What Marilyn could not see was that Bobby, like Jack before him, was less interested in strengthening her than annealing her; heating her up like white gold, then leaving her alone to cool down, making her more pliable, bendable, easier to manipulate. Wearing down her strength.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table for lunch with my family one day back in the early 1960s. The news was on the radio, and the announcer mentioned that the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, had suffered another miscarriage. There was, the report said, great grief in the family.
My grandfather, who was at the table with us, said drily, “All that money Joe Kennedy made running bootleg whisky during Prohibition sure didn’t bring their family much joy.”
Talk of the Kennedy curse was common back then, and continues today. But Maureen Callahan’s book Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed offers a more prosaic explanation – Jack was carrying asymptomatic chlamydia, and had infected Jackie.
That’s essentially the tone of this book – there’s a lot of legend and romanticism in the Kennedy story, but it all boils down to some pretty sordid facts about a truly degenerate political dynasty.
The book is told from the viewpoints of a series of women (there are many, and more could have been listed) whose lives were ruined – and sometimes ended – because they flew too close to the Kennedy flame. Some had their reputations ruined, a couple died (at least one murdered), and one was crippled for life. What they got from the Kennedy men was a brief encounter (none of them seem to have been very good lovers) and all the bad consequences, because no Kennedy male ever took responsibility.
The stories are told out of sequence, which can be confusing to the reader. Also, because viewpoints change, characters often surprisingly change… character. Someone who was kind in one story is vicious in another. As in the play, Rashomon, it all depends on the point of view. There’s little sisterly solidarity here – the women tend to rip each other up when wounded.
I was often annoyed by the author’s point of view. She seems to be an orthodox neo-feminist. For her the real problem with all these women was that they’d been expected to marry and have children. If they’d just devoted their lives to career and money, I suppose, they’d have found happiness and fulfillment.
Frequent jabs are taken at the Roman Catholic Church, which admittedly does not cover itself in glory in this narrative. However, more recent Kennedys, like Jack Jr. and Bobby Jr., affirm(ed) feminism, and there’s no implication that their hypocrisy was feminism’s fault.
Even when I was a Democrat, I was never a Kennedy fan. So I wasn’t shocked by these revelations, and had no illusions to be dissed. But the coming new administration, which I support, includes one of the characters described in this book, and not one of the least reprehensible. He must be watched – no journalistic firewall will protect him this time out.
My conclusion is that Ask Not is an important book, clearing out a lot of mythical cobwebs in an era of American history. It is not a salacious book, and not particularly sexy to read. It’s dismal. A dismal, bleak story about a dysfunctional family with abysmal values that held too much power too long.