakis out as if he was at a loss for words, then looked John square in the eye. “We wanted to come to you first,” he said.

“Yeah.” John knew without even asking that the Bessettes were out of the loop. Christ. He’d asked for them to be looped in on everything. But it was all second-hand requests, relying on intermediaries. He should have checked. Should have known. John had been in a medically induced coma when the Bessettes had stopped in to see him. Hadn’t heard anything directly from them since he’d come to. He should have known something was up.

They’d had the funeral for Lauren with him still abed.

Rescuers from the Coast Guard recover the body of Kennedy sister-in-law Lauren Bessette as Sen. Edwardy Kennedy looks on.


“You did the right thing. You made--it was a heroic effort.”

“A hero saves the girl.” John heard the irritation and weariness in his own voice and realized the statement was truer than he’d even meant it to be. His father had been a hero once, and he hadn’t just saved one. He’d saved them all.

John hadn’t even been able to keep his wife afloat.

“Sometimes they do,” said Clinton. He placed a hand on John’s shoulder and squeezed with just enough force to communicate that he was there for John. That he understood. “And sometimes they damn near kill themselves trying.”

Clinton walked to the window and let the silence mellow.

He was good, there was no denying it. John’s life had been lousy with politicians from the get-go, and he would be the first to tell anyone that most of them had about as much charisma as a pile of dirty clothes. Clinton had that thing that average joes thought all politicians had. In reality, the average joes had it exactly backwards. Politicians made careers out of begging the right favors from the right people.

When was the last time anyone met a charming beggar?

Still facing the window, Clinton cleared his throat to speak. “Without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men have lived.”

“Mr. President, you can’t quote my father to me.” John cracked a tiny, tired smile. Nixon had done that, too. “Not even you.”

When Clinton turned around, his eyes were twinkling. “I thought I might get in trouble for that,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested the reality of the situation--that he was a man that trouble never seemed to stick to and wasn’t about to start. “Fact is, your father meant a great deal to me. To the country. Hell, John, your whole family--y’all are a national institution. And this is...It’s just a tragedy. Senseless. But you’ve got to ask yourself, how are you going to live going forward? How are you going to live, and act with courage while you do it?”

It was probably the Oxy, but John had no idea what hell the President was talking about.

“I don’t know that I follow you, sir,” said John. “Probably my fault though. Still a little woozy,” he explained.

Clinton came back to the couch. “Listen John, I’m just gonna give you the facts: your approvals right now, they’re in the nineties. That’s better than mine--and mine are better than they’ve ever been!”

John looked at Clinton incredulously. No way. No fucking way. “My approvals, Mr. President?”

“Call me Bill,” he corrected. “Your approval ratings, John. Today, they were at ninety-one percent. Ninety. One. Percent. I’ve never seen anything like it. Listen, if there was ever a time for you to run for office... John, VP is yours.” Clinton clapped his hands together as if he was closing a book.

“Look,” John stammered, trying to think of a polite way to tell Clinton to fuck off. “I’m sure that Gore wants to pick his own VP.”

“I can handle Al,” said Clinton. And there was something--maybe the hint of an eye roll, maybe the edge in his voice--that changed, that gave the suggestion that there was much more to Clinton than charm. “He’d be lucky to have you! Probably be the only thing that drags his ass over--”

“I don’t want it.”

Clinton’s eyes narrowed and he folded his arms, scrutinizing John. “It’s a shit job,” said Clinton. He sighed with his whole body, as if reality was finally sinking in. “But I get it. You want to be the youngest ever. Youngest ever. You want the brass ring. It’s gonna mean a convention battle, but if we get to the superdelegates early, lean on the big donors to freeze out Gore, I think it’s doable.”

Christ. He’s like the god damned Terminator. “You’re not hearing me. I don’t want it. Not President, not VP, not any of it,” said John. “I’m not running for anything.”

Clinton said something about opportunity in tragedy, and John tuned him out by the third or fourth word. By way of excuses, John might have offered something about his wife being dead, or that his best friend had died right after her. He might have mentioned his re-broken ankle, or his newly broken ribs. He might have brought up that his right lung had recently collapsed, or that he had two herniated discs in his neck. He may have brought them all up. Or he might have just been thinking about them while Clinton talked. He never really could remember how the second half of that conversation had gone.

Just how it ended.

Clinton told John that he might one day count himself “lucky for the opportunities that come from tragedies” like he’d seen.

“Bill,” he’d said, and his voice must have been louder than he’d meant, because the Secret Service guy shot him a look. “I’m done. It’s time for me to go back to New York.”

 

[Unknown]

Don't blame JFK, Jr. for wanting to wait, especially with the survivor's guilt he must be feeling. Just run for a lower office first and win (assuming he ever is in the mood to run), and then try for the presidency...

 

[cra0422]

Don't blame JFK, Jr. for wanting to wait, especially with the survivor's guilt he must be feeling. Just run for a lower office first and win (assuming he ever is in the mood to run), and then try for the presidency...

I agree. People tend to either overlook if not forget that his father served 6 years in the House of Representatives and was a Senator when he ran for President. Given Jr.'s lack of political credentials at the time, him running for President would have been based on nostalgia and sympathy. I think in OTL he was considering a run at Governor of New York before the crash.

 

[cra0422]

Don't blame JFK, Jr. for wanting to wait, especially with the survivor's guilt he must be feeling. Just run for a lower office first and win (assuming he ever is in the mood to run), and then try for the presidency...

I agree. People tend to either overlook if not forget that his father served 6 years in the House of Representatives and was a Senator when he ran for President. Given Jr.'s lack of political credentials at the time, him running for President would have been based on nostalgia and sympathy. I think in OTL he was considering a run at Governor of New York before the crash.

 

[magellan2022]

We would have no QAnon conspiracy theories about JFK Jr. or the conspiracy theories about Hilary Clinton killing JFK Jr.

He would be someone to run in an election.

 

[dcharles]

I think in OTL he was considering a run at Governor of New York before the crash.

He was considering it. This TL, he's gonna have...other priorities.

 

[dcharles]

“She was the easiest woman in the world to fall in love with…Even now, to this day, with all the coverage, all the tributes after the crash, I’ve never seen a photograph that did her justice. Not even one. There’s no photograph that captures the traces of perfume that lingered in the air after she’d left a room. There’s no photograph that captures the strength of her embraces. The pictures don’t show how her laugh rang like a bell, or how the moments with her seemed more electric than the moments without her... ”

---- John F. Kennedy, Jr., in eulogy of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy Aug 21, 1999

* * * * *
​

August 26th, 1999


The numbers were through the roof. The September[1] issue of George sold a month’s worth of magazines in six days. In Boston, it only took two days before extra copies had to be trucked in from New York. Baltimore and New Orleans were picked clean in three, and the DC newsstands were all denuded within thirty-six hours of publication. While John was still under, Liz* and Matt had pulled the trigger on bumping the initial run from just over 400,000 copies to a cool half million. Liz had argued for eight, but a half million was as high as Hachette--John’s publisher--would go. No surprises to John, Liz had been right, and there was a four day period--longer in some places--where there was not a single copy of George for sale on any newsstand, anywhere. Hachette went ahead with another 400,000 copies. Liz argued for five. In a couple weeks, those sold out, too.

For the month, George was--by far--the best selling political magazine in the United States. His uncle Ted had penned a heartwarming eulogy to the memory of Carolyn, her marriage to John, and their love for one another. Calvin Klein wrote a short article sharing a series of dubious anecdotes about Carolyn, an employee-- for the moment his most famous--John knew had only met Klein in passing before their engagement. They ran long, deeply personal obits on the other two deceased, his sister-in-law Lauren and his flight instructor, Ed. They even did something unusual for George, and did a long piece about one of the rescue divers, a young guy from Massachusetts who’d grown up idolizing the Kennedys.

By any metric--newsstand sales, subscriptions, ad sales--it was their most successful month ever. Of course, John had fuck all to do with it, and in his eyes, it was a radical deviation from the George he needed the magazine to be at that moment. Supposedly a magazine devoted to the intersection of celebrity and politics, their September issue devoted half of it’s pagecount to people no one had ever heard of, it mythologized a marriage so far on the rocks it might as well have been in the quarry, and it celebrified a woman who’d resented even the periphery of John’s fame. It was hardly the stuff of Pultizers. Even worse, it supported the notion that George didn’t know its own identity and was too shallow to recognize how out of its depth it was. That it was a scattershot effort by an attention-deficit dilettante to make himself look smarter than he was; a journalistic embodiment of the Dunning-Krueger effect.

Normally, he would have allowed himself more than a little celebration for the magazine having its best month ever, almost regardless of the provenance. But nothing was normal anymore. His wife’s death had literally put money in his pocket, a thought so ghoulish as to be unthinkable, rendering it inevitable that he would think of nothing else. The high-minded thing to do would have been to find some way to give it back, like setting up a scholarship in Carolyn’s name. John had been raised to be high-minded, and he would have loved nothing more than to be then. But before the crash, George was on track to lose 4 million dollars in 1999. A company on track to lose 4 million dollars could not afford to be high-minded about money, whether it was good money or bad.

It was that four million dollar hole, along with Hachette’s embarrassing foot-dragging, that convinced him that it was time to jump ship. John had been flirting with Conde Nast about buying out Hachette’s stake in George for months now. Now, at the Century Association, John was going to get a handshake deal or kill himself trying.

The Century was one of those old-style Manhattan social clubs with mahogany walls, hand-carved wainscoting, and help that knew how to step quietly. It smelled like old leather and decaying moral fiber, and to call the membership merely elite would have been a droll understatement. They weren’t just elite. They were the ruling class.

John hated the place, of course. It didn’t change the fact that he had nowhere else to go. Thanks to the paparazzi, a normal restaurant was out of the question, and the offices weren’t right either. John didn’t want to be seen by every hack and hackette at Conde Nast, and he didn’t want Steve Florio, the CEO of Conde Nast, to see what a crappy building Hachette put them in. That left the Century, or someplace like it. John was grandfathered in at the Century--his mother had been part of the first group of women ever invited, back in ‘88--and best of all, there were no cell phones allowed. That meant that the gossiping aristocrats would at least have to leave the premises before the subject of this lunch would be the talk of Manhattan.

It was hard to find a pair of suit pants that would fit over his cast, and John arrived several minutes late. Even at the Century, he got stopped three times on the way to his table. Everyone wanted to offer condolences for Carolyn, and they wanted to be seen doing it badly enough to keep a hobbled man on his feet. John accepted the awkward handshakes and the sympathetic nods with warmth and grace. He was a Kennedy, after all, and the Kennedys knew nothing if not how to grieve in public with iron dignity.

Steve was already at the table with a glass of red. It was a corner spot, away from the windows and away from the rest of the club members. The waiter brought over a glass of Middleton, poured neat, without John having to ask. Steve eased into the small talk. He praised John’s eulogy of Carolyn and said the memorial service was stately and poised. He inquired about John’s recovery and asked about Camp David. He told John that the Clintons had settled on a house Upstate, and pegged Giuliani’s chances of being in the race come May at “precisely zero.” He even complimented John on George’s numbers for the month.

It was only then they started talking business.

“Obviously, the situation has changed,” said Florio. “Not just your personal situation, either, and my condolences again. Your whole public profile is on a different level than it was before. You realize that Soledad O’Brien was camped out in front of Walter Reed for three days while you were in a coma? I mean, who gets that treatment? You were in bed--freaking unconscious--and that was the biggest news all week. Then--boom--you wake up. Same day, some guy named Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France. First American since Greg LeMond, and nobody’s even paying attention.”

“Which should make us more attractive to you,” said John.

“It’s going to make you expensive, is what it’s going to make you. Listen, Hachette may be a French company, the offices may be in Manhattan. But the mindset is pure Coney Island, okay?”

“You might be surprised. They never cared before.”

“That’s because they didn’t realize who you were. What you are. You had David Pecker, on the one hand, who’s probably the cheapest s.o.b. in publishing--and that says a lot--and foreign ownership on the other hand. It’s a recipe for undervaluation. But Pecker’s out, and now we’ve got...this thing...the crash situation.”

“And the ensuing media attention.”

“The debacle--and I’m sorry John, but that’s what it was--where you run out of copy twice in one month? If they didn’t understand what they had before, they do now.”

“Steve, we’ve been talking about this, what, for weeks now? You’re trying to tell me now that you’re not interested?”

Florio made a “slow down” gesture. “First of all, we were chatting before. Now, we’re talking. And second of all, what we were interested in before doesn’t exist anymore. Mid-to-large size political book with an owner/editor who’s a draw, but not the story? Gone. Political book? Half your last issue was human interest. Not the story? You’re the biggest story! That doesn’t mean we’re not interested in what George is now, but the expense, the return, the timeline to profitability--all of that’s changed.”

“It hasn’t changed me wanting to get out from under Hachette.. And now, I’ve got a magazine that’s got more subscribers, more circulation, more ads, and you’re telling me that’s a problem?”

Steve swirled the wine in his glass and smiled. “It means the investment has gotten bigger. The profile is higher. The consequences of failure are more severe. It means we’re going to want more control over editorial, and it means your magazine is going to have to change.”

Absolutely not.

“I’m not stepping down as editor,” said John.

“That’s--and you have to keep in mind that I’m not the only person we have to satisfy here--but that’s probably not going to be necessary.”

John wasn’t about to let Florio use the threat of SI Newhouse’s disapproval--Newhouse was the owner of Conde Nast--to weasel his way out of committing to anything. He downed the rest of his whiskey. “Let me clarify. I’m not going to step down in terms of my title or my workload. That’s non-negotiable.”

Florio gave a shadow of a nod. With his dark complexion and his pinstripe suit, the effect was Godfather-esque. “I can appreciate that.”

It wasn’t quite yes, but it was close enough--for now.

“What did you mean when you said ‘the magazine is going to have to change?’” asked John. “‘Change.’ That’s a word that covers all kinds of sins.”

“Well, that’s one of our non-negotiables. Right now, George is too close to Vanity Fair--”

“George is sexier than Vanity Fair.”

Steve chuckled, but he didn’t miss a beat. “And we want to keep that. Play it up, even. But what Vanity Fair can’t do--what no one can do like you--is cover politics as personality. Politics as relationships.”

“I don’t want to do a bunch of fluff pieces.”

“It’s already too--listen, George has too many soft edges as it is. That’s not what we mean. Politics as personality doesn’t have to be soft. We like George’s irreverence. We want to bring that irreverence to the scrutiny of these political personas. A lot of these guys haven't had an original idea in their entire lives. Every policy position they take is a function of their ambition and their connections. We want to open that up. Your background is tailor-made for it. Here’s my question: why haven’t you already?”

“What--why haven’t I been reading your mind?”

“Like the Lewinksy thing. You barely covered it. You run a political magazine a lot like a guy who doesn’t want to upset any powerful Democrats. Why would that be?” he said with a wink.

“Is that what this is about?” asked John. Everything in his life always seemed to come back to this question. When would John assume Camelot’s crown? He rolled his eyes and made sure Steve saw him do it.

“That’s not an answer, and it’s a fair question. People are saying you might want to take a shot at Pataki.”

John's sense of disappointment was familiar yet surprising, like an unexpectedly cold shower. There were four, maybe five people in the room when he’d talked about that, Carolyn being one of them. If Steve knew...well, the President and CEO of Conde Nast wasn’t exactly the proverbial man on the street, but he wasn’t part of John’s circle, either. “I thought about it.” John shrugged. “Pataki’s not FDR or anything. A third term? C’mon.” John shook his head at the thought of another four years of a stiff like Pataki. “But like you pointed out, the situation’s changed. I’m a widower.” John gestured towards his crutch. “I’m still healing. I’m not running for anything, Steve. Not governor, not president, not vice president. Not for my building’s co-op board.”

Steve looked mildly surprised. “I don’t-- that covers the next three-four years?”

At least. “I’d say so.”

“For argument’s sake, we’ll say I believe you. Let me circle back to George’s focus for a second. Politics and celebrity are both creatures of the media, and the consumers are picking up on it more. We’d like to see more coverage of the media as myth-makers. You can bring an intimacy to that subject that I can’t get from another editor.”

It wasn’t a bad idea. “Whenever we’ve tried to do that with Hachette, there’s been blowback.”

“Respectfully, Hachette’s not in our league. They think of you as a novelty. We think of you as a coup. We make the books the other publishers wish they made, and if we can get SI on board with this, George is going to be one of those books.”

“Is there some reason SI wouldn’t be on board?” asked John.

Florio smiled. “SI didn’t even think we’d get this far. He didn’t think you’d commit to not running.”

John signaled for the waiter to bring him another glass of whiskey. “Let’s bring him a deal, then.”

Over the next couple hours, the two men negotiated. They ironed out enough details so that the lawyers could flesh out the rest. Since John wasn’t going to step back from editorial, he agreed to add two editors--picked by Conde Nast--to the masthead, bringing the total to four. Six writers would be added to the staff, though they would go through the normal hiring process. John agreed to reorient the focus as Steve suggested, and found that he didn’t mind the reorientation itself as much as he resented himself for not having the discipline to recognize that George was a flabbier publication than he’d meant to create. They would shoot to complete the deal by January. It was an optimistic timeline, but Hachette wouldn’t be able to drag their feet too long without incurring bad press.

As the black Town Car slithered through traffic to take him home, John reclined in the back seat and let his mind wander, the whiskey macerating his brain like a warm bath. His whole life, he’d kept one eye on a vision of his destiny that was not his own. And what had that gotten him? A dud of a law career, an unhappy marriage, and a glossy magazine, of late pimped out by David Pecker, a tabloid hack.

Fuck that.

It was time to raise some hell.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“So I am going to form a presidential exploratory committee, I might as well announce that on your show, everyone else does... But, the president has to be a great leader, and you have to lead by example. But, you need leadership in this country. And we're just not having it right now.”

----Donald Trump, announcing his pursuit of the Reform Party presidential nomination on “Larry King Live,” October 8, 1999

Next up: America's Toughest Sheriff

[1] For those readers too young to remember print magazines--which at one time, were everywhere, I swear--for some reason, monthlies often published a month ahead of the actual calendar month. No idea why. So that's why we're talking about how well the September issue has done, while in the timeline, we're still in August.

 

[Tmckay]

Intriguing

 

[Whanztastic]

This is interesting!

 

[Kennedy Forever]

Watched. Very interesting and excited to see more

 

[Deleted member 78540]

Watched

 

[dcharles]

This is interesting!

So nice of you to say.

By the way, I loved "Accountability."

 

[dcharles]

"I just recently learned this, but believe it or not, those two interviews happened on the same day. Of course, the piece in George didn't run for another couple of weeks, but if you want to try and trace it back--where things started to really shift--there you go. I mean, the Imus thing was all anyone was talking about that Thanksgiving. Before the Imus interview, everybody thought Trump was a joke. After the interview, all the people who thought they were smart--myself included--still thought he was a joke. But really, he was a phenomenon. And the whole Arpaio saga, that piece was the genesis of it all. I mean, Dougherty had been covering Arpaio for years, and eventually he was the one who ended up taking him down. But that piece was how Dougherty and Kennedy hooked up. So yeah, Imus and Kennedy, strange as it may seem , are kind of the ones who helped turn the Reform Party into a prairie-fire."

-----Anderson Cooper, 2017, in Burned: the Rise, Fall, and Undeath of the Reform Party, by Matt Taibbi


November 19th, 1999

* * * *

When November began, John had no intention of interviewing Joe Arpaio on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Until that Friday, in fact, John had no intention of interviewing Joe Arpaio at all.

On Friday the 19th, John was eating lunch with Richard Blow, one of the staff writers at George, and thinking of the infinite dread with which he contemplated joining the extended Kennedy clan for the holiday week. It wasn’t just the typical anxieties one might expect from a recent widower at a big family gathering that preyed on his mind. Most recent widowers didn’t have to deal with the prospect of paparazzi hiding in the oyster stuffing, and most recent widowers weren’t getting anonymous death threats mailed to their offices every week.

The death threats began about a month after John returned from Camp David. It started when some jackasses on talk radio started claiming that the plane had gone down on the thirtieth anniversary of Chappaquiddick. It hadn’t gone down on the anniversary--and John wasn’t sure what it would prove if it had--but the truth had never gotten in the way of people believing nefarious things about the Kennedys. Soon after, a minor talk radio personality named Ken Hamblin questioned whether Carolyn had actually been in the plane at all. He didn’t answer his question--he didn't need to. The callers provided the theories and accusations. All Hamblin had to do was provide the innuendo. After that, it was only a matter of time before the most marginal of John and Carolyn’s hangers-on were slipping salacious items about the state of his marriage to the tabloids, including The National Enquirer--now run by David Pecker, his old boss at Hachette. Beginning with the “revelation” that John was living alone in the Stanhope Hotel in the months before the crash, a slow, steady drip of embarrassing details about the breakdown of his marriage leaked to the press. Every shitty detail leaked to a tabloid seemed to fertilize the corresponding fever-swamp of conspiratorial innuendo in talk radio circles. A couple weeks back, Bob Grant, the Tri-State area’s answer to Rush Limbaugh, had a supposed expert on his show who claimed that it was “impossible” that Carolyn’s body could have been swept to sea.

The mainstream media wouldn’t touch the story--at least not directly. But the same companies that owned CBS and NBC News also owned Inside Edition and Entertainment Tonight. Although the Inside Editions of the world weren’t reporting on all the conspiracy crap that was floating around on talk radio, they scarfed up every succulent morsel of gossip they could, often hinting that John was a more controversial figure than they were letting on.

Case in point: earlier in the week, Deborah Norville called him the “beleaguered heir to the Kennedy Dynasty” in response to a story that Carolyn had used cocaine.

It wasn’t helping matters that John had not publicly spoken to the media at all since the memorial, and that he hadn’t done anything in-depth since the crash itself. Not that he hadn’t had opportunities. Barbara Walters, in her own very polite way, was becoming a huge pain in his ass with the weekly requests for a long sit-down.

“Just you and me. Minimal crew,” she’d said in her last request. Just John, Barbara, “minimal crew,” and about 200 million viewers was a better way to put it. Truthfully, John couldn’t be bothered. With the impending buyout, his slowly mending body, and his interview with Castro in January, he just didn’t have the energy to attend to his public image. SI Newhouse, for example, had insisted on no less than four separate meetings with John before he agreed to basically the same deal as the one John and Florio had worked out. He was doing physical therapy three times a week, and the doctors were now telling him he might always walk with a limp, even with the therapy. In addition to the mountains of background he was doing on Castro, he’d hired a tutor to help him brush up on his Spanish, on the off-chance that John might catch something the interpreter translated too generously. All of this was in addition to the normal duties he had as Editor-in-Chief. With all of that, he didn’t even have the energy to have a public image, much less cultivate one.

The advent of the death threats was another incentive for him to lower his profile. He told himself that if he starved the media, the crazies would eventually go away. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was just telling himself what he wanted to hear, but he knew that his grief and stress weren’t going to let him act any differently. So he tried not to think too hard on whether or not he was being truthful with himself. It just seemed like a dead end.

The latest death threat was a doozy. It was illustrated with pictures of the fight John and Carolyn had right after they’d been engaged--pictures that had run years ago in People magazine--and lettered with cutouts from previous issues of George. As John was preoccupied with the pictures, Richard had noticed that particular detail himself.

“Do you think it’s a subscriber?” asked Richard.

“That would be one reason someone would have multiple issues of George,” said John, his inner lawyer kicking in. Try as he may, he wasn’t entirely sure what the other reasons would be. “The overlap between George subscribers and people who think I killed my wife has gotta be pretty small though. Right?”

Richard, who was an ivy league Ken-doll in the form of a journalist--no obvious flaws, no obvious problems, no obvious personality--looked down at his chopped salad awkwardly. The death threats seemed to throw him off balance even more than they did John. “Where’s the postmark saying it’s from?”

“Huh,” said John. “Good question. Phoenix--let’s get a list of Phoenix subs.”

“Oh, sure. What’s that going to tell you though?”

“Not going to tell me anything.” John pushed away the take-out container. “Might tell the Phoenix police who’s sending me death threats, though.”

Richard caught the hint, and began to clear his own place setting. “You’ll want the sheriff though. In case they’re outside city limits.”

“Sure,” said John, who was still staring at the pictures pasted on the death threat. He kept coming back to the one where he had tried to yank the engagement ring off Carolyn’s finger. That had left a bruise. “Just let Rosemarie know about the subscriber thing on your way out.”

Richard stopped short at the door. “Wait. Have you heard about this thing with the Phoenix Sheriff?”

“Isn’t he the pink underwear guy? The tent guy?”

“No,” said Richard. “I mean yes--he is that guy, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Have you heard about the assassination attempt?”

“Assassination attempt? What?”

“That’s not even the best part, John. There’s a paper down there, a weekly called The New Times, they’re saying he set the whole thing up.”

“Where was I when this--nevermind--when did this happen?" John asked.

“Well, the story got forwarded to me right around the time you left the hospital.” Richard scratched at his chin as he tried to remember. “Mid-August? Something like that. I think the attempt happened in July. It’s wild. I don’t know why no one’s covering it.”

“Rich, we’re the press. Why aren’t you covering it?”

Richard shrugged and kept his mouth shut, but the expression on his face read something like “because of the fucking crash, man.”

John slumped in his chair. “Just go ahead and forward me the story when you get back to your desk.”

* * * *

As it turned out, the story was everything Richard claimed.

James Saville, a somewhat feebleminded 18 year old high school dropout, had been jailed for vandalizing and attempting to burn down his old high school in 1998. He’d been sentenced to 18 months, a sentence which he’d served without any serious problems. The trouble came when he made the acquaintance of a criminal informant and jailhouse snitch--given a pseudonym in the article--who managed to spin Saville’s idle boasts to get even with the prosecutor into an assassination plot against Sheriff Arpaio. While Saville was incarcerated, the snitch, who’d been working with the Sheriff’s Department, not only gave Saville the idea for the crime, he told him that if he did it, there would be--Christ--parades in his honor. The snitch also put him in touch with an undercover deputy who he claimed was a mob hitman. A mob hitman, who--coincidentally--wanted to pay Saville to commit the very crime the snitch had been telling him to commit. Within hours of release, the undercover had met with Saville, taken him to various hardware stores where the deputy bought the bomb-making materials, had him assemble the bomb, and then, once he had done, arrested him with news cameras rolling.

John did not love the law, as many lawyers did, and there wasn’t a day that went by that he wasn’t happy that he’d left the miserable profession. But he was still a trained lawyer with years of experience in criminal law; he’d won numerous convictions. And as a lawyer, he could say that this stunk of entrapment. It wasn’t just that the defense attorney was making a case for entrapment and presenting it well to the media. It was more than that. Not only was the defense claiming entrapment, the publicly available facts and the department's own statements supported it. James Saville was a nonviolent offender, given the idea for and the means to commit murder by the department itself. They’d created a crime where there was none, for the apparent purposes of raising the Sheriff’s public profile. In other words, Arpaio was incarcerating and indicting a teenager for a murder plot that Arpaio himself had cooked up, all so it could make him famous.

So Joe Arpaio could be a fucking celebrity.

Politics and celebrity. That’s what George was supposed to be about, wasn’t it?

* * * *

“John Dougherty? This is John Kennedy, from George magazine. Got a minute?”

“Is this--”

“No joke. I’m calling from Manhattan. Check the area code on your caller ID, if you’ve got it. You free?”

“Uh...yeah. What’s up?”

“Just read your article about the whole Saville-Arpaio assassination fiasco. It’s good work. How long have you been covering him?”

“Oh, Arpaio…” said Dougherty as if it were all starting to make sense. “Yeah, thanks...Been covering him since he was elected, more or less. He was elected in ‘92. I started at the New Times in early ‘93. So me and Joe go way back.”

“You’ve done a lot of investigative work?” asked John.

Dougherty chuckled. “Little bit. Broke the Keating Five story back when I was in Dayton. Got the Governor arrested a couple years ago. Took me ten years, but I got him. Why do you ask?”

“Because I want to run it. I’d like to run the story.”

“I see,” said Dougherty.

It wasn’t the response John had hoped for. “Problem?”

“I just, ah, didn’t think you guys did stories like that.”

“Investigative stuff? We usually don’t. But we’re reorienting our focus a little. Still politics and celebrity--but from what I can tell, this guy wants to be a celebrity more than any local politician in the country. And Rudy Giuliani is the mayor of my hometown, so it’s not like he’s got no competition. You know, you’d have to rework it a little bit--it’s got no national context--but we can credit The New Times on the reporting. You interested?”

Dougherty hesitated. “Well, I guess my question is--if you’re crediting us for the reporting, what does George bring to the piece?”

“Good question.” It was John’s turn to chuckle. “So, long story short: it looks like someone from Phoenix is sending me death threats. I talked to Sheriff Joe about it this afternoon--very accommodating--and while we got to talking, I told him I was going to be in Phoenix early this week. He agreed to give me a tour of the jail and sit down with me for a couple of hours on Tuesday. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ll bet he won’t talk to you for shit.”

“Hates me,” said Dougherty.

“And I’ll bet you’ve got some questions you’d like to ask him.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” said John. Silence on the other line. “You in?”

“Hell yeah I’m in,” said Dougherty. “This Tuesday? Two days before Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah, but I fly in on Monday. Meet me at my hotel, brief me on Monday night. It’ll be fresh when I talk to Joe.”

Maybe Thanksgiving wasn't going to be such a drag after all.

* * * *

KENNEDY/ARPAIO INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIPT OF TAPE 2
NOVEMBER 23, 1999



KENNEDY: So you were wrongfully accused of murder, is that right?

ARPAIO: Excuse me?

KENNEDY: In Turkey, back when you were a DEA agent. I’ve got a quote from you--

ARPAIO: Oh, Turkey. Yeah. That’s a different story.

KENNEDY: A different story? You’ve only been arrested for murder once, right?

ARPAIO: Oh, of course, just the once. [ laughs ] It was several decades ago. I don’t need to play Wyatt Earp anymore. Still could though--I haven’t lost a step.

KENNEDY: You were incarcerated for that?

ARPAIO: Briefly. You know, it was me and four other guys--four other agents--and we got into a gun battle with some dope-pushers--

KENNEDY: And you saw a lot of action over there?

ARPAIO: Oh, it was a hot zone. A real hot zone. You seen The French Connection? That movie was about what we were doing. They based that character--Popeye Doyle, the one Gene Hackman played--partly on me, you know. I’ve got more hair though. [ laughs ]

KENNEDY: Yeah, you’ve got more of a John Wayne thing happening. Anyway, a lot of action. “Weekly gun battles,” is the quote I’ve got here.

ARPAIO: Well, I don’t know that uh, that was a direct quote.

KENNEDY: Misquote?

ARPAIO: Exactly.

KENNEDY: It came from the transcript from when you testified before Congress. So anyway, who were the deceased?

ARPAIO: Who? Oh--the deceased. He was just some dope peddler. Dime a dozen, really. I mean, there were more than one that probably took bullets from me. I never killed nobody in the United States though.

KENNEDY: You said there were two, back in ‘89. You don’t remember their names?

ARPAIO: It was a long time ago. I can’t remember every little detail--

KENNEDY: But you shot them.

ARPAIO: --about every scumbag I’ve taken down. I’m not losing a bit of sleep about it. I’ve had a long career. Things happen. Shot him? Yeah. I was the only one with a gun.

KENNEDY: In the gun battle... And you can’t remember who they were? We wanted to do a little background on them. Give the readers some context, so they know the kind of dangers you were dealing with. Anyway, what was it like in Turkish jail? You ever seen The Midnight Express?

ARPAIO: [ Laughs ] They actually treated me pretty good. You know, I was an American, and I was with the DEA. They knew they had to be decent.

KENNEDY: And it’s an inquisitorial system over there, so I was thinking it might have been pretty rough. Anyway, you’ve got a reputation as being tough-on-crime. You’ve got the tent city, you’ve re-introduced chain gangs, you’ve taken away the tv, the salt-and-pepper from the cafeteria. What’s the philosophy behind all this?

ARPAIO: Don’t forget about the coffee. Saved a hundred and something thousand a year on that. You pay for your coffee, I pay for my coffee. Why should criminals get free coffee? The philosophy? You can’t coddle criminals, is the philosophy! Jail’s not supposed to be the Holiday Inn. It should be a humiliating experience. I believe in humiliation. I want to make jail the worst place in the world, so they know not to come back for a visit. People talk about prisoner’s rights--but the fact is, what I hear from the public over and over again is that prisoners should have no rights. Deterrence is the name of the game, and if I’ve gotta make it as bad as a concentration camp to achieve that, that’s what we’re going to do to protect the people of Arizona from these animals.

KENNEDY: But a lot of people in jail haven’t been convicted of anything. A lot of them will be, but a lot of your inmates are awaiting trial, right? Three-quarters, right? You were wrongfully accused yourself--

ARPAIO: You can’t compare me to the convicts. Period. Apples to oranges.

KENNEDY: But I’m talking about the ones who aren’t convicts--

ARPAIO: Next question.

KENNEDY: Okay. I’ve got a case here. Felix Bordallo Ruiz. Arrested on 7-7-97 on suspicion of DUI. Bordallo claimed that he was on a new medication. He was field sobriety tested and arrested, never given a breathalyzer. He was awaiting trial for 73 days. In that time, he lost his job, was evicted from his apartment, and his car was repossessed. Turns out, he was on the medication, not drunk. Charges dismissed. Did Felix deserve a concentration camp?

ARPAIO: There’s always going to be isolated exceptions. What we’re trying to do is create a culture. It’s about hard knocks. Tough love. And making sure that the criminal element is not welcome in Maricopa County.

KENNEDY: Isolated? I’ve got quite a few of these. There’s Scott Norberg--died in detention after your deputies, what, asphyxiated him with a towel? Tough love?

ARPAIO: Those deputies did nothing wrong! They followed the policy, is what they did. It was a freak accident. Norberg was resisting! The Norberg case was--

KENNEDY: Norberg was handcuffed to a chair. How much resistance was he putting up?

ARPAIO: The Norberg case was an accident, and we’ve already changed policies to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Sounds like you’re talking to the enemy, frankly. Crime is down! You want evidence that the policies are working, look at that. Crime is down under my tenure--way down. End of story.

KENNEDY: But crime is down everywhere. And I’m glad you brought this up. Crime overall is down in Phoenix. But the murder rate is way up. Phoenix and Baltimore are the only two metros in the country that didn’t see a drop in the murder rate in the past decade. Baltimore’s is pretty much where it was ten years ago--but Phoenix’s increased from 14 per hundred thousand to over 16 per hundred thousand. How do you account for that?

ARPAIO: We’re not the only law enforcement agency in the metro, you know--

KENNEDY: But you’re the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the county. Doesn’t the buck stop with you?

ARPAIO: --there’s the Phoenix Police. Now there’s an agency you need to look--

KENNEDY: How did hiring James Saville to build a bomb--to kill you--a few hours after his release further deterrence?

ARPAIO: Saville? I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation, and I’m sure you know it. What the hell kind of interview is this supposed to be?

KENNEDY: Just a question. With the spike in the murder rate, how does the department have the time to concoct their own murder plots?

ARPAIO: This is over. This is bullshit. This interview is done. [ Storms Out ]

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

IMUS/TRUMP INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIPT, PART 2 OF 3
IMUS IN THE MORNING
NOVEMBER 23, 1999

TRUMP: You know I like women, Don. I’m a man, so I like women--you should see my girlfriend Melania. Trump likes women, okay? No problems in that department. But you know, the way I look at Clinton--I see a man who’s weak minded. Very weak minded. It’s not like he’s picking the quality, okay?

IMUS: Ooooh, no. Definitely not picking the quality. Woof.

TRUMP: Right? You look at these women--and you know, at first I didn’t even believe it, cause he’s the Governor, right? He’s the President, right? And you should see these women, Don. Paula Jones? When I first heard it, and then I saw her, I said “that can’t be right.” And I look at it, and you’ve got Lewinsky, and I think he’s a very sick man. I’m not sure he can help himself. He’s like an animal or something, Don.

IMUS: Woof woof. So you think he’s got problems?

TRUMP: It’s sad--sad. When you think about it, you know, he’s got a lot of problems with self-control. And he had a chance to do some things, you know. A lot of people don’t realize, but Clinton had a chance to do a lot of things. Because the President, you know, is really more powerful than most people imagine. And he wasted it.

IMUS: For a plump co-ed--

TRUMP: A little too plump.

IMUS: --and an Arkansaw Lot Lizard!

TRUMP: And maybe that’s why Hillary--you know, she’s had to put up with a lot, very troubled marriage--you know, maybe that’s why she’s such a nasty woman sometimes. Who knows? It’s sad. Sad for the country, really. Sad for the families. And they’re laughing at us--all the other countries--they’re laughing.

IMUS: So we’ve got Clinton the sex-maniac for the Dems--

TRUMP: I never called him that. [laughs] Imus is trying to get me in trouble.

IMUS: Would you leave your daughters alone with him?

TRUMP: Ivanka? No way. He wouldn’t be able to control himself.

IMUS: So, Clinton for the Dems. What are your thoughts on the Republicans?

TRUMP: Well, you know, some of them you can barely even remember. But I guess you’ve got the main ones. There’s Bush, and with him, you wonder if the guy’s really all there. I mean, you’ve got that book, about the monkey, Curious George, and really with Bush, it’s like a not-so-curious George. I mean, you know, that’s what the people are saying. And you know, Bush--the original Bush, not Junior--he’s a real New World Order kind of guy. That’s his thing. And so I guess that Junior’s probably the same. And who else is there?

IMUS: You’ve got Forbes--

TRUMP: Oh, Forbes. Well--and he’s kind of a smart guy, thinks he’s a real smart guy--and well, you know, the thing is with Forbes, his father was a real flamboyant kind of character. You just wonder with Forbes, is he really the kind of guy you want sitting across from Khrushchev? You need a leader in the White House, really. You need leadership.

IMUS: And then there’s McCain.

TRUMP: And McCain, you know, there’s a guy I really feel sorry for. Because--and he was some kind of war hero, you know--they’re never going to let him win.

IMUS: So you’re saying it’s rigged against him?

TRUMP: You think I don’t know? Rigged--these guys all come to me. Democrats, Republicans. All got their hands out. You think if I put in a call these guys don’t take it? They’re begging to take my calls. I know how it works--and I tell you now Don, they’re never going to let McCain win. McCain’s onto them. He knows about the corruption. I think a guy like that, a year or two, and he’s going to be looking really hard at the Reform Party, because he’s going to see. He’s going to see that the New World Order guys are never going to let a guy like him get anywhere. And he’s going to have to take a hard look at it.

IMUS: Would you consider him for VP?

TRUMP: Only if you and Oprah turn me down, Don.

IMUS: You heard it here first, folks. “John McCain on Trump’s VP shortlist.” It is 8:26 a.m. here in the studio, that’s thirty-four minutes till the hour, Imus in the Morning.

 

[dcharles]

So, this is going to be the last update for about two weeks. Timeline/story/whatever this is, is not on hiatus or anything--swear to Christ, I'm having a blast writing it, and have no plans on putting it down--I'm just going to be working on a couple of other projects.

(One of which y'all should see very shortly.)

Anyway, the point of that being, any questions, complaints, comments, suggestions, and/or predictions anyone may have--let 'em rip.

Also! If you've been reading but haven't hit that watch button, go ahead and do it. It'll make you live* longer. We're going to be tackling the Castro interview--or at least getting right up to it--next episode. I know you don't want to miss that.

(Which was totally something that was already planned OTL! How cool would that have been? What's it like to interview a guy your dad tried to murder like, 20 times?)

*Or, worst case scenario, it's really boring, and reading it will make you feel like you've lived longer. Either way, that's a good deal.

 

[jack_donaghy_is_the_shado]

I'm loving this!

I don't know much about John Jr., but you are doing a wonderful job of illustrating an insightful man trying to grieve and live with the whole world demanding front row seats.

I know Arpaio was crazy and sadistic, but I had no idea he was this bad!! Hopefully he will be removed and punished much sooner.

As for the spray tan elephant in the room...I think you nailed it to say the least.

I was 10 when Clinton was impeached so I didn't give it much thought then. My opinion has changed of course, but mostly I feel terrible for Ms. Lewinsky. That poor woman was coerced by the most powerful man in the world, led on, then betrayed by both him and her friend before being hung out to dry and be the symbol for the anti-Clintons and all the other awful things she had to endure. I can only hope she has the life and peace she deserves.

Thank you again for this wonderful story!

 

[dcharles]

I'm loving this!

Thanks so much!

I don't know much about John Jr., but you are doing a wonderful job of illustrating an insightful man trying to grieve and live with the whole world demanding front row seats.

Thank you again. One of the things that I--after researching him--found so interesting about JFK jr was that he really bent over backwards to avoid using the privileges of his birth to unfair advantage, especially in his personal dealings. He was more concerned with being a good person who lived a decent life than a great one. Long before the public at large did, he realized that a lot of "great men" are shit heels. And that being a shit heel might be inherent to the condition of greatness. So it's really interesting to me to examine how a guy like that--a guy with all the gifts, so to speak--who's almost punch-drunk from tragedies, who has a magazine with a circulation of a half mill, who has the blood loyalty (and blood loathing) of a significant portion of the American public...what happens when that guy gets pissed off?

To quote Patrick Rothfuss, what happens when you provoke "the anger of a gentle man?"

I know Arpaio was crazy and sadistic, but I had no idea he was this bad!! Hopefully he will be removed and punished much sooner.

I could have made the interview section with Arpaio--easily--five times longer. What's shocking about Arpaio is not just the level of his wrongdoing, but the persistence of it. There was so much that was publicly available about Arpaio for so long--had anyone but the Phoenix New Times cared to look--that it's almost incredible. He was very savvy with the press though. He didn't really do hostile interviews until the 2010s, when he could no longer avoid it. The most critical pieces from the 1990s and early 2000s--from everywhere but The New Times--are profoundly unserious.

You have no idea how many stories I found that contained an "in-tents/intense" pun. For the record, that number should be 0. So depressing.

So here...I mean, what kind of self-respecting media whore is going to turn down an interview with JFK Jr?

WRT his trajectory, Arpaio's going to have a more up-down career trajectory TTL. I'll just leave it at that for now.

As for the spray tan elephant in the room...I think you nailed it to say the least.

Thanks. Trump's going to be a little different TTL, but very significant nonetheless.

I was 10 when Clinton was impeached so I didn't give it much thought then. My opinion has changed of course, but mostly I feel terrible for Ms. Lewinsky. That poor woman was coerced by the most powerful man in the world, led on, then betrayed by both him and her friend before being hung out to dry and be the symbol for the anti-Clintons and all the other awful things she had to endure. I can only hope she has the life and peace she deserves.

As I've had to do the research for the TL, one of the things that I kind of forgot about, but came back vividly once I saw it again, was how often people said that she was ugly. Which is just...so fucking mean. So out of line. She's hell of a lot prettier than Leno and Letterman, that's for sure.