America's Reluctant Prince

by Steven M. Gillon

  There was some truth to Berman’s complaints. In any office, it is common for staff to jockey for access to the boss, and John’s celebrity status only intensified the infighting. “It was made more dramatic because it was John who was the boss,” reflected Matt Berman. John recognized that dynamic and went out of his way to encourage the staff to disagree with him. “Tell me what you really think,” he once pleaded with Matt. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass. If you don’t like my ideas, tell me.”

  Initially, the staff had nothing against Michael. Over time, however, even those who would have been his natural allies turned against him because of the way he treated them. “I gravitated away from Michael because he scared me,” said Matt Berman. “He forced us to choose sides.” Most senior staff members described Berman as arrogant, abrasive, and controlling. They complained that Michael, feeling cut off from the natural flow of information, circled the floor quizzing editors, trying to ascertain whether they were loyal to him or to John. When Michael could not find John, he would confront editors, barging into their offices and asking, “Truth time, truth time! Where’s John? Where is he? Tell me where he is.” On one occasion, a senior editor was holding a job interview when Michael tried forcing open her door, demanding information about John.

  However, the problem went far beyond personality clashes and staff intrigue. More fundamentally, John and Michael had different expectations about how their relationship should evolve now that they were running the magazine. Michael wanted their roles to remain the same, in which he and John would get together and make all major decisions, even though many more people would be in the office. He even had his title changed from publisher to president, assuming that the new role would justify his involvement in all aspects of the magazine.

  John, on the other hand, wanted Michael, regardless of his title, to shoulder all the responsibilities of being the publisher, while he took control of editorial. This was an arrangement common at most magazines. “It was the standard church-versus-state conflict,” noted a senior editor. “John did not tell Michael how to sell ads, and he expected him to stay out of his side of the business.” Berman assumed that he would continue to be the gatekeeper, controlling access and the flow of information to John. He also planned to continue his role as John’s handler, overseeing every detail of his public life. Unlike the new editors, who were willing to ignore John’s short attention span and his nonchalant handling of important issues, Michael insisted on asserting that authority even further. “I knew many of John’s strengths and his weaknesses,” he recalled, “and I believed that together we could have controlled the direction of the magazine had it not been for all the other voices weighing in.”

  While Michael miscalculated just how much John would submit to being managed, he was right about a key point: it was impossible to separate John’s private life from the life of the magazine he now led. Michael had the unenviable task of reminding John that any negative stories about him would distract from their ability to get the public to take George seriously. Meanwhile, John believed naïvely that he could continue to maintain a wall between his private and public lives. But nothing demonstrated the fragility of this wall better than his very public fight with Carolyn in Washington Square Park.

  On February 25, 1996, John and Carolyn got into a loud, physical dispute, all of it captured by a National Enquirer photographer who snapped eleven photos and a videographer who recorded the entire scene. They were walking their dog and holding hands when the argument erupted suddenly. According to the New York Daily News, Carolyn stopped in her tracks and started yelling at him. They continued walking, but a scuffle broke out. John was captured yelling at her, pointing his finger in her face while she grabbed the back of his neck. According to a witness, “He got hold of her wrist with his left hand; they are wrestling with each other. His right hand is between them; he could be lashing out or he could be protecting himself.” John then tried unsuccessfully to rip Carolyn’s “friendship ring” from her finger. When she appeared to leave with Friday, John shouted, “You’ve got my ring! You’re not getting my dog!” A photo showed John sitting on the pavement, his arms crossed and his head bowed. Carolyn went to his side and tried to console him. They spoke for a few minutes before John got to his feet. Then, as if nothing had happened, the two walked away holding hands. On March 3 the New York Daily News story “Sunday in the Park with the George Editor” hit the newsstands with a scandalous eight-photo spread.

  The cause of this infamous fight, and the many that followed, stemmed from Carolyn’s ongoing complaint that John let people walk all over him. A few weeks earlier, the couple had attended a wedding. If John accepted every invitation to the wedding of a “friend,” it would have been a full-time job. Couples whom he knew only casually did not just invite him to their wedding; they even asked him to be the best man. “Can you believe this?” John complained to his friend Sasha Chermayeff. “I barely know this guy, and he wants me to be his best man.” On this occasion, John and Carolyn agreed reluctantly to attend, only to find themselves seated next to the society page editor of The New York Times. Carolyn surmised instantly that the bride wanted to get the Times to cover her wedding and was dangling John as an incentive. She may or may not have been right, but she was furious at John for not making a statement by walking out. It was a familiar argument, one she had belabored frequently in private, but this time it leaked into public view.

  After the negative publicity, most of the editors went about their business and did not raise the topic with John when he returned to the office. Except for Michael. “He was furious that John hadn’t told him about the brawl before its public screening,” RoseMarie recalled. Berman had been in Milan, Italy, when he learned of the incident and heard that photographs existed of the shoving match. Worst of all, rumors were circulating that John had hit Carolyn. Coming so soon after the launch, and while wrapping up the third issue of the magazine that would hit newsstands in February, Berman feared how the public would react, especially after the video footage revealed the truth. “This could be the end of the business. A wife beater?” he fretted. “America’s heartthrob is a wife beater?” Meanwhile, John remained unconcerned and instructed Michael firmly to stay out of his private life.

  “This is personal,” he told Berman angrily.

  “Which part of this is personal?” Michael shouted back. “I’m sitting here in Milan meeting with advertisers, and I know nothing about this, and you’re doing nothing to clean it up. This is not just personal—this is the point where your personal life and your professional life mesh in ways they don’t for other people. There needs to be a response from our company.” No one had yet seen the video that was scheduled to air the following week. “Let them show it,” John said. “It will show that she was the aggressor, not me.” In Michael’s eyes, though, it was not so much about who had been the true aggressor. Had he been informed ahead of time about the video, he would have softened the blow by arranging a photo op with a smiling and still-very-much-in-love couple.

  Berman was right to feel that the fight could not have come at a worse moment. After publishing two highly successful editions, ad sales crashed for the February/March 1996 issue, which had basketball star Charles Barkley dressed in Revolutionary War garb on the cover. Everyone warned John of the unfortunate reality that, based on research, placing an African American on the cover of the magazine would hurt sales. But he insisted, saying that he wanted his magazine to highlight the achievements of a diverse group of people. As predicted, sales dropped, and critics pounced. “The magic appears to be wearing off for John F. Kennedy Jr.’s magazine venture,” noted the New York Post. And it was not just advertising dollars that declined. Newsstand sales also dropped. While the first issue with Cindy Crawford on the cover sold five hundred thousand copies, the March issue plummeted to fewer than three hundred thousand.

  In many ways, the magazine was a victim of its own success. Berman and Kennedy ori
ginally planned to start small and gradually expand. They had anticipated no more than thirty to forty pages of ads in the first issue. Pecker, however, decided to engineer a big splash, and his calculations worked. But Hachette failed to follow up with a subscription drive that would help the magazine sustain its numbers. Since George had required advertisers to purchase the same number of ads in the first two issues, it was natural that ads would decline for the third. “When we had a hundred pages in the third issue, which was an extraordinary feat, it looked like we were losing all our ads,” said Berman. Most magazines would have been thrilled with those numbers, but George had set the bar so high with the first two issues that its third issue could not be perceived as anything other than a disappointment. “It was the beginning of where I started to see how George was going to be judged differently than other magazines,” recalled Elinore Carmody.

  For Berman, the sales drop provided further proof that the magazine was drifting and needed to return to its original mission. He argued that what made George different from all the other magazines was John’s unique perspective. He never thought of George as a way for readers to know John better. Instead, it was a way for people to understand politics better, through John’s eyes. “It was to me the beauty of George, and why he could be a great editor. It was not because of his editing skills, but because he had this unique perspective and could share it with the world.” Berman did not want George to be a People magazine about the intimate details of John’s life. Rather, he wanted John to infuse more of his voice into the magazine’s content. “Anna Wintour herself is not on every page of Vogue,” he said of the fashion bible’s longtime editor in chief, “but her perspective on fashion and culture is.”

  At the same time, David Pecker was pushing John in the opposite direction, complaining that advertisers thought the magazine had lost some of its creativity after the first two issues. “They felt that the content itself, the features that were being written, did not really deal with pop culture or take the risks they were expecting the magazine to take,” Pecker reflected in 2018. Advertisers warned Pecker they felt the magazine “was floating.” “What you need is consistency,” Pecker told John. “You need the wow factor on the cover, you need the wow factor on the pages, and, as editor, you need to make your voice heard.” John repeated to Pecker that he did not want the magazine to be about him and that he refused to commercialize himself.

  “You are running a commercial venture,” Pecker retorted, “and you must give readers what they are looking for, and in the case of George, what they were looking for is you.” Clearly, John gave the magazine its uniqueness. “It’s the uniqueness that the advertisers are going to invest in,” Pecker insisted. By now, John must have been tired of this argument, believing that he had already settled it on the first day. But as sales declined, then advertising pages, Pecker decided to raise the issue again.

  Both Pecker and Berman misjudged John, who had made it clear at the outset that he would neither appear in the magazine as Pecker suggested nor be the voice of the publication as Berman wanted. Berman assumed that John, because of his family history, possessed a rare and unconventional view of politics and culture. But to be honest, I never saw anything like that. Like many other bright, highly educated, and cosmopolitan members of his generation, John was knowledgeable about big issues. Because of his family background, he had a sense of public-mindedness programmed into his DNA. However, he did not possess a singularly unique view of politics or of its relationship to pop culture, and his political ideas were not yet fully formed. While he had good instincts about story ideas, he always wanted the magazine to speak through the voices of its many talented writers and editors. John preferred to work behind the scenes: pitching story ideas, guiding editors, offering his comments to writers, and, when necessary, using his stature to open doors and provide writers with access. But as hard as he tried, that didn’t seem to be enough, especially for Berman.

  * * *

  —

  John grew increasingly puzzled and annoyed by his partner’s behavior, which seemed a total departure from what he had witnessed the last two years. Even when they had argued angrily in the past, they had always managed to cooperate and share responsibility. But now that they were running a large, complex organization with many employees, John continued to maintain it was best to divide responsibility, a decision that did not sit well with Berman.

  A staff member remembered having prolonged sessions with John dissecting Michael’s behavior. John, who spent years in therapy, was skilled at analyzing motives and understanding why people acted the way they did. He wanted to maintain at least a respectful relationship with Michael, partly because a highly publicized spat would be damaging to the magazine, especially at such an early stage. But as much as John hoped to salvage their bond, he struggled to understand Michael’s motives. “Where is this coming from?” he asked. “Why is he shooting himself in the foot like this? What does he want that he is not getting?”

  While it is possible that Berman and Kennedy could have worked through their personal and editorial differences, there was no way around the conflict over Carolyn’s role in the magazine. It was obvious to observers that John hungered for Carolyn’s approval. John rarely revealed self-doubt, but he recognized that he had no experience in journalism and that he needed the magazine to be successful, especially if he planned to use it as a launchpad for a career in politics. Matt Berman recalled once sitting in John’s office reviewing logos for the magazine. After offering a few comments, John leaned back in his chair and confessed, “I’m kind of bad at this stuff. Which one do you guys like?” Always self-aware, John could recognize his weak spots; but now he had Carolyn, who could fill in where he had weaknesses, especially when it came to fashion and photography. On another occasion, Matt and Carolyn were eating pizza when John walked into Matt’s office and asked her abruptly, “What do you think of the magazine?” Matt sensed a certain amount of fear in his voice. But Carolyn reassured him, “John, it’s exactly what it should be.” Carolyn, not Michael, was rapidly becoming John’s closest advisor. Even Pecker noticed her growing sway over John. “Carolyn had a tremendous amount of influence,” he recalled.

  Berman, struggling to maintain control and increasingly sensitive to any slights, immediately identified Carolyn as a threat. “Michael had a lot of influence over John, and John had been very dependent on Berman for a lot of decisions,” recalled RoseMarie. “He trusted Michael. But when Carolyn came along, John started to rely on her counsel and her opinion. In the process, it changed John’s relationship with Michael, who no longer had the access that he used to have. He wasn’t John’s main go-to person anymore.” Berman viewed Carolyn as a “roadblock,” RoseMarie continued. “He used to have direct access to John all the time. Now there’s this person who John sees as protecting his best interest and starts listening to her.”

  Berman felt as if he could barely control his current partner; by no means did he need a second one added to the mix. As she became a regular presence around the office, Michael stewed. When Carolyn was not home phoning staff members, she was wandering in and out of the offices, usually settling into Matt Berman’s office to make small talk and smoke cigarettes. She delivered baby clothes to a pregnant senior editor. She joked and told stories. She would often invite editors for drinks after work and treat them to dinner. Berman saw only sinister motives behind her actions, but there was actually a much simpler explanation. The George offices were one of the few places outside her apartment where she felt safe, and she trusted most George employees because John had already vetted them. Initially, Carolyn was not there to undermine Michael’s authority. She was there to relax and find an outlet for her energy, two things she could rarely do anywhere else, and she had every reason to believe that the staff appreciated her contributions.

  These simmering tensions exploded on the night they were putting the first issue to bed, as Carolyn sat in Matt Berman’s
office, tinkering with the cover. Michael was furious. They had already settled on the cover, and here was Carolyn, potentially holding up production. “She kept changing already approved cover colors, fonts, and other things in the issue. Each extra minute was costing us printing overtime charges we could ill afford, and everyone was exhausted,” Michael recalled. Berman’s wife was a famous interior designer, known professionally as Victoria Hagan. Around three in the morning, Berman said to John, “Please tell your [girlfriend] to go home. People pay my wife handsomely for her color advice, and she’s not here. So ask [Carolyn] to go home.” John responded with an uncomfortable laugh and went to Matt’s office to ask Carolyn to leave.

  Unlike Michael, neither Matt Berman nor Biz Mitchell minded Carolyn’s presence that night. “She had worked for Calvin Klein,” reflected Biz. “She knew what those advertisers were looking for in the magazine. She had a lot to offer, and most of her suggestions were very helpful.” Matt especially appreciated Carolyn’s input and enjoyed her company. “She always made me feel good about what I was doing, and when she showed up at the office, I felt like someone had my back. She didn’t know so much about politics, either, but when she looked at the work and gave her approval, it was with such confidence that it always sounded like I found the perfect solution.”