Maureen Callahan (55:41)
Now what is so strange, because I watched this episode in real time on fx and then the next day they put it up on Hulu. In the FX version, there's a shot of Carolyn underneath, like she's underneath a glass Japanese coffee table and she looks like a corpse. Like she's still. And what these images are really reflective of now this is late 90s when this is taking place. They're really reflective of heroin chic, which was popularized by first a photographer named Corin Day, who discovered Kate Moss and then Kate Moss went on to become like a superstar. And heroin chic became like the lingua franca of the 90s. Until her ex boyfriend's brother, Davide Sorrenti, died of a heroin overdose. And Bill Clinton helped a press conference in the White House and told the fashion industry to cut it the fuck out, which they did. So this is all very ghoulish, okay? And I don't know why they took out the like, why just. Why not just lean in? Was that too much? Was that like a bridge too far? Okay, now we're going to. This episode was sort of gunning for like a who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf vibe, but at least those two characters, as portrayed on film by Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, were literate, literary, sophisticated, highly verbal, psychologically astute. And they were directed by Mike Nichols, very psychologically Astute himself. This is not that. This is not. Not that. Okay, John and Carolyn are going to get into an argument about John wanting Carolyn to go back to work. This is. This. This I believe probably passes for the, the level of fight that they, they probably engaged in in real life. But on the back end of this, I'm going to tell you about all the things that they were really fighting about in real life, okay? And they would have made for much better drama. And as I said in my Daily Mail column the other day, it would have gotten this show at least three seasons, at least, if they had really dug into the real shit that was going on. You know, they're kicking themselves over at FX and Hulu and Ryan Murphy's production company. This show is a cultural phenomenon like no other. That's what you get when you play it safe. Here we go. You told me to go work for Petra. When 30 minutes ago at this dinner party you insisted on hosting. Petra was complaining about how difficult it is to find anyone with work experience willing to build something from the ground up and accept a pay cut. And you started yelling at me. Oh, I did not yell. Yeah, John, you were literally yelling. And I know that because you were seated at the other end of the table. All I said was that you had fashion experience and you didn't need money. Pr. I have PR experience. Alvin Klein. Isn't that fashion? That's fashion. Petra has a jewelry line, John. I'm not a jewelry designer. Well, I'm sorry. For instance, insinuating that you have great taste, that qualifies me to buy jewelry, not make it. They are depicting Carolyn as a non negotiable personality who is impossible to deal with. Impossible. Now that may well have been true, but so was John. And I feel that they are stacking this deck to make it Carolyn's fault that that plane took off late. That's not what caused the crash. John Kennedy jr's insolence, his entitlement, his stupidity, and frankly, his suicidality, which they do tip a nod of the hat to in this episode, are the reasons. But as I wrote in my column, here are the things they really were fighting about and that would have given them episode upon episode. Carolyn's extremely heavy cocaine use. John's magazine failing to the point where executives at Hachette sent him a letter saying they were completely done with him because he didn't know what the fuck he was doing in some. And substance. His cousin and best friend, Anthony Radziwill dying. His sister Caroline Kennedy, long among his Closest confidence, no longer speaking to him. Him. Carolyn making abusive phone calls multiple times a day and in the middle of the night multiple times more than once to his business partner Michael Berman, saying, john, can't stand you. Nobody can't can stand you. It would just be so much better if you left. Why don't you get the fuck out of our lives? The two of them in marriage counseling that was going nowhere. Carolyn on medication prescribed by another therapist she was seeing on her own, reportedly John's daily marijuana habit. Carolyn spilling humiliating details of her non sex life with him, and the both of them cheating on each other all through their relationship and through the marriage. Okay, and we're going to get to this. We are going to get to this because this is such revisionism and it's really dangerous. John Kennedy Jr. Depicted here as like a nice guy, just a nice guy trying to make his marriage work, trying to make his magazine work. Here's something John wrote in George. As George was failing, he had two cousins who were caught up in very public scandals. One, Joseph P. Kennedy, who as written about in Ask not had previously left a beautiful teenage girl named Pam Kelly paralyzed for life when he recklessly drove a Jeep. Got away with it. This current scandal he was in, he was running for office and it was a real problem because he got his marriage to a woman named Sheila Roche Kennedy annulled by the Pope behind her back. She had a problem with that. Kennedy women aren't supposed to have problems with anything their men do. He also wrote about his cousin Michael Kennedy, who had slammed into a tree. While playing football on skis with other Kennedys. And the resort had told them to knock it off. It was against the rules and regulations because they were putting the lives of other skiers at that resort in mortal danger. Did they give a shit? No, they did not. John's editor's letter, which was normally written by Steve Gillen, whose book I Took this from America's Reluctant Prince, but it's so poorly written that I believe John pretty much wrote this one himself in writing about his cousins in his editor's letter, which was also adorned with a photo again of this exhibitionist who wanted to be part of the media, would exploit himself and his own family members, including his beloved mother, for, you know, the commercial viability of his magazine. But don't, don't take pictures of his wife. You know, you cannot have it both ways. His editor's letter, I quote of his cousins. One left behind an embittered wife. Interesting choice. Embittered wife. How would John like it if his wife had the juice to go to the Vatican to call the Pope and say, hey, I'm just gonna sling enough money your way, and I'm a Kennedy. Give me an annulment. My spouse doesn't want one and she doesn't even know I'm talking to you. You know what I'm saying? And I say this as someone who's raised Catholic, so I know what I'm talking about. Another in what looked to be a hedge against morality. Now, I think that here Gillen made a mistake, and I think it's something of a Freudian mistake, because what John really wrote was mortality, what looked to be a hedge against mortality. But Gillen slipped and wrote morality. I continue, of the other cousin John's writing about in what looked to be a hedge against mortality, fell in love with youth and surrendered his judgment. In the process, both became poster boys for bad behavior. Now, that's terrible writing. Poster boys for bad behavior. That's a double cliche. It's so flat and unoriginal. That's why I think John wrote it now of the cousin Michael Kennedy, since deceased, who John wrote, fell in love with youth and surrendered his judgment. In the process. In the process is redundant. Again, terrible writing. I'm going to tell the real story of Michael Kennedy. Michael Kennedy. Now, Jerry Oppenheimer wrote about this in his excellent RFK Jr biography, which I devoured when it came out. This was also reported in all of the New York tabloids in time magazine in 1997 as part of a piece about these dual scandals, divorce, Kennedy style. And by the Chicago Tribune on April 25, 1997. I'm reading from the bulk of the Oppenheimer bio, but I'll tell you the other salient details, of course. Michael Kennedy went to rehab within hours of the shocking discovery by his then wife, Vicki Gifford Kennedy, who was the daughter of the famed football player Frank Gifford and the stepdaughter of Kathie Lee Gifford and Kathie Lee when she was on Regis and Kathy Lee. I love Kathie Lee, but she would always. She would always make reference to now being related to the Kennedys. She was not. It's very Carol Radziwill adjacent, you know what I mean? Within hours of the shocking discovery by Vicki Gifford Kennedy of her husband in bed with Marissa. I'm going to leave out her last name. She's moved on with her life. Marissa in one of the Kennedys spare bedrooms, she found her husband in bed with Marissa, who was their teenage babysitter. Who began babysitting for the family when she was 12 years old. The Chicago Tribune reported that fact. Now it was long reported that Michael began raping this child. There's no other way to put it. When she was 14. That age got bumped up to 16 in subsequent reports and or when the law started circling. I believe 16 was the age of consent in that state where they lived. Kennedy had blamed his drinking for his. This is how this was reported back then. And when I say to you guys like you need to read every word carefully. You could never word this report this way today. For his illicit affair. She was a child with the teenage babysitter and family friend and his wife believed him for the time being. Around that time, Michael Kennedy was caught stalker like on a security camera breaking into the garage where the teenager kept her car. He left behind a bizarre offering, a quote, artificial penis. So a dildo that he attached to the windshield. Having turned 18 and become a college freshman, Marissa decided to confess all to her parents who were high powered Kennedy political donors and friends of the family, or so they thought. Her mother was so devastated that the next day she climbed to the roof of the six story Boston building where she and her husband had a chic apartment and threatened to jump. Steve Gillen writes in his book that John really believed, and I quote, that both cousins that they had admirably chosen to pursue their passions. The real villain was the media that punished and judged them for their indiscretions. I'm proud to be a member of the punitive judgmental media. I'm proud of the nerve for telling the truth about these fucking savage animals. John Jr. Was no gentleman. Now we're going to turn to ask not and the part in the book where I write about the kind of guys John Jr loved to defend publicly. The kind of guys that John Kennedy loved to use his fame to defend and rehabilitate in the public square. Mike Tyson. John championed Mike Tyson even though the boxer had served a six year prison sentence for raping an 18 year old girl, a contestant in the Miss Black America pageant. As John wrote to Tyson in 1997. Most folks think you have considerable talent balanced by some faults, just like the rest of us. I don't know how many of you guys out there identify as rapists. John's support was more astonishing considering that Tyson's victim's testimony had been well publicized during his rape trial in 1992. She recalled that the famous boxer had brought her to his hotel suite and I'm going to stop anyone right there. Who says, well, she went up to his hotel. Right room gives you not any license to lay hand on a woman who says, no, I don't want that. The famous boxer had brought her to his hotel suite, saying he needed to make a phone call. She waited in the suite's foyer before, she testified, he asked her to join him in another room. I was terrified, she testified. I said, it's time to leave. He said, come here. This is graphic, so I'm just going to warn you. He grabbed my arm and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He pulled me fast toward him. This is the heavyweight champion of the world known as Iron Mike Tyson. I pulled back. He said, don't frighten. Don't frighten. Relax. That is very specific language. And I believe her people don't normally talk that way. That's very specific syntax. Don't frighten. And she, she says, he said it twice. I tried to punch him, but it was like hitting a wall. At the time, Tyson was 5 foot 11, weighed over 200 pounds, and was the most fearsome heavyweight boxer in the world. His teenage victim was 5 foot 3 and 108 pounds. The next thing I knew, he slammed me on the bed, she testified. He put his hand in my vagina. He jammed his fingers in me really hard. I said, ow, please stop. You're hurting me. My eyes were filling up with tears. And he started laughing like it was a game. Tyson forcibly performed oral sex on her. And then she said he raped her. It felt like someone was ripping me apart, she testified. And when he was done, he called her a baby, a crybaby. Tyson's prison sentence at the end of the 1992 trial was followed by another in 1998 for assaulting two men. John made a show of visiting Tyson at the Rockville Detention center in Maryland and compared Tyson's troubled reputation to that of his own father. I mean, the world knew the half of it it about his father, like a fraction whose legacy was becoming sullied by multiple reports of his own womanizing. I mean, again, in that letter to Mike Tyson, John said that his father's moral failings only showed how, quote, human he was. That's why John wrote, 35 years after his death, my father still sells books, miniseries, magazines, et cetera. That's the important stuff, right? As discussed with Rob, he sympathized with me in some way. Tyson recalled later defending someone accused of rape. Wasn't new for John. In 1991, his cousin, William Kennedy Smith, stood trial in Palm beach for raping a 29 year old single mother named Patricia Bowman. John showed up to court in a public display of support even though his mother Jackie refused to to do the same. John told his friend James Ridgeway. Dsigetsi, if I'm pronouncing that right, that the Kennedy family, quote, should have done something about Willie years ago when he first started doing this. Close quote, meaning I write raping women. Bowman's story was entirely credible. After meeting Smith at a high end bar in Palm Beach, Florida, she testified that she went back to the Kennedy estate again. I am going to insert my admonition there. She can go back home with whoever she wants. If she doesn't want to have sex, she gets to say so and that's the end of it. She went back to the Kennedy estate with Smith because she said there could be no safer place because, quote, she said there was a senator there, Smith's uncle, Ted Kennedy. And you see what I mean, that if the media had just told the truth about these people, women wouldn't have thought they were safe and open. Quote, I didn't feel I was in any danger whatsoever. Close quote. Smith then walked her down to the beach where she said he raped her so savagely that Bowman testified, quote, I thought he was going to kill me. How does it feel to be a character assassin, John? His friend James Ridgeway Desezge asked him after the verdict. How does it feel to be this woman's Lee Harvey Oswald? John hung his head. He always hung his head when confronted with something he didn't like. It was a signal to back off in his own defense. John muttered an explanation. You just don't understand the pressure I'm under. John's long term affair with, among many other women, a woman named Sybil Hill. And the National Enquirer was the only outlet bold enough to cover this story. It got picked up later by other outlets, but no one else would go near it. This was called JFK's Secret Lover. It was published in the year 2000 after they had died. And this is entirely credible. And the Inquirer stood this story up. That's the phraseology in journalism. You stand it up with sources. And they spoke to several friends of hers who said, yeah, she told me all this contemporaneously long before you guys came around. And she also had handwritten letters from him and a distraught. I'm reading from the article. John F. Kennedy Jr. Had a passionate affair with a beautiful blonde in the last two years of his troubled marriage, which lasted three years, four years. The woman is Sybil Hill 34, formerly of Manhattan, of Aspen, Colorado, a remarkable lookalike for Kennedy's wife, Carolyn. John was unhappy in his marriage, very unhappy. Sybil told the Inquirer the tender love Story. You know, they had to sort of goose her up a little bit. Close friends who know about the, the affair say she provided a sympathetic ear as John poured out his heart about his failing marriage. Now he reconnected with her after she left New York City. That's where they began their, their affair. He wasn't married at the time, but, you know, he always kept these women around. Julie Baker was another one. I'm going to mention her in a moment. Anyway, John flew into Aspen by himself to attend a bachelor party for a friend at the Caribou Club. These are all very details. Details are telling. It tells you this is likely true. Caribou Club in February 1998. John had met Sybil a few years earlier in New York, knew she'd moved to Aspen when he came to town. He came by the store where she worked, a cashmere shop, and picked her up for lunch. So he was seen, Sybil's friend added. They ate at a restaurant named Vinh Vin, which is a sort of out of the way spot, as John did with Sarah Jessica Parker. As your cultural criminal prosecutor, I am showing a pattern. He took her, she said, to out of the way places so they wouldn't be seen together again. That bled into Sex and the City too, but so he won't be caught cheating, he's got to hide these women and they have such low self esteem, they take it. John wore a baseball cap pulled down tightly as a disguise. Following lunch, they went back to her apartment. They had sex. Then he went off to the bachelor party. Then when he was done at the bachelor party at midnight, he called Sybil and told her not to pick her up. First of all, come pick me up like you're the help. Get a cab, you fucking asshole. Come pick her up so they can go back to her place and have sex again. But not in the front. She's got to pick. Pick him up in the back where all the trash is. Metaphor of all metaphor. He confessed his marriage to Carolyn was self destructing. After they had sex, John complained that his wife was open, quote, like this wonderfully cutesy, warm person one minute and an emotionless ice princess the next, next, the next. And that tracks. John wanted a baby, he said Carolyn did not. John was also upset with Carolyn's gay fashionista friends and her incessant jealousy. He said he was still Going to try to make the marriage work. Now, the other fucked up thing that this miniseries, so that. So the episode 8 date ends on John leaving the house and going to a hotel, the Stanhope Hotel. Also a Sex in the City similarity there. It's another show. And he stayed at the hotel up until they all left for the wedding on the Cape. The Kennedy wedding on the Cape. Now, this is how up John Kennedy was. Carolyn was up, too. Don't get me wrong. John had been begging and bullying Carolyn to the point where even his assistant, Rosemarie Terenzio, inserted herself and encouraged Carolyn to get on that plane and go to that wedding. Because otherwise the media would be talking about how John was their stag and clearly, clearly they were getting a divorce and the media would have been right. Everyone likes to say, you know, the media, they just like, they just root around and they make shit up. Journalists know what they're doing, okay? The night before that flight that John had bullied and harangued Carolyn into taking with him, he was at his hotel with an ex girlfriend named Julie Baker, who bore a substantial resemblance to Jackie, making it doubly fucked up. But, you know, she has always maintained, Julie Baker has, that they just chatted that night. She was always around. Whenever John called, she came running. So John is. In my opinion, she denies it, but, you know, it doesn't make any sense. John was likely fucking another woman hours before flying his wife against her will in a plane. That I believe. I believe that flight was a murder suicide mission. I do. The more I talk about it, you know, I theorize about it in Ask not, and I do offer evidence and Ask not, but the more I talk about it with you guys, the more I really do think so. And, you know, ask, sorry, love story in this last scene, we're gonna show it makes a nod to John's suicidality. It really does. The character here, as played, I think very well by Paul Anthony Kelly, is enumerating all of the things in his life that are going wrong. What remains unsaid, but we all know here, is that John Kennedy Jr. Had zero internal resources because he had been given a glide path through life. He was never told no. He had zero emotional calluses. He had zero emotional or psychological scar tissue. He didn't know how to deal with one major failure, let alone multiple losses. Grave losses. His cousin and best friend dying slowly and painfully of cancer at a very young age. His sister, his primary confidant, not speaking to him anymore. His magazine, his brainchild, was a laughingstock in New York City Media. It was failing, and nobody wanted to buy it and save it. His business partner, Michael Berman, had cut him out of his life. John thought it was kind of like a just a thing that Michael would get over because no one ever exited John F. Kennedy's life voluntarily. He was John fucking Kennedy Jr. Michael did, and John couldn't fucking believe it. Lastly, his wife, he knew, was fucking another man and was miserable, and his marriage wasn't going to make it. You think this guy was going to be able to handle that level of public humiliation? The mask coming off the world, recognizing that the emperor named John. John had no clothes. Here we go. There is nothing you can say to me that would hurt me more than you walking out that door. Do you know what it's like to see it in your eyes that I'm
