| Subject: A couple of transcripts |
Author:
Marilyn
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Date Posted: 14:03:27 03/11/05 Fri
In reply to:
Yas
's message, "All Too Human: Jack and Jackie Kenedy" on 12:20:16 03/11/05 Fri
'ALL TOO HUMAN' [BY ED KLEIN] TAKES INTIMATE LOOK AT KENNEDY ROMANCE
NEWS (CNN), September 8, 1996
HIGHLIGHT: "All Too Human" by Edward Klein focuses on the romance between Jack and Jackie Kennedy. A reviewer says it's certain to sell, and though Klein's sources are not clear, his accounts ring true.
MILES O'BRIEN, Anchor: It's our book time. Summer's just about over, so time to put away that beach reading stuff.
JOIE CHEN, Anchor: But there is lots of fun still to be found in the bookstores. Joining us this morning to talk about some new releases, Kevin Richardson of Elle magazine. Good morning, Kevin.
KEVIN RICHARDSON, 'Elle Magazine': Good morning.
JOIE CHEN: So this first book you have is this Kennedy love story book, and if you could say nothing else about it, you know it's going to sell.
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Well, it will absolutely sell. The book has already generated a tremendous amount of publicity because of the extraordinary amount of intimate detail from the lives of both Jack and Jackie Kennedy that are included in the book.
JOIE CHEN: That would be intimate detail - that's what we say on family-oriented shows.
KEVIN RICHARDSON: That's exactly right.
MILES O'BRIEN: We'll just kind of leave it at that, I think, Kevin. But we need to know a little bit about this author. Where does he get these intimate details?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Well, Ed Klein was a so- is a- was a social friend of Mrs. Onassis during her years in New York at the final stage- in the last stage of her life. Where he gets all of them is unclear. Some of the details that he reports, only two people could possibly know them. One can only speculate where he actually- where he- where he developed his information. But it's- I think one of the things about this book that's interesting, though, is that anyone going to it should realize that they're going to be confronted with a great deal of this. But there are lots of other things in the book, I think, to recommend it, in addition to some of the things that have been more widely reported.
JOIE CHEN: In a sense, though, you say that he is a friend, or he was a friend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Is this the story from her side?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: I- the book is very much written from the standpoint of- of Mrs. Onassis. That's- that's absolutely right. And of the two, it's much harder on Jack Kennedy than it is on her.
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, given the revelations here, what kind of friend was he?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Well, I- I- I think- I think that probably is now the $64,000 question. But I must say, I didn't find- I didn't find the- the way the revelations were done to be offensive or distasteful. There- there probably- there will be some people who- who think this is really more than we need to know, but I- I- I didn't find these scenes over done, and they weren't terribly troubling to me.
JOIE CHEN: Well, when you say that it was harder on Jack Kennedy than on his wife, what do you mean by that? I mean how does it create a story line around him?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Well, the- the portrait of Jack Kennedy that one gets is of a man who was really just on a deep level emotionally incapable of being a devoted family man. At- at one point, he- I mean he's terribly outspoken about the fact that he really has no particular desire to be married. He would have been quite content to remain a bachelor throughout his life. He really got married at his father's urging in order to further his political career.
MILES O'BRIEN: Do we- should we believe a lot of this? Do you think most of this rings true?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: I- I think most of it does ring true- I really do. I think- I think there's so much detail and these things are placed in the context of the social worlds that these two people grew up in. And the behavior seen in that context really wasn't too out of the ordinary.
JOIE CHEN: All right, the theme of your books today is 'sort of biography,' and sort of biography, I think, is particularly the case in Paul Theroux's book. Is it or isn't it? My Other Life.
KEVIN RICHARDSON: It is- well, as you can see, he calls it a novel. It's really probably something more closely approximating a memoir or perhaps an embellished memoir. And it's not even straightforwardly an embellished memoir at that. It's really more a series of short stories from the life of Paul Theroux. These things certainly happened to him, but there are, for example, pages and pages of dialogue from things which happened 10- 20 years ago. You- you- you'd think that he would be hard pressed to remember events in that much detail. So it's really- it's a- it's an interesting kind of- kind of a new genre. It's somewhere between a novel and an autobiography, I suppose.
MILES O'BRIEN: So accepting some poetic license here, can we read this and- and understand a lot about Theroux?
KEVIN RICHARDSON: You can read it and understand a great deal about Theroux, but that's not probably the most important thing here. I think that the most- the best thing about this book is how beautifully written it is and how wonderfully talented Paul Theroux is at evoking an atmosphere, at plumbing the psychological depths of people who live in a particular place, at telling you about- with great elegance about his own emotional responses to people and places.
JOIE CHEN: All right, Kevin. We're running out of time, but we do want to get a chance here to plug the third book, which-
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Sure.
JOIE CHEN: -Noel Coward's book- the book about Noel Coward. Tell us a little bit about it.
KEVIN RICHARDSON: That's right. This, really, is the most detailed look we've had yet at Noel Coward's life. The author was given access for the first time to a trove of correspondence, manuscripts that- that Noel Coward's estate has not released up until this- to anybody else before. And it's a much fuller picture of Noel Coward's life than we've- than we've had before.
People who are great Noel Coward fans may find the tone slightly chillier than some early Coward biographies, but for the wealth of detail, you can't beat it.
JOIE CHEN: All right, Kevin. Thanks very much for coming in for us today.
KEVIN RICHARDSON: Thank you.
JOIE CHEN: Kevin Richardson, Elle magazine. And he's read all those books.
KENNEDY BIOGRAPHER [ED KLEIN] DISCUSSES POLITICAL SCANDAL [AND HIS BOOK “ALL TOO HUMAN”]
SATURDAY MORNING (CNN), September 14, 1996
HIGHLIGHT: Scandal is nothing new in American politics. The conventional wisdom is that a scandal, especially of a sexual nature, could derail a political career. Author Edward Klein discusses his book on the Kennedys.
MILES O'BRIEN, Anchor: Scandal is nothing new in American politics. The difference between the old days and now is a lot more rumor, innuendo and allegations tends to get circulated by the media. The conventional wisdom is that an indiscretion made public, especially of a sexual nature, can be fatal to a political career. There are, however, some notable exceptions. For example, going back a few years - the Kennedys. The book All Too Human, the love story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, offers a provocative look at the lives of the two Kennedys and raises question about how the public and the press might have viewed what apparently went on behind closed doors in Camelot. Joining us from New York is the book's author Edward Klein, former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine and a personal friend of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. We thank you for being with us Mr. Klein.
EDWARD KLEIN, Author, "All Too Human": Good morning.
MILES O'BRIEN: All right. The first question would be- if the Kennedys- if Camelot existed today given the media attention on the White House today, would there be an added level of scrutiny and will we be hearing about Jack Kennedy's alleged philandering?
EDWARD KLEIN: Well, you know, you have to I think distinguish between if we knew about Jack Kennedy back in 1960 what we know now, he would never have been president. But if we knew today what we know about Jack Kennedy, would the public seem to care? And judged by the way they're dealing with our current President Clinton, it seems as though a tremendous change has taken place in the majority of the American public as far as public morality is concerned. The great, puritanical strain that has characterized this country for 200 and some odd years seems to be going through a major shift.
MILES O'BRIEN: So incrementally this threshold has gone up? I mean, we were just talking a few moments ago about the new TV season, and the critic was frankly aghast at the language and the level of violence, and yet this is on mainstream television. What does this say about our society?
EDWARD KLEIN: Well, I think if, you know, if a president behaved the way John Kennedy behaved, bringing women into the White House while he was in the White House, running around nude around the swimming pool, having affairs while he was president, I think he would be literally impeached and thrown out. But if his indiscretions were in the past as Clinton's seem to be, then I think there is a great deal of acceptance today. And I think the reason for that is that Newt Gingrich has a sister who's an avowed lesbian. Bob Dole himself has been divorced and apparently had an affair while he was married the first time around. There's hardly a family in America who can't point to someone in their own family who's either living with somebody out of wedlock, divorced many times, has had infidelities, has a alternate lifestyle. This country is going through changes, and as a result we're judging our political leaders by wholly different standards than we used to.
MILES O'BRIEN: You know, much has been made about the apparent complicity of the media in covering JFK. A lot of the reporters say they knew about all these activities and yet did not report it. Today, that would not occur, would it?
EDWARD KLEIN: No, it wouldn't. And in fact, you know, you can't really get a straight answer from many of the reporters who were covering the president- I'm talking about Kennedy now in 1960, 61, 62. They claim to this very day, such as Ben Bradley [sp] of the Washington Post, Hugh Siddey [sp] of Time magazine, other reporters, that they were only vaguely aware of stories about Kennedy's philandering. It seems to me very hard to believe because all of the people surrounding Kennedy in the White House, his entire social circle for years knew that this man was a compulsive womanizer. I would call him almost a sexual addict. And so there was no secret about his behavior and yet, as you said, it was all covered up.
MILES O'BRIEN: All right. Well, given all of this, and I'm asking you to speculate a little bit, what sort of scandal does it take nowadays to have some real political implications for people in public office?
EDWARD KLEIN: I think you have to prove that somebody is doing something while they're in office that is considered utterly reprehensible by the American public and that would be lying, perjury, having elicit affairs while in office. I think those kinds of things, the very things that Kennedy did.@PGPH The reason I called my book All Too Human is because the Kennedys, both Jack and Jackie, are very much like the way we are today, less than perfect, flawed and yet today we're very- we're much more tolerant. This is a society that is now composed of many different- not only ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, national backgrounds but also lifestyle backgrounds.
MILES O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you very much Edward Klein, the author of All Too Human, the love story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy, we appreciate you joining us this morning.
EDWARD KLEIN: Thank you.
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