But despite its apparent incoherence, the magazine still managed to attract a host of talented writers, including Lisa DePaulo, Naomi Wolf, Michael Lewis, Edmund Morris, Claire Shipman, Jake Tapper, and William Styron. John even hired the legendary Norman Mailer, who had covered the 1960 Democratic Convention that witnessed his father’s nomination. Furthermore, in keeping with George’s postpartisan appeal, John recruited commentators from both sides of the aisle, including Tony Blankley, who had been Newt Gingrich’s press secretary and political consultant, as well as Democratic firebrand Paul Begala. He gave a stage to young conservative women, including Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. At one point, Coulter wrote a column announcing that she was leaving Washington and moving to New York because, she claimed, there were no suitable men to date in DC. John passed the piece along to a colleague with a note. “Should I,” he asked, “put in an editor’s note that Washington may not be the problem; it’s that Ann is a ball-busting bitch?”
With this impressive roster of writers, the magazine tried to distinguish itself by publishing controversial and important stories—although not as many as critics wanted. For example, the June/July 1996 issue contained a devastating portrait of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, describing him as ruthless, manipulative, and dishonest. The January 1997 issue included articles by Mailer and Willie Morris, a former editor of Harper’s magazine, who wrote about the ongoing struggle to bring the assassin of civil rights leader Medgar Evers to justice.
George also tackled tough, controversial topics. In April 1997 John decided to publish Russ Baker’s article critiquing Scientology, which was founded in 1950 by L. Ron Hubbard and based on his controversial writings. The article examined the German government’s decision to declare that Scientology was not a church but a “tyrannical cult.” In response, the notoriously secretive, highly litigious, and well-connected church tapped into its Hollywood connections, raising the charge that Germany’s crackdown on Scientology paralleled the “unspeakable horrors” of the Holocaust. Scientologists took out a series of ten full-page ads in The New York Times condemning the German government for “practicing religious intolerance.”
Soon enough, the head of the Church of Scientology International, David Miscavige, came after Baker and John, who had signed off on the article. Miscavige accused Baker of being a Holocaust denier, even though his mother had escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe and several relatives had died in concentration camps. Scientologists bombarded George with letters and phone calls complaining about a story that none of them seemed to have read. Miscavige even flew to New York to personally confront John and editor Biz Mitchell about the piece. Frustrated by their reluctance to back down, Miscavige threw a book on the conference room table. The book bounced up and hit John squarely in the face. Then, over the next few weeks, John and Biz noticed strange men following them. Though John was used to being photographed, he found the stalking “creepy.” But he did not hesitate to publish the article once it had been fact-checked. As expected, Scientologists threatened a lawsuit. George was ready to fight, but David Pecker intervened, promising to run two full-page ads for Scientology in George if they backed off on their threats.
Aside from its more serious articles, the magazine admittedly employed plenty of gimmicks to attract readers. If I Were President remained a regular feature, along with We the People, which consisted of a photo collage of famous individuals. John was especially partial to lists: “Top 10 Glamorous White House Weddings,” “The 20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics,” “The Power 50: Who’s on Top of Politics and Who’s Not,” “Washington’s Top 10 Media Hounds,” “20 Most Fascinating Men in Politics.” The two articles that I wrote for George fell into this category: “100 Most Important Laws in American History” and “Top 10 Big Laws That Bombed,” a list of ten pieces of legislation that had unintended consequences.
John’s Editor’s Letter continued to be a mixed bag. Some of his essays simply offered quick summaries of the pieces appearing in that issue while trying, sometimes unsuccessfully, to find a common theme. Occasionally, John would include some insight about his life and family. “When I was younger,” he wrote in the August 1998 issue, “I used to take a rafting trip with my family each summer about this time of year. One of my older cousins had a theory that we should include at least one person whom everyone else was sure to regard as a jerk. His logic was that it bonded the rest of the group together, uniting us in common antipathy against the chosen churl.”
In another issue, John spoke about the year he spent in India after graduating from Brown. He focused on his visit to an organization in New Delhi that filed lawsuits on behalf of women who had been killed by their husbands. Most cases involved a dowry that the bride’s family had not fully paid to the husband. In those cases, the deceased wife became a hostage in a contract dispute between families. If the wife died accidentally, the husband was allowed to keep the dowry and remarry. John reflected, “Throughout my year in India, I was always bumping up against this odd contradiction: How does a culture that subordinates its female population produce so many women of exceptional ability and character?”
Often the letters for which he sought my help tried to place contemporary events in historical context. For the July 1997 issue, featuring Playboy model turned TV personality Jenny McCarthy, he wrote about Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and how Federalists and Republicans celebrated the Declaration of Independence differently. In the August 1996 issue, with a cover of Newt Gingrich posing behind a lion, he discussed the history of political conventions, charting dramatic moments from William Jennings Bryan’s electrifying “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, to Franklin Roosevelt’s pledge to provide “a new deal” for Americans in 1932.
Some of his best essays were thoughtful meditations on the state of American society. In May 1997 he wrote about watching one of his father’s appearances on Meet the Press in which “bland, deferential men in gray suits” asked easy questions. John contrasted the treatment his father received in 1960 with Tim Russert’s recent grilling of Washington, DC’s embattled mayor, Marion Barry. “How different it was from the mano a mano struggle between Russert and Barry I had just witnessed.”
He went on to observe how a New York Times article had lamented the trend of politicians appearing in prime-time dramas and sitcoms, but John saw that phenomenon as part of an ongoing evolution in American politics. He pointed out that in the nineteenth century, it was considered unseemly for presidents to give stump speeches or even for candidates to campaign for votes. The essay touched on the central theme of George magazine: “The point is that politicians and journalists must now compete with an abundance of diversions for a share of the fickle public’s attention. Exchanges between them must not only inform, they must also entertain; if not, plenty of other things will. Pass the remote, please.”
Of all John’s letters, the most notorious appeared in the September 1997 issue. He had just returned from a solo kayak excursion to Iceland. He found the trip refreshing because no one recognized him, giving him ample time to spend in solitary thought. When he returned home, his philosophical mood continued. For the cover, Matt Berman shot supermodel Kate Moss as Eve, so John thought it would be a good idea for him to play Adam. In the photograph accompanying his letter, John appeared to be naked and looking up at an apple. Seated, he showed only his limbs, chest, and face.
Naturally, his essay dealt with the topic of temptation. “I’ve learned a lot about temptation recently,” he wrote. “But that doesn’t make me desire any less. If anything, to be reminded of the possible perils of succumbing to what’s forbidden only makes it more alluring.” What John took special note of was how the public enjoyed “gawking at the travails of those who simply couldn’t resist. We can all gather, like urchins at a hanging, to watch those poor souls who took a chance on fantasy and came up empty-handed—to remind ourselves to keep to the safety of the middle path.” He
went on to describe an article he had just read about temptation. “The author surmised that the more we live a life governed by conventional norms of proper behavior, and the nicer and more responsible we force ourselves to be, the further we drift from the essence of our true self—one that’s ruled by passion and instinct. Give in to our deepest longings (like Mike Tyson and chop off your tormentor’s ear) and become an outcast; conform utterly and endure a potentially dispiriting, suffocating life.”
It was at this point that John connected these reflections on temptation to his cousins. “Two members of my family chased an idealized alternative to their life. One left behind an embittered wife, and another, in what looked to be a hedge against morality, fell in love with youth and surrendered his judgment in the process. Both became poster boys for bad behavior.” John was referring to Representative Joseph P. Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, who was now a congressman preparing to run for governor of Massachusetts. His ex-wife had accused him of using his influence to have their marriage annulled. The other cousin, RFK’s son Michael Kennedy, allegedly had an affair with an underage babysitter. The central point of John’s meditation came in the next paragraph, when he blasted “the ferocious condemnation of their excursions beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior. Since when does someone need to apologize on television for getting divorced?” he asked. In John’s estimation, people took “comfort in watching the necessary order assert itself. The discontents of civilized life look positively benign when compared with the holy terror visited upon the brave and stupid.”
The following day, Joseph Kennedy, despite not having read the article, offered a stinging rebuke that paraphrased President Kennedy’s inaugural address. “I guess my first reaction was, ‘Ask not what you can do for your cousin, but what you can do for his magazine,’” he told reporters. Joe’s response infuriated John. “That’s a great quote, Joe,” he told him in a phone conversation. “What idiot on your staff came up with that line? Or did you do it all on your own?” John knew that the media had hyped up his words, but he could not fathom why his family had turned on him so quickly. “But if they’re too stupid to get the point,” he told Billy Noonan, “who needs them?”
The media focused only on the sentence in which John described his cousins as “poster boys for bad behavior.” The response was brutal, proving in John’s eyes his exact point: venture outside the box society has placed you in, and you will get crucified. The New York Times denounced his essay “as a transparent marketing ploy” and “sophomoric.” “Hunk’s real agenda: polish his own image,” declared the New York Post in a three-page spread devoted to “Camelot crumbling.” The Guardian caricatured John’s editorial as “a vicious attack on the conduct of two of his cousins.” On CBS This Morning, author Daniel Horowitz claimed the letter amounted to “a family coup,” asserting it showed that John was refusing to “cover up” his cousins’ bad behavior. NBC’s Dateline took a poll asking 503 Americans what they believed had motivated John’s decision to criticize his family. Most agreed, at 33 percent, that it was all a ploy to sell magazines. Political ambition, at 22 percent, ranked second. Only 18 percent believed he wrote the piece for moral reasons.
The essay warranted criticism, but not for the reasons critics suggested. It was a convoluted letter, a collage of different ideas pasted together that made sense only in John’s mind. As a result, the real meaning—that society rewarded conventional thinking and stifled the passion that makes us human—was lost in the jumble of competing thoughts. John was not condemning his cousins but rather doing just the opposite. He believed that they had admirably chosen to pursue their passions; the real villain was the media that punished and judged them for their indiscretions. John’s mistake was that he let his cousins off the hook too easily. In truth, Michael’s sexual relationship with an underage babysitter was not about pursuing a passion or creating a “hedge against morality.” It was statutory rape.
Even worse, the story ended with a tragic twist. Several months after the magazine hit newsstands, Michael died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. He and his siblings were playing their annual game of passing a football back and forth as they skied down a mountain at night. John was in Vero Beach, Florida, at the time of the accident. He flew to New York and asked his friend Billy Noonan to pick him up at Boston Logan International Airport. Noonan described him as “visibly shaken.” They drove in silence for about forty-five minutes before John mustered up a sentence. “You know that stupid game they play. It’s so dangerous.” John pointed out that Michael’s brother Max had broken his leg the previous year playing the same game. “They were warned about it, and now look what happened,” he observed. “It’s just the Kennedys acting like Kennedys.”
The very public dustup with his cousins was yet another reminder that no matter what John accomplished, he was first and foremost a “Kennedy,” with all the expectations and burdens that name involved. While battling with his cousins, John was also shadowboxing his past. In the spring of 1997, the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a scathing biography of John’s father, The Dark Side of Camelot, depicting JFK as a reckless womanizer with ties to the Mob. Secret Service agents fed Hersh a string of gossipy details: JFK held daily skinny-dipping parties, had prostitutes brought to his hotel rooms while traveling, and suffered from a variety of venereal diseases. One of his mistresses was an East German spy. When a congressional committee started to investigate, the White House whisked her out of the country before she could be discovered.
The revelations troubled John deeply. “Will the book, and others like it that looked at my father’s private life,” he asked me, “change the way historians view Daddy’s legacy?” John knew that public fascination with his father transcended reality. His father meant so much to the baby boom generation that efforts to undermine his legacy would gain attention for a few days and then disappear. But John worried more about historians who wrote the books that would shape the way future generations viewed his father. I assured him that the allegations, if true, would be weighed against his largely positive public record, and I found it unlikely that there would be a significant change in the perception that JFK would have been a great president had he lived.
* * *
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Despite constant distractions, John remained actively involved in every facet of George magazine. He read articles, attended editorial meetings, and pitched ideas. He also surprised his staff with his eclectic interests. The magazine managed a house account at Coliseum Books, which was located just a few blocks from the office. John would often arrive at the office in the morning with pages ripped out of The New York Times Book Review or with scribbled notes containing titles of books he wished to read. Often John would read a novel, then ask the author to write a piece for the magazine. He would usually send Sasha Issenberg, a precocious intern who started working at George while finishing high school, to the store with his requests. “I was shocked by how catholic his curiosities were,” Issenberg recalled. Once, John even asked Sasha to pick up a biography of Sun Ra, an Afrocentric jazz musician. “I was perpetually surprised, not just that he was deeply read, but by how wide his curiosities were.”
That curiosity extended to music as well. John saw music, and the often politically engaged musicians who created and performed it, as another unconventional means for George to reach readers who would normally not be interested in politics. John loved classic rock, and the Rolling Stones remained his favorite band. But his interests ranged widely. “One time I was in my office and the door was open, and I had a Puff Daddy disc in,” reflected Ned Martel. “I was playing it, and I could hear a weird reverberation. I turned around, and John was at the door singing along. He knew every word. That is a deep knowledge of pop culture that is not the usual for a thirty-eight-year-old white guy.”
The highlight of the magazine, and perhaps the part that John enjoyed most, were his interviews with historical figures, many of them
his father’s contemporaries. These interviews complemented John’s love of travel. He would always add a few extra days or weeks onto his trips so he could go kayaking or participate in some outdoor adventure. In one of his most anticipated trips, John traveled to Cuba in October 1997, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, to meet President Fidel Castro. It was hard for Americans to travel to Cuba, and Castro rarely gave interviews to US journalists. John spent months laying the groundwork for the trip. Typically, he signed letters simply as “John Kennedy,” but he knew when to employ the full power of his name. He signed his letters to Castro, “John F. Kennedy Jr.” The magazine sold extra ads knowing that a face-to-face encounter between the son of the American president and Castro would generate loads of buzz. It was JFK who had helped neutralize Cuba and the Soviet Union in the most dangerous confrontation of the nuclear age.
The trip, however, turned out to be a huge disappointment. Castro, then seventy-one, kept John waiting for days. A government representative would call in the morning, promising, “He will see you for dinner tonight, and we will contact you.” Then John would hear nothing for hours. Around eight o’clock, the scheduled dinner time, he would receive another call. “El Presidente cannot meet you this evening. Perhaps tomorrow.” Click. The next morning, John would call back to inquire about the interview. “You will be contacted later today,” he was told once again.
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