Later that summer, many members of the Kennedy family came together at the compound, as usual. One night, John, Anthony, Joe, Bobby, their cousins Christopher Lawford and Bobby Shriver, along with some other Kennedy men, congregated in front of a firepit to toss back beers and enjoy one another’s company. Anthony seemed weak and looked thin. An hour was passed going down Kennedy memory lane as the fellows drank one beer after another, getting a little drunk. Later, as sometimes happened when the men of the third generation got a little loose, someone said something that set off a fight. Years later, in telling the story, Christopher Lawford couldn’t even remember the specifics of the argument; it had been inconsequential. He also asked that the relatives involved not be identified.
“You should watch what you say to people,” one of the men warned the other before bolting up and lunging at him. The two then toppled over each other, fists flying. “Hey, hey, hey! Break it up,” Anthony said as he positioned himself to separate them.
“Somehow Anthony caught a fist in the face,” recalled Christopher. “His nose started to bleed. John ran to him. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘you guys. He’s on blood thinners.’ We all sat there horrified as Anthony wouldn’t stop bleeding. His shirt was covered with blood; it was everywhere. It looked like a crime scene. John kept saying, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ as he pressed a napkin on Anthony’s nose. Anthony looked embarrassed as his hat fell from his head and we saw his balding head. He just kept moaning, a deep, guttural sound. ‘What are you two, still kids?’ John asked the guys who had been fighting. ‘Grow up,’ he said angrily. ‘Come on, Anthony, let me take care of you.’ Then he rushed Anthony away and back up to the main house, his arm protectively around his shoulders.
“While it was all upsetting, the way John had been with Anthony made a huge impression,” said Christopher. “After they left, we just sat staring at one another. A couple of us were even close to tears. Joe was the one who finally broke the ice. ‘Wow. That was real love right there, wasn’t it?’ he said.”
Anthony’s health challenge affected both John and Carolyn in many ways, not the least of which was that it forced them to take stock. For his part, John became more determined than ever to not only find purpose in his life but to be happy while looking for it. He’d already started on a road to self-discovery after Jackie’s death, and now given what Anthony was going through, he definitely didn’t want to waste any more time. He also sensed more strongly than ever that Carolyn should be at his side. Therefore, during the July Fourth weekend of 1995, he proposed marriage to her.
Carolyn, who was now twenty-nine, didn’t accept right away, which surprised John. However, she was on her own journey. She needed time to be sure she could survive being a Kennedy, especially given the way she felt about the invasion of privacy inherent to the task. In the end, while she didn’t really know if she could cope, she knew she had to at least try. “She held off the proposal for about three weeks,” recalled RoseMarie Terenzio. “I actually think that made John even more eager to marry her. Eventually, she accepted his proposal. It was a lovely ring, diamond-and-sapphire and modeled after one his mother had that he knew she [Jackie] had loved.”
A Sense of Purpose
Who am I? It was the existential question John Kennedy had been asking ever since the death of his mother. Never before had he found himself in such a serious search for identity, but now it was his most driving purpose. He sensed that marrying Carolyn would be a major puzzle piece in completing the picture of his life, but he knew there had to be more. John Perry Barlow recalled, “He once told me, ‘You know, this is going to sound incredibly arrogant, but it would be a cakewalk for me to be a great man. I’m completely set up. Everyone expects me to be a great man. I even have a lot of the skills and tools. The thing is, I’ve been reading the biographies of great men, and it seems like all of them, my father included, were shitheads when they got home. Even Gandhi beat his wife. What I think would be a much more interesting and challenging ambition for me would be to set out to become a good man—to define what that is, and become that. Not many people would know, but I would have the satisfaction of knowing.’”
As a Kennedy, of course, an integral part of being “a good man” had to do with giving back and being of service. The question by the summer of 1995 was: Just how would he achieve that goal?
While it’s difficult to imagine that a weekend seminar about magazine publishing that his sister, Caroline, had suggested he take at the New School would have such an impact on him, it really did change John’s life. He had always been fascinated with media and the way it had covered his family. Whether intrusive or from a distance, he realized that the press had been shaping public opinion about the Kennedys for decades. A student of political literature, he was well-read, even if he’d had so much trouble in school. He kept his library stocked with political biographies and other books of history, including many about his father, the President.
When John told Carolyn he was interested in starting a political magazine, she encouraged him in the idea. She even wanted to be a part of it with him, and he appreciated her support. John told her that a friend he’d known for more than ten years, Michael Berman, whose background was in marketing and public relations, had an idea for a magazine that would merge politics with personality. It would not be ideological but would instead find an intersection between government and pop culture. He felt that one reason people were so misinformed about politics was because they were bored by it. Carolyn was intrigued, as were many others in John’s life when he explained the idea.
Some were surprised, though, given the Kennedys’ sometimes acrimonious relationship with the press. In 1998, at a publication party for Max Kennedy’s Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy, a book of quotes his father had loved and an examination of the way RFK had been influenced by the powerful thinkers he so admired, the author said, “I think there’s a perception that we Kennedys are opposed to the public having a fuller understanding of who we are, of what makes us tick,” Max, who was three and a half when his father was killed, added, “But it’s not true. Yes, we have been opposed to much of what’s been written about us, mostly because of the inaccuracies or because it digs too deep into private thoughts. But we Kennedys understand history and the importance of history. In fact, my mother has been my greatest encourager. She’s the one who urged me to read my father’s journals, to go through his notes and all of the index cards he had assembled during his life with quotes and other thoughts that had meant so much to him. My uncle Teddy had written a book about his brother called Words Jack Loved, and it was always my idea to do sort of the same thing for my father. But it was my mother who pushed the idea along, who felt it important.”
John, as a magazine publisher, would certainly not shy away from being provocative. His mother, Jackie, had taken the same approach when she worked as a book editor at Doubleday. Although she was determined to keep her own life private, she understood the value of dissecting the private lives of public people to learn more about them and, maybe, in the process, more about ourselves. She once said, “I love people in the public eye who I sense have an inner life that is somewhat…” She paused. Then, with a conspiratorial look, said, “Secretive. I guess you could say I love people who have secrets,” she added, laughing. “Isn’t that just awful? But, really, what would be the point of writing about a celebrity if you weren’t going to reveal his or her secrets?”
Such analysis of public figures had its place, though, where Jackie was concerned. If it was done with care and objectivity and the result of in-depth research, she respected it. However, if it was just done for purposes of titillation, she had no time for it and, in a sense, this was something she and Carolyn Bessette had in common. “At first I liked it,” Jackie once told John Perry Barlow of being famous, “but then it made me feel like prey. Gradually, I realized that all this stuff in the press really wasn’t about me. It was actually a comic strip that had a character i
n it that looked like me and did some of the things I did but wasn’t me. It was something they were making up. And I read it quite avidly for a while, and then I realized it was making me sick, so I stopped.”
In 1994, John said, “As I see it, even the trashiest tabloid writer has a responsibility that he clearly does not take seriously—shaping the way people think of others, and by extension, the way they perceive themselves. It’s all tied together. When it’s about politics, the way the media reports and distorts or otherwise makes decisions about the way to ultimately present information to the masses can, obviously, have huge ramifications. This is a subject that has long interested me.”
For the next few months, Kennedy and Berman went about the complex business of trying to raise funds for their enterprise, which they’d come to believe would cost in excess of $30 million. John wanted to call the magazine George (an homage to George Washington). In a short time, enough advertising space was purchased to fill eight issues, and that was long before the first one was even published. Kennedy and Berman spent the next few months staffing the magazine’s Broadway office space, starting with its creative director, Matt Berman (no relation to Michael), and its senior editor, Richard Blow (now Bradley; he uses his mother’s maiden name).
In September 1995, John officially announced the publication of George at a much-touted press conference in Manhattan’s Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street, which stands on the site where America’s first President, George Washington, was inaugurated. He then displayed the cover of the first issue of George, featuring Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington (it would be the October/November issue).
Later, John stood beaming with Carolyn as the couple posed for pictures. He was wearing a sharp, well-tailored blue suit, which she had picked out especially for the occasion, and a white pocket square, which he always wore for luck. “It felt like a victory not just for John, but for Carolyn,” said Richard Bradley. “She was excited about John, about his drive and determination and the fact that he’d found something that gave him purpose. She wanted to be with him the whole way. She told me she had a sense that this was the first of a series of magazines John might publish, and she had an idea about a style magazine for men, something like Esquire but more mainstream.
“When you were with them, you felt John had really put forth a new power couple in the family, and there had been a lot of them, like Jack and Jackie, Bobby and Ethel, Sarge and Eunice. John had always had a thing about the Kennedy power couples of the past, and this was how he wanted to view himself and Carolyn. So, I guess one could say that Carolyn was becoming the woman behind the man, and John was happy and proud about it. I think his mom would have been as well.”
That One Fight
Fall 1995. “Why in the world would you wear such a thing?” Ariel Paredes, Gustavo’s daughter, was asking John Kennedy. The two were at the kitchen table of Ethel’s home on the Cape gazing at a newspaper photo of John rising from the ocean while wearing an awful black swim cap. As he ate breakfast, John was surrounded by a stack of publications, research material for stories he was about to assign to reporters at George. He explained his reasoning behind wearing the cap. He hoped paparazzi would think it was so ugly, they wouldn’t take his picture. “Kinda dumb, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah, real dumb,” said Ariel.
“So now here I am, looking like a complete idiot in The Boston Globe,” John said.
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ariel added, laughing. As she spoke, John poured himself another bowl of his favorite cereal, Total Raisin Bran. Ariel rolled her eyes. “Worst cereal ever,” she said as John poured milk on it. “You’re such a … dude.”
John chuckled. He said that lately he was all business all the time with George, “so shut up and let me just have my dude cereal in peace, will you, please?”
Though off to a good start, within a short period of time George began to show signs of sales fatigue. It’s a given in the magazine business that new publications have a difficult time in the marketplace and often don’t make it. John had a lot at stake. “It felt personal to him, maybe too personal,” said Michael Berman, who would eventually end up having a falling-out with John over the running of the publication. “This was his baby. He was living and breathing this magazine. It had to succeed.”
Adding to John’s complicated life these days was that Carolyn continued to show signs of insecurity. The longer she was with him, the more uncertain she seemed to be about their relationship. Some of her lack of confidence had to do with the response of others to John, which she witnessed on a daily basis. After all, it was difficult for people to avoid being swept away by him. His presence could suck all the oxygen from a room. No matter who was in his company, that person would become invisible. Carolyn had always been used to her own acclaim, though on a much smaller scale.
“Carolyn was accustomed to being the most interesting person at a party,” said a friend of hers from their Connecticut days, “and when it came to men, she was used to being the one being pursued. Once, we were together at a bar and a guy came up to her and hit on her hard. She flipped her long, luxurious hair, gave him a long look, and said, ‘Go away, little man. I am so out of your league.’ Maybe it was an act, but she at least appeared to be self-confident, before John. After John, things changed. When she realized she was so much in his shadow, it became a real issue. She started to feel that she was just an adjunct to him. It didn’t feel good.”
Making things even more complex for Carolyn was that she saw firsthand that John could have any woman he wanted. They seemed to fall all over themselves just to be near him, to breathe the same air. Carolyn couldn’t help but be a little jealous of all the admiring glances thrown in his direction. Like everyone else, she knew of the reputations of Kennedy men and, as she got closer to the family, saw in the next generation some of the bad behavior of the earlier one. “I see what goes on in this family, and it scares me,” she told her friend Stewart Price.
“But John is different,” Price offered.
“It’s a good thing, too,” she said. “I know myself, and I’m definitely not that pathetic Kennedy wife who’ll stay home with the kids while her husband is out screwing around,” she said. “No,” she added. “I’m that pissed-off Kennedy wife who’ll be in prison because she took matters into her own hands.”
Adding to the dilemma of her life was that every time John wanted to go to the Cape to be with his relatives, Carolyn didn’t want to go. Not only did she still feel she didn’t fit in, but by this time she also realized she was always being photographed while at the Cape. She’d previously thought photographers couldn’t get close to her when she was at the Kennedys’ sanctuary, but she was disabused of that notion one day when she saw a pack of paparazzi on a pier just shooting away at her. Now she felt she had to put on an act for public consumption, which added a new level of angst to going to the compound. She was still taking pills just to get through it, she confided in certain people, and an occasional line of coke, too.
It’s sometimes said that every couple has that one fight that they can’t get past, a disagreement that remains an issue between them no matter how many times they try to sort it out. If that’s true, the question of whether Carolyn would accompany John to the compound to be with his relatives was their recurring argument, the one they just couldn’t seem to settle no matter how many times they tried.
“Fine,” John said one night in front of friends at a restaurant. “Don’t come with me, hell if I care. I’m sick of having this same fight.” Apparently, they were supposed to spend another weekend with the Kennedys, and Carolyn had made her objections clear. When her eyes filled up and she started to cry at the table, John became frustrated. “You’re crying because you don’t want to have fun on the beach with my family?” he said, being a little loud. “I don’t get you, Carolyn. What’s wrong with having fun?” He also noted that it was often the case that when she got to the compound she seemed to enjoy herself, es
pecially with water sports. There were plenty of published pictures of her at least appearing to have a good time. So why fight it? In response to all that, Carolyn just rose and rushed off. John groaned. “Should I go after her?” he asked his friends. They all said, “Yes. Of course. What’s wrong with you?” Sighing heavily, John got up and left the table. Fifteen minutes later, he returned. “She’s gone,” he said, looking disgruntled. “Took a cab back to the apartment, I guess. I’m so over her now. What a big baby.”
John Perry Barlow, who was at the table, recalled, “He was really worked up. I said, ‘John, so what if she doesn’t want to go? Leave the poor girl alone. Stop badgering her.’ He said, ‘But it’s my family. We’re getting married, and she won’t even give them a chance.’ I said that she’d given them plenty of chances. It wasn’t easy blending in with that bunch, I reminded him, and he should know that by now. If they somehow make her feel badly about herself, I told him, he should be more understanding. ‘Don’t you ever again make her feel so small, do you hear me?’ I chastised him. He felt badly by this time and said he was going to go home and apologize.”
By the beginning of the new year, Carolyn was still deeply troubled and feeling maybe not up to the “job” of being with John. Unfortunately, a terrible argument in Central Park would come to define this time in her relationship to John for much of the public. It happened one Sunday morning in February 1996.
The couple was first photographed by paparazzi while they were arguing in front of the Tribeca Grill, where they’d had brunch. Then they were filmed screaming at each other and gesturing wildly. His face twisted with rage, John laid into Carolyn, and she returned his fury—as the media documented the entire combative scene. At one point, John snatched the engagement ring right off her finger. It was ugly, the two pushing and pulling at each other while screaming and sobbing. The whole world bore witness to it, too; it was big news everywhere, and to this day people still remember it and wonder about it.
The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation Page 11