America's Reluctant Prince

by Steven M. Gillon

  Madonna denied John’s request, saying she could never do his mom justice. “My eyebrows aren’t thick enough,” she joked. John then came up with another provocative idea: putting the young actress Drew Barrymore on the cover to re-create the image of Marilyn Monroe cooing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to his father at Madison Square Garden in 1962. “This was John’s call,” Blow recalled. “He had forcefully advocated for the idea but offered little more explanation than that it was a sexy image.” Although he did not raise his concerns at the time, Blow considered the cover a “slap in the face” and a setback in their efforts to get other journalists to take George seriously.

  Some wondered why John would choose an image that seemed to flaunt his father’s sexual conquests and humiliate his mother. After first seeing the mock-up of the proposed Monroe cover, publicist Nancy Haberman looked at John and smiled. He missed a beat and then said, “I guess I’m working through my demons, one by one.” The reality, however, was that John never believed that his father had an affair with Monroe. He therefore did not view the cover as an attempt to play with the truth but rather to toy with public perceptions of his family. It proved to be one of the most talked-about covers of the year, and it nearly doubled their newsstand sales.

  In another bold move the following month, John sat down with Iain Calder, the retired British editor of the National Enquirer. After being harassed by writers from that publication his entire life, John would now be giving its figurehead space in his magazine. Some people believed he was committing a mistake by adding legitimacy to a third-rate gossip rag. John, however, was genuinely curious about the world of celebrity gossip. He viewed his interviews, whether of George Wallace or of Calder, as a way to understand the people and institutions that had shaped his life and his father’s. Given his openness, John had no trouble engaging in a fair-minded conversation with Calder. His questions showed that he wanted a deeper knowledge of Calder’s brand of “cowboy journalism,” why it was so successful, and how the Enquirer had become the bestselling weekly newspaper in the country. Calder, nicknamed “Ice Pick” because he stabbed people in the front, characterized his style of journalism as mainstream, telling John that he was writing for “the mythical Mrs. Smith in Kansas City.”

  Near the end of the interview, John recounted a story about one of his many encounters with the Enquirer: “When I was at college, I once got a call, and it was a British voice on the other end. He said, ‘We have information that you’re gay, and we have photographs to prove it’—photographs taken in a bar or something.” John assured the caller the story was false, but the writer then contacted his uncle Teddy’s office and threatened to make the photos public if the senator did not pose for Christmas pictures. It’s impossible to know whether doctored photos existed or if the caller was bluffing in the hopes that it could land him an interview. But John never forgot about it. “Could that have been the National Enquirer?” he asked. “I can’t guarantee that it wasn’t,” Calder responded slyly, “but it certainly doesn’t sound like us.” “Why not?” John asked. Calder insisted that they would not have used the photos because “our readers consider you a beloved figure.” John appreciated the flattery but was not buying it. “You’re too kind,” he retorted. “But wouldn’t that be all the more reason?” John must have been shocked and horrified by Calder’s response: “You’re the little boy saluting his father,” he confessed, claiming his readers “would have killed us for doing that.”

  Calder’s response was revealing on many levels. Here was John, the cofounder and editor of a popular magazine, engaged in a serious interview, asking smart questions and engaging in thoughtful conversation, yet he could not escape his past. As much as he tried to reinvent himself and convince people to accept him as a serious adult, he was constantly forced back to the one moment that defined his life but that he could not remember.

  John encountered a similar problem when, in September 1996, he agreed to sit down for an hourlong interview with Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey’s daytime talk show, already the highest rated in America, could not have scored a better coup than snagging John for its eleventh season premiere. She had begged John in the past to appear on her show, but he always resisted. He did not want to rehash his childhood or be asked the same questions about his father. But now, John believed, circumstances had changed. He saw the interview as an opportunity to reintroduce himself to America as an adult and as the successful editor of a hot new magazine. To make sure the conversation stayed focused on the present, John extracted a promise from Winfrey that she would not show any photos of him as a child. Yet within the first few minutes, while John described the Calder interview, the audience at home saw a family photo revealing John as a child in his mother’s arms. Later in the interview, Winfrey projected the famous image of John saluting his father’s casket. When John returned to the office, he complained to Matt Berman, “I was three years old. I have no memory of doing that.” He later called Winfrey to complain. “Well, it’s television,” she reportedly said. “Get over it.”

  Winfrey could be so dismissive partly because she got what she wanted from the appearance. John gave her show its highest season premiere rating ever. Her numbers surpassed the combined viewership total of talk-show runner-ups Rosie O’Donnell and Sally Jessy Raphael.

  John continued to seek out other controversial figures that he found fascinating and mysterious. For the October 1996 issue, he sat down with Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam one year after Farrakhan had organized a Million Man March on Washington to focus attention on the problems plaguing African American men. Farrakhan descended from a long line of African American leaders, from Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X, who exhorted their followers to distrust white people and to create separate institutions. John peppered him with questions about the potential conflict between being both a religious and political leader. “When you associate yourself with a political candidacy, should people still regard you as a religious leader?” he asked. John gave Farrakhan, who had spoken critically of Jews and been labeled an anti-Semite, a chance to explain his views. “Why do you single out Jews?” John asked when Farrakhan blasted those who he claimed repressed black people. Farrakhan managed to slip through that tough question and a few others, but John deserved credit for having the courage to ask them.

  Continuing his string of daring choices, John ignored the advice of many of his top editors when he ran a story by the mother of Yigal Amir, who had assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. She argued that her son belonged to a right-wing conspiracy within the Israeli government that opposed Rabin’s peace overtures to the Palestinians. Her son, she charged, had been goaded into killing the prime minister by members of the Israeli secret service. John knew that running such an explosive story would be risky. He had his staff spend months fact-checking and hired investigators in Israel before he gave it the green light.

  John had complicated reasons for deciding to publish the piece. He resented the many conspiracy theories swirling around his father’s assassination, but now it appeared as if he were using his platform to promote a conspiracy theory about another head of state’s murder. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, an Israeli lawyer who negotiated the deal between George and Amir, raised the issue with John. He explained to her that too much time had passed since the deaths of his father and Uncle Robert for new evidence to emerge. But this case was fresh, and he encouraged the family to continue probing the details in hopes of finding some resolution.

  The article, which appeared in the March 1997 issue, produced a harsh response from Rabin’s widow: “I would expect John Kennedy, who lost his father to an assassin’s bullet when he was a mere child and grew up in the shadow of that horrible tragedy, to adopt a higher moral stand in his paper.” John stood by the story. While the claim that members of the Israeli secret service were involved remains controversial, a later investigation did reveal that a group of religious zealots had played a role in e
ncouraging Amir.

  It was also during George’s first full year that John asked me for help with writing his Editor’s Letter, which had been spotty in the initial issues. Some of the letters had simply, sometimes blandly, provided the background for the magazine’s featured interview. But John wanted to add more depth by situating contemporary issues in a richer historical context. That was where I came in. On a few occasions, I’d get home to find a message on my answering machine. “Stevie, this is John. I’m working on my letter and was hoping you could help offer some historical background. Oh, my letter is due tomorrow. Can you help?”

  By the time John started George, I had left Yale and taken a position as a lecturer in modern history at Oxford University. I was sometimes not home to answer the phone when he called because I was participating in the Oxford ritual of high table, which resembles a scene from a Harry Potter movie. The weekly ritual is uniquely British and dates back hundreds of years. Dinner commences with the faculty marching into the ornate hall as students stand at attention until we are seated at a table atop a platform elevated over the students—hence the name high table. Everyone wears appropriate academic robes signifying his or her status in the academic pecking order.

  I cannot remember how many letters I helped draft—maybe six, possibly a few more. Since we were five hours ahead, I would wake up early the following morning, write a few pages based on the skimpy outline that John had provided in his message, then fax them to New York so they arrived around nine. I never received a message back from John or even a note acknowledging that he received the fax. But later, I would pick up the magazine and realize that his letter looked awfully familiar. John always rewrote my material in his own words, extracting quotes to weave into his narrative, but the theme was identical to what I had suggested.

  I must have helped with one of his letters in the first three issues because a few editors caught on to our arrangement. They could not understand how John could leave the office on Thursday night with only the vaguest idea for his letter and then, less than twelve hours later, turn in a crisp, thoughtful essay sprinkled with erudite quotes, ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Franklin D. Roosevelt. They eventually guilt-tripped John into publicly thanking me, something that I felt he did not have to do. At the bottom of his April/May 1996 letter, which dealt with virtue in politics and drew heavily on my memo, John wrote: “Special thanks to Dr. Steven Gillon, professor of American history at Oxford University and South Philly’s only Anglophile.”

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  In a little over a year, the magazine had lost its executive editor and its cofounder. These losses definitely took a toll. In the short term, however, John felt unburdened by Michael Berman’s departure. He kept his office door open more often and could be seen casually strolling around the office. But in the long term, losing his friend and cofounder left John rattled and uncertain about the future of the magazine. Now it would be his instincts, and his alone, that would guide the magazine.

  Furthermore, John faced many challenges that went far beyond Berman’s departure. Critics, including some George editors, complained about the magazine’s uneven quality, saying that what generated the most attention were the colorful and provocative covers, like that of Drew Barrymore dressed as Marilyn Monroe, not the articles. None of these critiques should have been of great concern, since most start-up magazines needed some time to find their legs. But Hachette was too impatient and frugal to allow its new magazine the typical chance to publish a few trial issues to work out the kinks. It was obvious to those who worked for George that theirs was not just another magazine and that the media would therefore judge it by a different standard.

  In what was an ongoing theme, even George editors admitted candidly that the magazine often lacked discipline and focus. “John’s vision was prescient,” recalled associate editor Hugo Lindgren, “but it was one thing to have a vision; it was another to execute it.” You also needed a certain measure of self-discipline and the capability to evolve and adapt to a changing marketplace. “There was a disconnect between Matt Berman’s bizarre fashion statements and the second-rate, sometimes wonky content,” Lindgren concluded. “The magazine was less than the sum of its parts.”

  Lindgren had a point, repeating a criticism that Michael Berman had expressed from the very beginning. George published some interesting articles, but it lacked a clear editorial voice and seemed to re-create itself every issue. Each editor clung to a different idea of the types of stories that should appear in George, so the magazine reflected eclectic interests that sometimes didn’t mesh. John signed off on all the pieces, and he suggested a few of his own, but the magazine resembled more a chorus of competing singers than a solo performer with backup singers.

  Hachette’s budget-consciousness also damaged the magazine. Biz Mitchell estimated that they had roughly $50,000 to spend on the editorial in every issue, a fraction of what some of their competitors had and far less than what was needed to hire top talent. Hachette also never performed the necessary research to create the perfect reader profile for advertisers. They knew that George readership was 55 percent women and 45 percent male, an unusually balanced representation for a political magazine. Most political magazines leaned toward 75 percent to 80 percent men. But the George sales force did not possess granular demographic information on readers, making it hard to pitch and sell the magazine to advertisers. Hachette also worsened matters by deciding to go monthly so quickly. It made the announcement after the spectacular success of the first two issues, with the first monthly hitting the stands in July 1997. Elinore Carmody, who sold ads for George, claimed that decision “crippled” the magazine. Hachette assumed that it would get the same number of ads each month, but the math did not work that way. “I don’t think they knew what the ramifications were,” Carmody reflected.

  After only a few issues, advertisers started expressing disappointment over the magazine’s trajectory. When asked what he thought of George, Bob Guccione Jr., who had founded Spin, responded, “It has no bite.” Again, the expectations for George ran much higher than for other magazines. Advertisers assumed that because of John’s connections, his magazine would be close to the action, getting the scoop on the most newsworthy stories and uncovering something that readers did not already know. “I don’t see where it is going,” Ralph Lauren’s team concluded. George Fertitta, head of a major advertising agency, put it more bluntly. “There’s no ‘Holy shit!’ story in George,” he said. “There’s nothing that stops you in your tracks.” GM’s Michael Browner, who had been George’s largest advertiser for the first two issues, also questioned the magazine’s direction. “The circulation was not developing the way we hoped,” he reflected. “I came to the conclusion that maybe people were not as interested in politics as a subject matter as I thought they would be.”

  Other than the initial flurry of interest when the magazine first launched, the problem among advertisers had always been the same: they did not know how to categorize George, even two years in. Sports Illustrated was a sports magazine, and research revealed a specific profile of those who read it. But since George did not have similar detailed analytics, never mind a clear editorial profile and voice, imagining who would purchase it still involved a fair amount of guesswork. “It was kind of Vanity Fair, kind of New Republic, kind of Esquire. It was a little bit of different genres but never quite fit into any one,” recalled Gary Ginsberg.

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  Keenly aware of these challenges, John decided to give his team a pep talk. In late January 1997 he gathered the entire staff in a large conference room and spoke in uncharacteristically personal terms about his motivations for creating the magazine and his continued optimism for its future. He confided about how his own experience shaped the magazine, how he grew up noticing a gap in the way he viewed politics and the way most journalists covered it. “There were only two ways I knew of to do something about thi
s gap,” John said. “One was to start a political career of my own. The other was to start a magazine.” He insisted that he was proud of what they had accomplished, no matter what the critics said. “We have created a paradigm shift in journalism,” John declared. “Someday we’ll be able to look back on this and know that we created something truly new.”

  John went on to say that there would always be those who wanted George to fail. The media did not want him to succeed because they didn’t want him to grow up. Declining numbers aside, John believed that other magazines worried because the publication they had once dismissed still threatened their advertising dollars. Although he did not mention names, John was clearly referring to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone when he said, “I’ve lost friends because they’re feeling the sting of ads that we’re taking away from them, and they’re pissed off about it.” John had no intention of reverting to his former role as “Prince Charming.” This magazine had been his momentous chance to reintroduce himself to the American people as a serious-minded adult, and he had no intention of quitting.

  He recounted to the staff how people came up to him at Bill Clinton’s 1997 inauguration to praise the magazine. Some said it was the only political magazine they had ever read. Those comments boosted his spirits, but John preferred to laugh at the naysayers. I think it was his way of letting us know that he did not take himself so seriously that he could not poke fun at himself. He enjoyed telling the story of a man who approached him one day as he walked to the office. The stranger came right up to John and poked his finger in John’s face. “Kennedy, you know what’s wrong with you?” he said. “You’re mediocre.”