Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20130809

He includes beautiful facts about his life including growing up in the northwest. He worked in senator Eugene Mccarthys office right on the hill and it mustve been the catalyst is a love of investigative reporting. She began her lifelong career as a prolific writer of bestselling books in the uproar that came with them come including subjects like Jackie Kennedy onassis, the royals, elizabeth taylor, opera, and of course, my favorite an unauthorized biography called his weight, of Frank Sinatra. Her most recent book is focused on Iconic Images of the kennedys. Books mean a lot more to me when it is well researched. Never failing to raise a few eyebrows in doing such a wonderful job of reminding us that these characters are very human. Please welcome kitty kelley. [applause] i dont know that my writing is prolific, but thank you so much. [laughter] prolific as a turtle, it takes me four years usually on each book. But this book was a labor of love. Because stanley was were my very best friends. He was one of president kennedys favorite photographers and i used to visit family in washington and one time i asked him what he used as his coffee table and i said stanley, what you havent met him and he said, nude pictures. Years later when his family died, i dropped the subject ends are you years later he left his archives and they deliberately delivered the marine corps locker to my house and my husband said, what is in there. And i said nude photos. And he said, come on, lets open it, and i said no, i dont want to remember stanley that way. He said we have to openness, stanley was a great photographer. And we argued about it for a while. Then we opened it. It was not nude photographs at all, it was the most sentimental store of kennedy photographs and artifacts and letters and handwritten notes from the president himself and the first lady. Anyway, im going to show you some of them. Im going to tell you about them. But because this was the 50th anniversary of the kennedy administration, and because stanley had left me these photographs from i really wanted to share them and i just didnt want to donate them, you know, to a library where they would fit in dust and people would never see them. So this photograph, which is on the cover of the book, it came with an exclusive fourday fete family spent with president kennedy and his son. He did it to do a cover story for look magazine. This is stanley. He is not Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman, but the guy in the middle with the camera. His passion in life was covering politics and he was very close to the Kennedy Family. He also did a lot of special skills for movies, like all of the president s men and urban cowboy and a lot of Robert Redford movies. And the Dustin Hoffman movies. So i just wanted you to see what stanley looked like in his prime. He was a marine photographer in korea and he took us picture, which military times and i found it so moving that i included it in the book just to tell you a little bit about stanley so this on the face of it is the guest towel. One of the linen things that read antonelli mustve had in her bathroom and it is ironed and and brighter writer with jfk. When i went through the marine corps treasure trove, i thought i knew stanley for years and years, but he never mentioned anything about this towel. I can find no record of it in the trunk. I did wonder if maybe when he went to hyannisport one of those times, he might have pinched it. And the reason that i have included this picture is that to mean, this became a rosebud for stanley. You remember citizen kane. Well, when i knew him, it was years after he covered the kennedys and when i met him, he was driving a silver bmw and wearing a cartier watch and cashmere sweaters and he was driving me in washington one time they were really bad area and he slowed down and i said, why are you slowing down and he said, you see that window up there and he pointed to it and he said to me that that towel says it all. He said that that is where i came from. And he did come from poverty but because of hard work and immense talent, he did very well. And he was very prosperous. I do think it is the key to stanley tretick. On this plexiglas thing that the president gave to all those people who traveled with him on the caroline, what is the private plane at his father bought him for the president ial campaign, stanley kept all those things and they were in the trunk. Okay, this starts the picture in the book that was taken at valley forge when president kennedy is campaigning. Excuse me, senator kennedy is campaigning. It is so extraordinary for us to be looking at this in the year 2013. These are the crowds that turned out. You can see that it just says something about a time and a place that we do not get anymore. And no teleprompters either. This is what he called the hand shot and this was his favorite photograph of president kennedy. He is on top of a convertible and standing behind him as governor pat brown of california and it is during the fall election and is set to stanley, why is that particular photograph so important to you. And he said because i think it shows the charisma of a movie star or a that has come together in a way that we have not seen before. And i said, what about eisenhower, he was it. He was a war hero and he said that i am i covered it, but i never saw pictures like this when people are reaching out. And stanley also said about president kennedy that he felt that kennedy did not revel in the adulation. He would do anything to be elected, but he was not turned on by the appeal of crowds. This was taken at valley forge. Okay, can you go back once . Okay, this is in an area where he is standing on top of a convertible and here he is standing up. He is not in the picture. This was president elect kennedys very First Press Conference in palm beach after the election this is his mansion in palm beach and caroline came out in her mothers high heels and her little bathrobe and interrupted the press conference president kennedy had wanted to appoint James Fulbright as secretary of state. But because he was a segregationist and kennedy had made a commitment to civil rights, fulbright is in the picture to the side. But as a courtesy he invited them down to palm beach to tell him why. This is a photograph of the christening of little john kennedy junior. And stanley was the sole photographer, he was the photographer that was designated to go in and get all of the pictures for the rest of the photographers. He was born jewish and his grandfather was a rabbi and read him the torah. He told me that when he went and, youre a pro, im sure you know your way around here. And so he had cameras and lenses and president kennedy was bare and mrs. Kennedy was in the hospital two weeks after the birth of her child. Now women, you know that you are in and out. But it was two weeks and president kennedy brought her in to the chapel and he saw stanley that was looking around and kennedy saw him going towards the statue of the blessed virgin and kennedy did this [laughter] and kennedy then at the end, stanley said mr. President , i have to get some pictures and he kept snapping. He did the whole ceremony of putting the water in the oil on them and so forth. Then stanley kept taking the pictures and kennedy said no. Because he did not want this particular picture that was going to be flashed around the world showing any kind of church background, this is how sensitive the issue of kennedy being catholic at the time was. Even after the election, he does not want pictures of statues or crucifixions or church settings. He had made a very of a courageous speech in houston to the protestant ministers who are opposed to putting a catholic in the white house. This should be on Church Issues and he seemed to put the issue to rest but you will remember that election that he won by 1 . There were no more than 118,000 votes separating john f. Kennedy from Richard Nixon in that election. And the part that bothered kennedy the most was the votes coming back from hyannisport. Because up to that time they had ever accepted the irish kennedys in hyannisport. And kennedy knew down to the last vote that it was like 4873 votes for him in 1230 votes for kennedy. That was the one that bothered him the most. This picture of president and mrs. Kennedy coming back from the house was Jacqueline Kennedys favorite picture. She told stanley but they both realized that president kennedy was not an emotionally demonstrative man. And did not like any public show of affection. But coming back from their house, he reached over and took a wisp of her hair and tucked it behind her ear, and she is looking at him adoringly. It is a very intimate gesture. After the assassination, jackie asked stanley for this picture because she said that it was her very favorite. Of course, i had to include it in the book. And this is a picture of mrs. Kennedy on the first state visit of the kennedys made to canada. When i was curating this book and going through about 300 photographs, many have not been published before it was impossible to find one that photograph of the family. They just cannot take it that picture. They were beautiful people, they were young. Even the candid shot, many candid shots even when they were werent looking turned out good. President kennedy cared very much about image. As some of you heard lynne olson say, time and live in look magazine was the driving image makers. Most people got their news from the newspapers. So the pictures that went out on the Wire Services really introduced the country to the president. And the family was working at the time and the other wireless was the associated press. But upi kept stanley on the entire time. No other photographer traveled with the president and at that time senator kennedy as much as stanley dead. Now there are photographers that travel with the candidate. At that time it was only the Wire Services and then they pick up a local guide. But it is simply the Wire Services. Kennedy would not post the picture. He said it if it happens, you can take it. I dont want anything corny. And he was very vain about his hair and he had great hair. He would not be photographed eating. And he wouldnt be photographed with any kind of a hat, except for a hard hat. That one he wore was hide hughes finally getting criticize and at that time, kennedy was worth 400 million, which in 1960 made him one of the 10 richest richest americans. So after the vote came in, stanley said to him that that was a squeaker. The president said, and no reason for dad to buy a landslide. [laughter] so you will see a couple of pictures of the struggle with the indian headdress and this is mrs. Kennedy as first lady at the state dinner for the shah of iran. She was so nervous and they did come with this great crown of emeralds and diamonds as big as hardboiled eggs. She walked down and came out and the president said, oh, she has really be this time. But she looks quite regal and beautiful. So it is included in the book. And this is president kennedy on his first state visit and Charles De Gaulle as someone agenda was quite enamored with. This is the photo that may Jacqueline Kennedy in absolute star. I would like to introduce myself, he said im the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to paris and i have enjoyed it very much. Jacqueline kennedy was ferocious about protecting her children. She did not want the children photographed at any time. The president began to see the value of these children and how adorable they were. So he was told not to photograph the president s children, but he said that he couldnt help himself. When Maria Shriver came over, she gave caroline that postcard. And she said that that is the president and carolyn said it is not, it is my daddy. And she said it is the president as well. She said no, it isnt. So he just found himself snapping picture after picture. And this is caroline waiting with her father to come back on hyannisport during that trip. And this is a famous picture called the golf cart. The family was at hyannisport and saw the president get into the golf cart all the kennedys and drivers and lawfords would come piling in and jump in to the golf cart, and they would go off to the candy store. And so he said, mr. President , thats a wonderful picture, i would really love to take it. It just shows such appeal and warmth. And the president said, i will check with jackie. And came back to stanley and said, you can take the photograph, but it can be with caroline and john in the golf cart. So that is the picture. It is a picture that is huge and if any of you have been to the Kennedy Library in boston, they have a huge mural of this. But you wont find them in the golf cart, caroline and john. This is an important picture. This is president kennedy on the day of the march on washington for jobs and freedom. August 13, 1963. When i was going through stanleys archive to do this book, i found about 200 photographs from the march on washington that had never been published before. And so i am trying to behave myself so i can come back next year because i have another book coming out on the march on march on washington. It is coming out this august. And it is called let freedom ring. This is one of the photographs, this is after the march. The kennedys were terrified of this march. The whole city of washington had been shut down and businesses closed. The government closed, everyone thought that they were just going to have riots and bloodshed in the street. And it turned out to be 250,000 people at a sunday picnic. It was a joyous and wonderful occasion. The president had been terrified after the march. In fact, he would not speak at the march. One reason he wouldnt speak was because Martin Luther king was such a fabulous orator that john kennedy knew that he did not want to follow him. And he also, if there was a riot, did not want to be in the midst of it so he invited the big ten, the keynote speakers. It has been shown in planning this march and he said that we have to reach out. There has to be inclusive and you have to have laborers and jews and christians and every one. And the secretary of labor is there, whitney young, doctor king, philip randolph, Vice President johnson and i dont remember who that is on the far right, but this is a meeting that took place in the white house after the march. But you see all the pictures from the march, the book will be out. I do want to tell you that this book is so easy for me to promote it and tell you about it because all the royalties they go to the dc public libraries. All of them will go to the dc public library. [applause] the book that will be coming out in august as well, all the proceeds from that book will go to the childrens defense fund. [applause] and this is part of the famous photo shoot that stanley has. Stanley had been after the president to do a cover story on the president and his son. It took him 18 months to get the story going. The president said its a great idea, but jackie, i dont know if she would be on board. So they called him john john and stanley called them irving. Anyway, mrs. Kennedy took a vacation and she went to greece after the death of their child in august of 63, little Patrick Bouvier kennedy and the day she left washington Ellen Lincoln called stanley and said the president said the coast is clear and you had better get over here. So stanley arrived at the white house and he waited and i guess guess yes, this is probably the most iconic photograph taken of the president in the oval office. John john came over to say goodnight to his father and he ran to play in his secret place which was under the president s desk. He popped out and open the door and stanley new that he had a photograph. And stanley said to me, he said i know when i shove off thats the only picture anybody is ever going to remember, and it is quite true in all of his obits they did run this picture. This is caroline coming down to see her father before she started school up in the white house solarium. Mrs. Kennedy didnt want the children to be going out to school so she started a school for her kids and for the kids of cabinet officials. So caroline just came to say hello to her father. Its so endearing that i had to put it in. This is a picture obviously of john junior at his fathers desk and the president vetoed out of all the pictures stanley tuck and he did show them for approval. This was the only one the president said no, you cannot publish this because it looks like we are being too playful in the oval office. So it was never published until now. And this is president kennedy after he made the nanny get john to have a haircut so they could pose for pictures together for fathers day. And it was a matter of discussion you know, which photograph would be used in the book and the editors agreed that this would be the one. This is an endearing picture when you realize that john f. Kennedy could barely bend over. One thing that came through when i was doing the research for this look was the amount of pain come cut distress, good disease that really plagued the president. He had numerous back operations that never work. He had a steel plate inserted into his back that became infected and had to be operated on again. He got the last rites to times, and its interesting that this is the man who represented youth and vigor and a new frontier in the white house. And he hit his disabilities quite well. I doubt that he would be able to do that now, but he did at the time. This, for him to bend over, it holds dan lee at other than very much. He could rarely left his children up and he couldnt run with them too much, couldnt play touch foot all as much as he likes to but john is running to what he called his fathers fathers marine one the white house helicopter. As soon as he got off, the president gave him, you can see it in the picture, a parrot. Knowing that the president could barely bend over it is a very sweet photograph. This is a picture of Jacqueline Kennedy less than a year after the assassination. Stanley went to her and said that he wanted to do a story to show that she and the children were resilient and strong and they were able to cope. She didnt want to do it at first. Stanley went to Robert Kennedy compound and jackie agreed and so Robert Kennedy and Ted Sorensen Jackie and the two kids and stanley went up to hyannis port and he took a series of photographs that are quite extraordinary. Jackie signed this one for stanley with a very personal inscription which is in the book. This is from that same photo shoot. Mrs. Kennedy with her two children. This is a photograph taken of caroline and john in hyde park in london after the assassination. The queen dedicated to president kennedy and stanley, he was a wonderful photographer but he was also a very good writer and he would make notes to his editor. He kept copies of all the letters that he sends to his editor and the backandforth that went on. There was a wonderful 10 page memorandum called my agonizing 10 days in london with jackie. [laughter] and goes into very funny detail about how he had to follow her around. She said you can come but pretend you are were not there. I dont want anyone to think that i have my own personal photographer. Anyway, this picture was taken in hyde park and caroline is a real horse woman. She looked like her mother. John was allergic to horses and jackie did not want his picture taken because any time they got around horses his little eyes would look like he would start crying and she never wanted to photograph the president s son crying. Stanley took it. After the assassination stanley was very very close to Robert Kennedy and stanley started knowing the kennedys back in the late 50s when he covered the Rapids Committee and Robert Kennedy was counsel and senator kennedy was on the committee. This picture was taken in 1968, and it was taken a few days before the assassination. It is the photograph that Ethel Kennedy decided should be on a postage stamp. So this was the picture. Stanley was so slammed by the assassination of Robert Kennedy that he took four months off his job and didnt work for a wild. And i think he kind of lost his heart for coverage. He kept on working all of his life up until the time he had a stroke and in fact he covered the Carter Campaign and president carter asked them to come to the white house and do the white house talk. I remember asking stanley, why didnt you do that and he said oh i just didnt think that carter would give me the kind of access that a white house photographer really needs. And that mightve been true but i do think that stanley had lost a little bit of heart. He was especially close to Robert Kennedy and traveled with him every single day and every single night of the campaign. They had gone to him before and he said you no, years ago i had gone to president kennedy and told him for the Second Campaign for his reelection i would like to cover him in a way that no other photographer and journalist has ever done before and i would like complete access to all meetings to be able to photograph at any time, to take any kind of notes. Robert kennedy said absolutely. So it was during another campaign was not very long. He made his announcement in march of 68 and he was assassinated in june of 68. Stanleys archives contain thousands of pictures come come most of which again have never been published but this one has. Is that it . We did it. [applause] we did it. [applause] i would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the book, about stanley. Yes . Kittie,. Stepped to the microphone story one can hear you. Sorry. Thats okay, thats fine. I have a twopart question. Regarding jfk and his extramarital activity controversial as it was and so forth. Did stanley ever have any, you talked about access or was there any mention of this . What did he relate to you . Remember, i didnt meet stanley until i guess 1981. But he was an irreplaceable part of my life. This subject did come up and stanley knew about affairs with white house secretaries. He was a little stunned about the Judith Campbell affair with the mafia mistress. Stanley came from a different generation. And he was no stranger to affairs himself, thank you very much, which is why i believed him when he said he had a trunk full of photographs so he was kind of like well yeah you know, but more than that we didnt really he told me about the secretaries. He told me about a couple of one very pretty journalist but it was no big thing to stanley and at that time the extent had not been published, the extent that we have now. And my second question is i just wanted to agree with amanda introduce to you about his way. I just love that book. It was such a great portrait of this jekyll hyde personality. I remember it was vividly described in how he would get back at people. I dont know if you remember the one section where there was some comic that it didnt really killing him and someone stuck his fist right through the car window smashed his face open. Do you remember that . Guest i do come to i do remember that. I have not forgotten that look because before i had written a word Frank Sinatra sued me for 2 million to stop the book comp time and it was terrifying and i remember i called the publisher and i i said, i dont understand this. I just read that i am being sued by Frank Sinatra. The publishing lawyer said thats very interesting. And i said, i know but you know when you are sued you have to get a lawyer and she said well, you might want to do that. [laughter] and i said well what are you . You are a lawyer. She said, we dont have the manuscript. So i was on my own and had it not been for a group of writers that stepped forward to defend the first amendment, do i probably wouldnt be here. I would be in debtors prison because Frank Sinatra kept this going until he finally dropped it a year later. But, it costs a lot of money and it served the purpose. It sent a notice to the world that Frank Sinatra did not want this book written by someone that he could not control. And, i was grateful to get through the book and the thing that was really frightening issue that maybe my sources werent so good. I had sources within the family. I had sources in Frank Sinatras entourage. I had them all over the place. Ive reviewed hundreds of people for this book and one of them said kitty you dont have to worry about the anything. Sinatra said if anything happens to that blanketyblank i would be the first one blamed so i took a very false sense of security until about three weeks ago when pauls book came out and said there had been a hit put out. [laughter] it should you how they are. They probably didnt even know how to spell kelley correctly. They couldnt find me. [laughter] any other questions . Ms. Kelly, if i might . And its kitty. So much controversy in the novel to britain and one of the more controversial pieces for me is that i think to break your journalist encode and the love for the lot of characters you write about in the subjects that you write about through and i think that is enough just to wonderfully this book lays it bare and makes it easy. This does. This really was a labor of love. I am a Firm Believer in what they call the unauthorized biography. Unauthorized does not mean untrue. It means that you are doing it without the cooperation and blessing of your subject. And i do believe that its a legitimate and wonderful way to cover history. Especially public figures that have spent many many years and millions of dollars creating their own image and so i think its valuable sometimes to go behind that. So usually i am the one who is trying to get behind that and tell you whats going on but in this book, because it was stanley, because he was my best friend, and because he loves president Kennedy Compound i felt that i owed it to him to do the kind of book that he would have done and consequently you wont find anything too negative in this book at all. I mean, it shows my affection for stanley and it shows his great affection for the kennedys. But there are parts of it that make you think for instance Jacqueline Kennedy lost many children, two or three miscarriages. She went into a severe depression at one point and had electroshock therapy. You begin to understand why the kennedys threw themselves into mental health, because Rosemary Kennedy one of president kennedys sisters, also had electroshock therapy and it never worked and it was always the heartache for ambassador kennedy and for his wife. So there are poignant parts of this book but it is for the most part a love story and i hope you like it. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] at a conference on journalism today the recent purchase of the Washington Post by amazon. Com founder jeff reseaus who will be paying 250 million for it. This part of the Conference Begins with bill adair from polar effects. I am sure it will change a lot. I think that sosa has shown as jim brady put it ahead of Digital First media that he was able to sort of see the future and build amazon before people knew they wanted to order things on line and they think that is what has been needed in journalism as somebody who can envision the ways that people are going to want information a few years down the road and i think i think its a great thing for the post and i know there are a lot of people at the post who are apprehensive about it but i think he said all the right things. The letter to his, to the employees of the post was Pitch Perfect in terms of the balance between his commitment to the great journalism the post has always done but also plenty of clues there for futurists who wanted to see well what is he going to do . Well obviously he invented almost internet commerce. So much of internet commerce has been affected by what amazon did and i think he could have the same role at the post. I think its a very positive thing. One of our editors made a joke when the news broke that free Washington Post subscription with every candle macs sold. Its a lame joke but if you think about it, you kind of wonder getting back to what bill was saying if they do expand their on line presence how is it going to affect their local News Coverage because the Washington Post has been incredibly covering the d. C. Region and you have to wonder how they are going to involved in the upcoming years. With that new mindset of Digital First. Is a local growing up reading the post im a little apprehensive. I think on the one hand the post for a very long time especially the local coverage seemed to me that the core audience was not necessarily people that lived in the city but the people who lived in an upper Economic Group and recently they have started to change. They have a great columnist a guy named clinton who is a fantastic writer. They put them them on a paper full time now and im a little concerned that move towards a more focused within the city focused on a younger demographic may or may not be helped or hurt by that. But i also think you know there is a utility to having newspapers owned by families especially families that live in those cities. You know, cut and having somebody who lives in california wherever he lives and whose mind is not about local at all. He is an International Sort of global thinking kind of person. I do have some reservatireservati ons about what that will mean for coverage of crime and of life in washington in general, even sports in washington. Do they continue to be the goto place to read about the residents or the nationals or does it become sort of a bigger focus . Que . Que x i think these are all questions that are not going to be answered for months if not years potentially as a result of the sale. You know at the same and i do think the post has been struggling a little bit. All the newspapers businesses are struggling and having somebody who as was said created on line commerce there could really help create a new renaissance for the post and for all if it newspapers which is very important. I dont think that they should die. I think they play a very Important Role in our society. They are the institutions that hold the torch for what journalism should in a lot of ways on all levels and all the beasts of journalism and if someone can come in and help find a way for them to continue forward and to really finally find a place within the new sort of digital environment. I dont really have much to add. I think that something had to change and i also grew up around here. I have high hopes. I have friends who work there. My sense is that people are just kind of excited. Something has to change but we wont know how long it will take to show whats going to happen. I think something had to give and we will see what happens. I think its hard to overstate how seismic this is in the Media Industry and in washington. The ram family has been such wonderful stores of journalism for so long and of course their names are synonymous with watergate and the pentagon papers and the kind of journalism that inspired generations to come. So it really feels like a dramatic turn representative of the times we live in. The panel that we are on today is built around what our publications do differently than traditional journalism and i think its a sign that there really is no more traditional journalism in the sense that we are used to thinking about. There is not because we live in a digital age and we have to think about Good Journalism period delivered to people in the way that they can absorb it and understand it and get excited about it in a way that they want it. So, for big metropolitan papers like the Washington Post and the boston globe and so many others that have been in the news lately circulation decline and pressures on profitability, they have to find a way to thrive in the new space if they are going to remain viable. So we all watched the person to produce the excellent journalism that they have for so many many years but at the same time there is a need to transform an order to succeed in the new world. So i think we will see a lot of that. The question watching them move forward sometimes for an innovator i think is somewhat easier to come into a whole new space and create something from scratch than it is to take an existing institution with proud tradition entrenched bureaucracy and figure out how to make that move into a new space so that will be an interesting and hopefully very successful process for them. Some people say if you cut the military at least we wont have the temptation to go and fight as much and if the japanese want to fight over the same islands against the chinese let them do it. We are better off staying upandup we have a smaller military but will be disinclined to get involved. Either way i dont really want to fight the chinese over the islands but we have to decide if you look historically at when we fight among dont i dont see a correlation between higher Defense Budgets and greater likelihood of intervening. The world wars began when we are unprepared. The korean war began when we were unprepared. To get a marvelous little bit more complex and cleanup that case extremely well but if we now fastforward to the reagan years in many ways the reagan years are still people can correct me if they wish afterwards or whatever but the reagan years by many people seen as the golden years of American Defense policy because we have built up the budget and we didnt really use the military. Isnt that wonderful outcome . Im not saying its all Ronald Reagans great judgment that led to that area there were some happy circumstances as well but there was no correlation between increasing the budget and increasing the proclivity to intervene militarily. Subpars latest book is is a biography of rose kennedy mother of john robert and ted kennedy. The author was recently interviewed by Washington Post news editor vincent bzdek. This is an hour. Host barbaras good to be here with you to talk about the kennedys. I think both of us having grown up catholic i think the kennedys have it particular resonance for us but i wanted to start off an ask you view our Supreme Court and president ial scholar. How did you get interested in rose . Is going up and interest in the Kennedy Family since i was a little tyke. When i was four years old my mother took him my brothers to downtown louisville kentucky. She piled a sinner 56 chevrolet and drove us downtown to the courthouse. She was completely drawn to this new candidate on the scene in the president ial race, senator john f. Kennedy. Host do you think it was because she was catholic . Guest i have to think that was a major part of it in addition to which he was about. So see with that new generation to which the torch was being passed that i point out that while she loves history and politics she wasnt that active in grassroots politics and she didnt particularly like driving downtown on the very busy streets. I know it was his charisma and probably the policies and lets face it is handsome looks. Host he was a pretty goodlooking guy. Guest guest she she was john to that she was jaunted atsushi got their extra early with me as a 4yearold and my brothers and tell them put us in front of the podium so we would be sure to see him. Host thats great. You did a lot of your research at the jfk library after they opened up the records. Tell me about that because thats gives you some new insight into rows. Guest this book is the one that is fully based on her papers that opened up in the fall of 2006. Its a cute story the way that happen in terms of my finding out about it. I think teaching for many years and published a book on Jacqueline Kennedy in her first ladyship. My students knew that i was interested in now things kennedy. I happen. I happen to be on leave. As at the university of louisville and i got this email from a former student and alum of sweet or college and she said did you see rose kennedys papers have just been opened . I said i hadnt seen it so i went right away to the article and started devouring it. And then i decided this has to be my next project in between the Supreme Court scholarship. Host there were letters from rose to her children and some of them are quite scolding. I enjoyed the fact that she was after john kennedy when he was in office to shape up a little bit in how he presented himself and his manners. Tell me about those letters. Guest first of all there were 250 archival boxes and they went through another 50 of her family photographs so the book contains a number of photographs that are rare and have never been seen before. I was just amazed at the letterwriting prodigious mess of rose kennedy. From the time she was a young woman and in addition to the 250 boxes of her official papers i came across on the Internet Private letters that were held in private collections and i have been able to gather some of those together as well. That no one has written about because no one had them except the families of the original people to whom she sent the letters so they are at least a halfdozen that she wrote over the time she was a teenager to her childhood friends including how she wanted to go to Wellesley College which is a plan thwarted by her father honey fitz put all the way up to when she talks about her husbands time in hollywood and Gloria Swanson. In addition to the ones that i found the letters that were officially at the Kennedy Library yes rose was a typical victorian mother always interested in how her children looked and behaved and their manners and she never gave up until she literally could no longer write sadly in the later part of her years. She had strokes and became an invalid but up until that point through all of her motherhood she was constantly after the children to be better. In fact to be in a victorian kind of way as perfect as they could be. Host so, that word taurean , she very much try to fit yourself into that mold even though all around her things were changing. She was born in 1890, right . She didnt step into those roles. She kept it very victorian world. Why do you think that is . Guest i think because she was raised in such a conservative household and a conservative catholicism at that time conservative society. She was a woman. She was a girl so there was no way that she was going to be trained to be the kind of public officeholder that her father was and her sons would become. Having said that i think her life is filled with paradoxes and that is one of them. While she was not a feminist, and did not begin as a suffrage at she pushed the boundarieboundarie s as far she could within those parameters in her family and society under religion and push them as far she could to become the focal spokesperson for the Kennedy Family whenever possible and she was trained to do that by her father honey fitz. She would go out on the campaign trail when she was a teenager. She and some ways was pushing the envelope as they say but in others she was not a feminist by any stretch of of the imagination. Host you know before we talk about the role she played in the family can we go back to something he said about wellesley . What do you think was important about her father not letting. There . Que . Que x. Guest the story is that she had her heart set on going to wellesley. She was in a student coming from high school. She went to dorchester high school. She was a very bright woman and she herself strove for perfection in all things so she was trying to be the perfect student and usually looked up to her own high standards. She thought she was ready to go to wellesley and probably was. The story is that the archbishop of boston encountered her father the mayor of boston and said this wouldnt be a very good idea politically for you, the Irish Catholic mayor of boston to send your daughter and her eldest child to a noncatholic institution. So that thwarted her plan and she addressed Doris Kearns Goodwin that was one of the saddest days of her life and she regretted for the rest of her life. [inaudible] guest i point out that the picture on the front of the book head first i was a bit distracted by the water that seems to be in the forefront and i decided this was the perfect metaphor for rose kennedy. If you will notice its exactly half full with water. That was how grows rose feud life. She was the Eternal Optimist and it doesnt mean in private she didnt have sad moments but generally speaking she tried to be optimistic in her perch life and try to have her children do that as well. In addition not be able to go to wellesley, her father to add insult to Injury Center way to a convent abroad. A content. Not that she was going to become a nunn because she had fallen in love with her future husband joe kennedy as a teenager and we think that was part of the reason that honey fitz center are brought to get her way from joe kennedy. The kennedys and fitzgerald were not political allies in boston politics so honey fitz was not completely approving of joe kennedy. Host they were political rivals. Guest indeed so this was a problem for roses father to see her fall in love with a rifle son joe kennedy and he also picked as a suitor for her and wanted her to marry a neighbor boy who was also catholic and irish and was doing well in the business world. His parents were in construction so honey fitz thought that would be the Perfect Match but rose was not to be deterred even by what started two years at convent and she persuaded her father to send her back to the United States after one year. Host in her own way there is a spirit expressing itself already. Guest there is which i find ironic is when one her daughter kathleen decided she was going to vary the protestant nobleman, the effervescent child of rose and in many ways like her mother but often time that creates complex between parents and children. And so i think it is ironic that rose didnt seem to remember how she thwarted her parents wishes by marrying joe kennedy and kit was not to be denied and of course she did marry Billy Hartington and sadly the marriage only lasted four months when he was killed. Host lets talk about joe. Joe gets a lot of credit and he is a patriarchal figure and larger than life and even some of the sons give him credit for spurring his family on to greatness. But, how did that marriage work . Your book make the point and you see a lot of it in the research you have done that rose was a significant player especially in joes absences informing his family. Guest i would say that the marriage was built on love. There is no doubt about that. I think they both loved each other very much and by looking at roses letters and nine children there was definitely love there and shows letters to his wife are very expressive and very warm at times and very loving and in some ways or so then roses to his. You have to start with teenage romance. I dont think it ever left her. That concept is the first love sort of the puppy love that did mature into adult love i think rose kept that with her always. We know that her husband was unfaithful to her and so that was a cross to bear as rose would have said. Host it was not a dealbreaker. Guest we think in 1920 after rose had her fourth child that she left home and went back to her home, her fathers home and said i can do this anymore. We dont know all the details. We dont know if she was just overwhelmed by having four children in five years. Was it that she was having some postpartum depression . Was it that she worried about her husband . He was building a Business Career so even if he had not been unfaithful he was gone a lot. She was just frustrated and supposedly her father honey fitz said to her you are a catholic woman and you are in a catholic marriage. You must go home and make this marriage work. Certainly she did for over 40 years. Host it was divorce was not an option. Guest is not an option for her and i checked with catholic clergy. We would say say probably would have priests would have said to her in the 1920s. Its not that different. It has not changed. You are married and you need this choice and now you must go home and make this marriage work and bring their children in the faith. Rose did that with a caveat. We must say she absented herself a lot of times from the household, sometimes staying within the same bounce of the household so when the family spent summers at hyannis she had a Little Cottage or prefab cottage. Host her own space. Guest she was her own space the sheep down on the beach so she could get away from what she described as does the oysters and so grown children that was there. She said i went to harvard football games. I understood real football but i didnt know what they were playing. All i know is it was loud and noisy and she would retreat to this Little Cottage on the beach. And then a hurricane came and swept it away so they put another went up there but another hurricane came and swept away. She joked about it and said after two hurricanes i decided this was not meant to be. I was not going to have my cottage on the beach at hyannis so she said i just went to paris. Host she traveled a lot. Guest she traveled a lot. She couldnt wait every year to get to paris to see the latest fashions so she would go three and four times a year before the war to get new fashions and bring them home combat and she just loved to travel. She had done this with her father. She had gone on political trips with him in the United States into south and latin america which was very unusual for women in her generation. So she had the wanderlust from the time she was a young girl. She was very proud of the fact that she spoke fluent french and german which he perfected while she was at the content making the best of a bad situation which would become her mantra in life. When she married this was a way to escape both the boisterous mess of the children and perhaps some of the upset over the weaknesses in her marriage and in some ways perhaps was also a form of Birth Control because of worst the Catholic Church the Catholic Church would not have allowed any artificial contraception. Host she thought mine was enough. Guest she thought mine was enough and in later years she was on the merv griffin show in the early 70s and he brought up that her son bobby and his wife ethel had 11. Rose said well if i had known it was a competition i mightve had more than nine. Host i think it was a bit of a competition. There was one trip where they want to rush on that was unusual for women. Did rose and her daughter go . Guest rose and kit in 1937. Host that was rose just wanting to see russia. Guest her son and her son and the apple of her i had gone to to england at joe seniors request and planning. Joe wanted both of his eldest sons joe junior and jack to go and study with the socialists at the London School of economics because even though joe senior was the ultimate enemy of the capitalists he said to his sons you need to know what are the waves of the future and socialism may be one of them. Absolutely severe between prep school and when joe junior went to harvard he went to london to study at lse and spent some time in the soviet factfinding and would report back to his dad what he saw there. Rose was so taken with joe juniors reports that she decided she would go. Her daughter kit said why cant we go to italy the way the other wealthy mothers and daughters do . Rose said we have gone to italy lets go to the soviets so off they went in 1937 at the height of the stalinist era to the soviet union. Host thats great. Guest she was a very adventuresome woman. Host you mentioned that she liked piercing going to see dachshunds and that reminded me that she was quite the image maker and stage manager of the family. I love how honest your book is about that and how important was to her. Can we talk about that a little bit . Guest as they often say i dont mean to entertain that rose had a more significant role than she did. You mentioned it was a patriarchal family to be sure so her husband ruled the roost and then about things they had two sons to begin with. So when the sons came of age in the sons ruled the roost as well as they went into their careers first in the military and joe junior was killed in the war in 1944 but jack and bobby and then teddy. It was the men all these who were running the show. So i would say a few grand credits for the Kennedy Family and the kennedy legacy it would be joe quite appropriately who had a career in hollywood as a producer. Joe kennedy senior would be listed as executive producer and rose would have almost all of the others. She would be the stage manager and the wardrobe. She would have been the best girl. And the dialogue coach and certainly the wardrobe mistress. She would have had all the other roles. The argument that and make in the book is that as the men began to disappear from the stage roses broke its larger and larger in what she had done by that point is taken all that typically female roles, worked him to the hilt and was ready to take over and become if you will the producer when necessary. Host , really . So, but that sense of image, that came from rose a lot with the life magazine cover story and i remember a tv show about the kennedys. It seemed like creating an image of the family was important to her but also important to the family and the legend of the family. Guest its so true. It starts in 1937 when joe senior comes into the new deal. They are billed as a new deal family and the newspapers began to show joe and rose and their nine children for however many are on the scene at the time lined up in stairsteps. Host they were just captivated. Guest i say it would have been if you had john and kate plus eight. The kennedys were the first reality show and joe senior because he had his hollywood career and he wanted his family to have this public image, he was pushing as well but this is where joe and rose are the same page and on the same script. It is where rose who is attempting to make this family looked perfect is the perfect person to follow the lead of joe senior. To the point where when they first appeared in 1937 in newspapers with the children in fashion simply lined up, one of the major photographers on Broadway Health life is his main, he writes to mrs. Kennedy and he is noted for taking beautiful portraits of stars and he says you have a beautiful family but i dont think this is the best way to present them in a stairstep vashem. He said her name into my studio. I will put them in a way that is much more becoming. Rose was on that immediately and one of the most famous photographs was a portrait taken by mr. Fife and he put it in this room in his harper dormitory when he was in college. Host even then he had pictures of his family. Guest as they move to london in 1938 and joe becomes u. S. Ambassador to to the port of st. James. Host than they were celebrities. Guest not only on the american stage but on the world stage and you mentioned the sheer number of children. That made them stand out in that made them different. Such beautiful and handsome children and also active at all different age ranges. And rose herself someone said they believed in the store quonset metra knowing they had nine children and kept those svelte figure that she works very hard. I say in the book she may have had some body image issues because you was very careful about what she ate and it was important to her to maintain this girlish figure. Shed like Nothing Better she got older to be confused with her daughters. Host she did some of the same things with their children. You mentioned the index cards where she kept a record of their weight and adjusted what they were fed according to how much weight they look like they gained . Guest she had gone out when they were children baden and x. Card box. The other thing she was devoted to is their health and if you think of it she is only two generations removed from the great potato famine of 1840 where people were dying in droves and her father was born in the tenements. So rose obviously gets to move out of there with her father and for her children is all about health and fresh air. By the time these children are born she is pushing them in strollers in and taking the toddlers with her. One of these walk she famously goes into a Stationery Store and eisen index card box and buys the cards and begins by hand much his parents would do on a computer, she is writing down their weight. Every weekend she would weigh each child and keep tabs on their weight and then she would also report their religious milestones. Their first communion and their confirmations conquer any kind of shots. There werent very many vaccines back then and she worried so much about their help in any medical procedure she would write down. Then she would just keep a record of it. She was conflict trying to as you say gauge their way. If someone was gaining weight should cut down on their calories and if someone john was always ill and intended to be painfully then and this worried her so she would say i would give him cream instead of something less fattening in terms of mail. She would give him the juice of fate for she thought i would build up his body. When he was chronically late for dinner she had this very victorian rule. Host they would starve without him. Guest them you would start without delay child and the child would have to start at whatever course was served but he would go back and charm the cooks. Host that is where that charm started from, in the kitchen. That is funny. I remember reading stories that they used to have a map they pulled down sometimes in the dining room to get the kids geopolitical lessons. Was rose a part of better was that all of joe . Did rose tried this emulate them intellectual and get them interested in politics . Guest she did but we discussed before about the patriarch. If joe senior was there if he was home for business then he ran for dinner discussiodiscussio ns. But if rose was there and he was gone as he often was then she would run the show and she would run the dinner conversations. She tended not to focus as much on issues or international relations. She tended to ask the kids and quiz them about Church Issues and if they have gone to mass that sunday if it was a sunday and what was the celebration that sunday . What was the sermon about because she would test their theology and do grammar lessons and arithmetic lessons. She was also noted for cutting out Current Events from the paper and either passing this around to the kids and put them all of Bulletin Board and read those and discuss them. If they were old enough at dinnertime. Host you mentioned their theology and their religion and i think faith is a big part of your book and a big part of roses life. I wonder how important it was to her overcoming tragedy after tragedy . To that little bit. Guest its completely important to rose. This is who rose kennedy is the first and foremost a Roman Catholic. She is raised in that tradition is a staunch Irish Catholic woman. She would tell stories in later life about our own mother who had six children would during the yearly commemoration of the land so for 40 days every night for six children would be brought into the living room and mrs. Fitzgerald would have been neal on the Hardwood Floor and say the rosary. Every night during lent. Rose said, that was somewhat painful to be kneeling for the time it took to say the five decades of the rosary every night and that was somewhat of a punishment she thought as well. That was appropriate for lance she thought that she said in later life she taught her children, if you are upset or there has been a tragedy or if you are nervous nervous on wood so whether that they pray the rosary rather than turning perhaps to a cigarette or a drink. She said i know the children are claiming that helps keep their weight in check she had also taught them to do i heard that as well but she said if only they would pray the rosary that would be much better. There are stories about when her daughter pat had an emergency appendectomy and was brought home and an infection set in. For the rest are back for another surgery rose would pray the rosary over pat and in a way it sounds a bit unsophisticated i think to us today. I can remember my own mother when i was about six i had a fever and my mother penned religious medals to my pajamas as a means of helping to get beyond this illness. This was something that clearly was indoctrinated in my own mother who would have been the generation of roses kids and i know my grandmother who would have would have been in the generation of rose when my grandmother would visit us on weekends she would remove herself from the family whatever we were doing. She would just disappear and i wonder where his grandma . We would find her in the quiet living room praying the rosary. She prayed the rosary every afternoon. Rose said the attack a few feel of the rosary beads in her hand gave her comfort. Host do you think catholicism because John Kennedy Kennedy do you think that helped create the kennedy ethos of taking care of others and the contributory life or how that might express itself in their politics . Guest i think it did and certainly teddy who was the only brother to live to write a memoir. He had written through to beautifully about teddy and the impact of religion on him but he specifically said that the gospel of matthew chapter 25 about corporal works of mercy clothing the and tending to the sick and kicking taking care of the deceased that is what rose was committed to. I have to say i dont find a lot of examples of her early life where she is taking her children to examples of how they can take corporal works of mercy but i think she taught that ethos. I think we also have to remember that she raised her children in catholicism which was more about selfdenial than it was out to others. I think by giving her children that core of catholicism i think we see particularly in bobby and teddy and their policies were provatican reaching out to the underprivileged. Host thats really interesting. Throughout her life she had a lot of tragedies and i wonder how her faith helped her through them. Can you say anymore about that . We are going to take a break ready soon. Guest rose would turn immediately to religion and to her faith into her rosary and to the mass. As soon as she would get word that one of her children had bitten injured as in the case of bobby when she heard it and shot she was off to church to pray and when he passed away the next day the first thing she did was go off to mass and that is what she did after jack was killed as well. She went to mass every day that she found great comfort there particularly in hyannis because the altar had been dedicated to joe junior when he was killed in a war. Host lets take a break and well come back and talk more about the kennedys. He had been governor of the Federal Reserve board and he started under hoover. He stayed as Federal Reserve chairman for a little while under roosevelt and then he resigned because he didnt like roosevelts monetary policies and went to mt. Kisco. The post came up three weeks later for auction on the steps of the building and he bought it anonymously. Cspan what did he pay for it . Guest 825,000. Cspan how many newspapers were in washington then . Guest there were five and washington was fifth in a field of five so it had a circulation of 50,000 in a pretty broken down building and so he started in and he was a businessman and he thought he knew how to turnaround businesses but he really had no newspaper experience and he encountered the most horrendous difficulties in finding his way up but he really did a terrific job starting with nothing. Host lets get into what a great campaigner rose was. Teddy when i was researching him said were rose was the best campaigner in the family and i wonder what you thought about that. She helped out with Johns Campaign and bobbys campaign and they considered her a secret weapon, didnt they . Guest they surely did and for good reason. She really was the best campaigner in the crowd and they were all very good at it but she started this issue like to point out when she was a little girl when she was five or six years old into the 90s. Her dad had been in the u. S. Congress and the the u. S. Housef representatives said she liked to say she had been in the spotlight since she was a little girl and she loved it. As she went into teenager hood as we mentioned earlier she would go out on the stump with her father when he was campaigning. Host sometimes taking the place of her mom. Guest she did take the place of vermont who was very introverted and didnt care but rose embrace the limelight. She had an interesting combination of her parents. There was onesided for the want to be solitary and that is when she would go up to her cottage on the beach or go to paris and she didnt mind traveling alone. Host it helped her cope. Guest guest it help to remove herself from from the situation that was painful to her and remove herself from unlimited childbirth but she also loved this drawer of the crowd. She looked to be out on stage so from the time jack ran in 1946 for the u. S. House of representatives they would begin to bring rose out in she could tell the story about how he had been wounded in the war and was a war hero and how she lost a son in the war and she was a gold star mother and jack was especially womens audience so rose could reach out to women. Remember that jack was not married until much later in life and started his campaign in 1946 and didnt marry until 1953. So there was no spouse for him to bring out so there was rose. You also have to keep in mind that her husband joe senior had become politically toxic when he said some undiplomatic things about the United States and britain possibly losing the war to the nazis. It was a victory nevertheless of that. Didnt rose and her daughter sort of give people a feel like they could come meet royalty. Wasnt that part of that deal . Yes, they were called this party in 1946. Part of the congressional campaign. They are saying it is part of this don tea party. But people love to come to this. And the fact that the Kennedy Family had rubbed elbows literally with royalty during their time in prewar it anyway. So women would be given the great invitations. And women were known to go out and buy new dresses. Women would line up in these ballrooms there would be rose in the receiving line with one or two of her daughters and then sometimes jack hanging onto crutches. So it helps his image because alderwoman wanted to marry him before he married jackie. Host so they wanted to further their political career. Guest i think they were the epitome of emerging. Host this really came at a time when jack kennedy was becoming a force. It literally began as they come into the Roosevelt Administration and then off to england they go. And you and i have talked about the fact that teddy used to say that life magazine was part of it. Life magazine just loves the kennedys. And why not, they were again a handsome and beautiful family and they were doing interesting activities and interesting things in their private lives, honestly we didnt know everything that was going on. But certainly in the public eye with their force and vigor and how this would also be a part of hollywood as well. So there was always this glow about the kennedys. But a very slick and glossy, big page newsstand magazine. 20 had television. That had gone up to 80 . The images were more important. Absolutely they were. Host he said that this may have been articulated, but that rose sort of created this. Guest i think we have to give her a lot of credit. We know that jackie coined the term week after president kennedys assassination about camelot a week after president kennedys assassination with time magazine. She made such a beautiful presence on the world stage and the american stage. So i would call her the queen mother of camelot. Host when john kennedy was assassinated, that whole image system kind of came crashing down. How did she handle that . Guest anyone can imagine losing a child of that kind of violence. And rose had almost seen her children disappearing birth order. This was after the assassination and she writes she would look forward to this. She was said to be one of the most powerful family in the world. Theyll try to get together in an irish wake style. And Joan Bennett Kennedy was a very good pianist. And they would all sing the old irish songs that they loved. And she said everyone just dissolved in tears and ran from the room. In kind of a preoprah culture where everyone goes on television and talks about their pain and grief and doctor phil is there to help them. Again, very victorian for the family to hide their grief. Kennedys dont cry and rose tried to follow that as well. By trying to be one of those up here a and get away from things. So he was still remembering her son. In a different way. So she would be trying to be strong for everyone and then people would break down because of the loss of president kennedy host you point out that she was fairly human and she did resort to medication to help her get through it. And i think that that gives you a more threedimensional picture of her. Because in public she was very stoic and somehow saw the country through this with her reserve. But in private she did have the moments she really was in a great deal of pain. Guest she was a lifelong insomniac and very sensitive to noise ratio is has had trouble sleeping and she told the story about when jack is in the South Pacific in the Pacific Theater in world war ii that she would wake up with her heart collocating. Because you have these nightmares. And this is before her son was lost. And she was anticipating what could happen as a motherboard. So after all of the things she feared would happen began happening, and has an even greater impact on her ability to sleep and should have nightmares after that. Host that makes me think that she was even more egregious than what we realize. Guest they sometimes turn to pharmaceuticals. I was in grade school and high school at that time. My mother was a huge fan of rose kennedy and i remember my mother is talking about being a role model for all of us. I but now that i have seen that that is the complete portion, it just makes it seem more human. As you say, and makes her seem more courageous. Along with the daughters in law, they would be counted to make the country strong. And then go on. She would always say that we mourn the death of the one for the living. Host one of the things that the kennedys did quite well was to take a personal tragedy theyre trying to do something on a national scale. Im wondering if you could talk it took a while and that came from, i assume her experience with rosemary. Guest indeed, that was something that she manifested, the daughter rosemary had a lower iq. Experts said it could have been in the 1920s that rosemary was mentally and. Host Developmental Disabilities . Guest they manifested in very basic ways. But she learned to walk and she was the oldest earl born at the height of the spanish flu in 1918. But she didnt learn to talk as rapidly as the boys. She didnt learn to read and write. When she did write it alarmed her mother that she was writing from the right side of the page to the left. In modern times we might think it was simply a learning disability. She has the physical slowness as well as mental slowness and the kennedys were told that she had this mental retardation. Because they didnt want to send her off. And they did not do schweizer until many years later, many know she had a lobotomy that was ordered for her without consulting roads. As far as we know, he did not tell rose that he was going to do this. She did not leave a record of her feelings about that. But she does explain how she felt she had a little known interview and she knew rose kennedy in the kennedy and felicia went on the palm beach and they were staying with her for a book she was doing and felicia asked rose and rose burst into tears. And this is then 30 years after now, we should say two things. They always talk to the best people in the field. And they were saying that they thought a lobotomy might be appropriate. It was disastrous. The other thing is that the kennedys had rarely told each other that is he hoped he would have a night of restful sleep and he had suffered his own individual. They had this lifelong package when they were apart. And if they had bad news and the other was a way they wouldnt tell each other, but they also just try to keep bad news from each other so that the other wouldnt worry. Sure some ways it was part and parcel. It sounded the joseph he kennedy junior foundation. And theyve been lose that foundation towards helping the mentally. Because mental retardation with was hit and particularly since this was a family that wanted to move ahead in politics. The word began to filter otherwise the family would not talk about it prior to that. He runs with that mission, very much involved with her mother. They have the power to do that and there was the cause of this. The modern era if i can say that, where a first lady had one policy area to focus on. Rose kennedy did that and her policy area was the personal one for her. Both times helping those who are already born with this. And second trying to prevent it by encouraging women. There is drinking, there is suicide, and some have tried to make the case that rose contributed to that. Guest i will say that rose herself recognized her own way wishing that her children would play the rosary rather than turning to drugs and alcohol. When it became clear in the 1970s because of a very public arrest of some of her older grandchildren for pot possession, as i said in the book, some of them were high in hyannisport. [laughter] guest i thought rose for the first time actually addressed that Inconvenient Truth in her journal and she said how disappointed that she was. She had hoped that her grandchildren had all the advantages and the name and the celebrity status would have stood up against drug use. Which i realize it is very widespread. She said i know that they are exposed to it, but i hope the older grandchildren would stand up against it. So she was very disappointed. But if you go back to her materials and her papers, including her tribalist, she was carrying this along with her. Because she had all of these various afflictions, perhaps even psychosomatic. She had your pond this a day. She had prescription drugs known to mankind that she just wanted to have with her and sometimes she would take it, including something that i understood from my older relatives. And it was an opiatebased drug is a lot of overthecounter drugs were for many years. It would be given for upset stomachs and given to children and hysterical menopausal women. But she certainly indicated by the drugs that she was taking that she had quite an array of medication. Sometimes perhaps even what people do today, they end up taking medication for the symptoms that are caused by the other medications you are taking. Host what about the reaction to that . Guest she doesnt have a lot of personal papers, but she did write about it at that time had a little bit in her journal about it. And she tells was like to see teddy the day after the accident and that she said that he wasnt like himself. She said maybe it was because of the death of the girl that was with him, but she said that teddy was not like that. So she points that out. And she mentioned that jackie had once called him the black sheep of the family. And that is what rose said, but she said she didnt see that, she said that she didnt do that but she knew something was very wrong and she was also very upset that things resulted in her being hounded and as we know, she meets with the parents and the kennedy apartment in new york. She empathizes and sympathizes and says she lost her daughter at the same age of 28, so she does try to reach out to the family, but i think she is really perplexed by exactly what happened and how could teddy have done this and he is the baby of the family. He is the called one of the family. He is the one who would often get into trouble, he was the one to tell him because they think that joe would go easy on the little kids. And yet it was teddy who would teach at harvard and excelled. So it wasnt just that she had punishment in mind. Host she helped to instill that, i think you are saying. Guest i think that she did. By being the supportive mother that she always was, maybe not able to admit herself the more Inconvenient Truth. But she does talk fairly frequently in her oral history and in her journals about how the boys would misbehave and how they were encouraged by their father to come and tell him the truth. Telling the truth and then she would say that my husband would take care of it, and she didnt seem to see the conflict between and having them be responsible. It was often in her writings to them. But she didnt see the conflict of having him at the head of the clan to take care of all these misbehaviors. So there were times in washington where teddy would crash the car and he is noted for going over the speed limit many times and being arrested many times, but he also crashed the car in europe and what did joe do but to take care of him. He was the fixer in the family. Host was teddy the one that was closest . Guest i think it was joe dinner because he was the number one boy. I think that that role goes to bobby because he is so much younger. And rose and her mother would talk about it. And they said he is surrounded by girls in this birth order. And she is later approached by an individual who wants information about bobby for a film he is making. And rose says i dont remember too much about his boyhood because he was the seventh child in the midst of all this. So i cant really give you details. Having said that, he was a sensitive one. He was the smallest of the four boys, he was the most religious, he was the most moral. So i think that there is a beautiful clip of bobby campaigning for senate in new york in 1964. His mother had this great bantering and really shows how close they are. And i think than he really gets his mother for the rest of his life. And they know just how much they have to take of this ongoing letter about dont say this, this is a grammatical error, you are dressing improperly, this is how you should speak. But he knows just how far he can push her. John wondering what you would finish with about what legacy is. But also the contribution to this whole kennedy myth. How would you characterize that . I would say that her legacy to the country is not only that she produced this potent dynasty, but she literally had this dynasty in American History and politics. So its not to get this or be forgotten. During the clinton administration, serving five years in that role. The very important piece project. So it was her daughter as well. So she produced this very powerful thing back to the nation. And certainly in the mental retardation area. Rose made the argument, i think it is very much a part of the queen mother of camelot. From the moment these children are born to this legacy, which you should point out. From bill clinton to barack obama, they have the tendency to talk about the kennedy legacy. John thank you so much. [inaudible conversations] coming up tonight on cspan2 is author david nassau. Followed by a discussion about how the news media covers politics. So much going on, several workers actually complaining, several official workers complaining about the other workers because they thought that they were getting paid more. There was a lot of confusion as to who was paying them. And not you know, it was not until a year later that folks started putting things together when federal investigators began asking questions and they realized from away the minute, the folks who are next door, we cannot find any record of them in the Campaign Finance records that we see. Put bajada they get paid and it was in charge . Corruption in d. C. Politics before sunday and it 00 on cspan q a. Recanting his career in politics including his time working on wall street in hollywood, and as an ambassador to Great Britain during the fdr administration. This talk from the philadelphia Field Library is in our. [applause] thank you all. Delighted to see. As i tell my history students, i teach at the City University of new york. [applause] thank you. As i tell my history students until they want to choke me, the past is a foreign country. We can visit, when the customs, recoil at the foul odor, but we are foreigners in a strange land this is true as much as the recent past as a this of colonial america or 12 century venice. Writing about the recent past is not easy, as i learned this time around. There are people you have to talk to. [laughter] and while i was blessed from beginning to end by having fascinating people to talk to eric tweeting the large numbers of kennedys, i must prefer working from written documents to listening to people talk and trying to figure out what is real, imagined, what they know, what they think they know because someone told them. What they think they know but they dont know what all. The other is writing about our recent past is is that always easy to establish distance from it. To construct the pastness of the past that is so close to us and yet this is what historians have to do. Our job is to complicate, take apart our common sense here of the recent past, interrogate what we think we know, demystified, demythologize, move beyond the cliche is about when airs at losers, saint seine centers, the wisdom and courage of our forefathers to my especially those of the greatest generation our job is the story to tell a different story, one grounded in evidence. The life of joseph p. Kennedy was, for me, a sort of antique fun house mirror which, if i looked at it long enough, would reflect back to me, often in hazy, and distinct, distorted form, images of events, people, places, which organize and erased told the story of 20thcentury america. So as a historian i am interested in origins. I will tell you about the origins in this book. I was a colleague of Arthur Schlesinger at the city up university of new york. He introduced me to the Kennedy Family at a some event. I dont know what it was, a reception, dinner. I met with Jean Kennedy Smith, in actual smith for the first time. And i have recently i was finishing up my first book, and my first biography i had used a treasure trove of materials that Jean Kennedy Smiths daughter who was riding a collection, compiling letters from her father to her aunts and uncles had put me on , and in that treasure trove of material, letters from William Randolph hearst to Joseph Kennedy backandforth items to man who was different from everything i had heard about him. So i told Jean Kennedy Smith at some point that her daughter should write a biography of his of her grandfather. And that the man was absolute seat absolutely fascinating. Is a good word to use if you dont know if youre going to be ready about of villain or hero. It was fascinating, i said. Somebody should do a biography. About a year later i saw Jean Kennedy Smith again. She approached me and said that the family wanted me to do it, to write that biography. That they recognize that there was need for such a biography. And i said, well, i am in the midst of writing another book. Im writing about andrew carnegie. And she said, when i you going to be finished . If you cannot say no to a kennedy. I said, i dont know. Six months maybe. Six months to the day we got that call at home from someone i was convinced was at ted kennedy trust a man. I dont know if any of you grew up in new york or listened to don imus, imus in the morning, he had a ted kennedy impersonator and it sounded just like this. I listen to the message. After listening to it the second and third time, i realized it was not an impersonator but the senator asked me to come to washington to talk to him about doing a biography of his father. I went to washington, and the senator and i and his two dogs had lunch together on mondays his dogs came to the senate with him because the senate was in session, and they could roam, play in the senate. It was a weird sight, believe me. We were brought into like tiny little tiny Village Conference room, two dogs, the senator, and me. A card table in the middle. And this senator who was always on a diet. They believe that his back he would appeal feel better that than ever that he was, the most bitter razzle sandra to have ever seen, like as sliver of tuna fish that looked as old as he was on a piece of bread. I had two pieces of bread and potato chips. And we talked for three, four hours. What i remember saying over and over and over it did his, you dont want me to write this book because i am nestorian. Im going to find stuff. Whenever i find, im going to put in the book. And who knows, by that time this book comes out there might be akin to the running for office. Little that know that that kennedys name would be joseph p. Kennedy the third who ran for and was elected to congress. The election came before my book came out. But i was worried. And that thought it was a legitimate concern and the senator should know about that. He said, dont worry. He said, you know, Everybody Knows that my father had an affair with Gloria Swanson and he said, and i know my father was not an antisemite. Whenever you find that whenever you right is going to be truer to the man i knew and loved and without that. So i said, okay. I want full access to everything. I want full access to the family, the documents come everything that is stored at the Kennedy Library in boston that has been closed to researchers. You will see the book, you in the family and your lawyers and representatives will see the book when it is between hard covers, not before. I will be coming back to you for permission to cite anything. Whenever i find im going to use in the book. He said, okay. Then it took 18 months to get this all in writing. And i was off. I was often running. And i found some more remarkable stories that i had ever imagined i found the story of a man who spent his life moving back and forth from being an outsider to in insider to an outsider to an insider. I found the story of an Irish Catholic who was not ashamed of his carriage heritage, but did not want to be defined by it a thirdgeneration immigrants who cared little about the country, had no desire to visit ireland or to read about it, who considered himself 100 percent american and could not understand why anyone would think of him as less than that. A catholic , went to mass every sunday and went to confession. AntiCatholic Church in boston was the anchor of his existence. And everywhere he went he would find out where the church was. When he went on vacation in new hampshire, he sent the note to the innkeeper who was a friend of his and said, find out when they do confession on friday and also, find out if tools and lily he was married at the time, tools and lilly will be around. I mean, this in one sentence, he grew up the son of a very respected businessman and board leader in east boston. The ultimate insider. And even when he went there were about 10 percent of the suits were catholic. A much larger percentage from public schools. He is still considered himself an insider. There were they did not let him into some of the clubs, but that did not bother him nearly as much as the fact that he was too slow to make the varsity baseball team. He graduated from harvard. He wanted to go into banking and finance, and he discovered that every door was closed to him because he was an Irish Catholic from east boston his father had been aboard be here. His friends to my classmates who were not Irish Catholic cat interviews, jobs at major banks, fans constitutions, he got nothing, nothing, not an answer, interview, not at nothing. He was still going to go into banking. He take a Civil Service exam and became an assistant banking examiner and traveled around the state examining the books of banks and learned more about banks and the ever would have had begun directly into a management position. He wanted to get rich, and he wanted, as he said over and over again, to make enough money so that he could leave every one of his nine children a Million Dollar trust fund in 1,920. And in order to do that, he realized that he had to do more than be a banker. He had to make deals. He had to flow Stock Options for companies. He had to raise money for the Larger Industries in and around boston. Again he realized as an Irish Catholic fermis boston he did not have the connections and would never have the connections in any of the major american industries. What did he do . He looked ahead and realized. The Boston Financial institution would Pay Attention to an industry that was about to take off, moving pictures. They paid no attention. So he moved again. He began making his own deals and his own contacts. He tried tent, when babe ruth was still in boston, to put him in a moving picture. That did not work. But most of his because baby ruth demanded to be paid in france, and kennedy never pay anybody up front. Every other deal went through. Eventually he ended up in hollywood as the owner, the studio head of what was a minor studio, but that was not going to stop them. He realized and recognized how he could converge his outsider status, how he could make it an advantage, benefit, rather than a liability. So what did he do when he arrived in hollywood . He positioned himself as the non shoe, as the boston banker, as the Third Generation american, at a time when small towns and cities all over the country aided and abetted by a lot of rabblerousers were beginning to say that movies are dangerous to our children. They are dangerous because there are they are controlled by these aliens, by these use the dont understand christian morality. And towns all across the country in states all across the country were beginning to institute laws. And hollywood had brought in will rogers who had been in the harding cabinet and was mr. Protestant and kennedy now positioned himself as the not too and made himself indispensable to the industry as such. And studio after studio hired them. At one point he ran for major studios. And at each of those he demanded to be paid in Stock Options. By the time he left hollywood after only a couple of years he was a multimillionaire because he knew how tough use those Stock Options, turn those pieces of paper into dollars, millions of dollars, and he did. At age 50 he learned how to make an advantage of a disadvantage. At age 50 he had millions and millions and millions of dollars. At age 50 knew the way the stock market worked, the way stocks and bonds retreated, and he knew that a crash is coming and pulled out all is money so that when the crash did come he was left with his millions in an extraordinary position. And yet with that crash, we are suffering from a recession now. A lot of people suffering. We all know people aware suffering, but it does not compare to the depression of the 30s. Kennedy was scared to death that everything that the country he loved, because it had given him lots of opportunities that he converted into dollars, he was convinced that unless something was done to right the economy capitalism was going to go down. With capitalism democracy and with democracy everything that made this country great. He was convinced the only managed to right the ship, save capitalism and democracy in the nation was Franklin Roosevelt. So in 1932 he signed on to the Franklin Roosevelt team and was one of the only bankers to do so and was one of the only Irish Catholics to take a prominent position and was only one of the only hollywood men and women , hollywood connections to back roosevelt. Hollywood then was solidly, some of you, saw the republican. The outsider was on his way to becoming an insider. And yet he refused to play by the rules. He refused to become part of the rooseveltian. He refused to unabashedly say, whenever you and your brain just want to do, ill pack it. I am with the. Yet he was so important as a banker that roosevelt appointed him the first chairman of the securities and exchange in commission. At the time roosevelts colleagues in new dealers were horrified. You know, why are you putting a fox in control of the chicken . And Joseph Kennedy was there greatest chairman of the sec we have never seen. He knew every trick of the trade , and he passed so many regulations and soft said tough regulations that when he was finished he had to get of the market. Every device he used to make his million see a lot. From the moment he left the sec began investing in real estate. That Merchandise Mart in chicago, the largest building and said the pentagon in the country. He bought, you know, block after block in new york. I dont think in philadelphia. He was concentrated in new york and chicago and westchester and albany. He was not yet where he wanted to be. He demanded much from roosevelt. Roosevelt named him the first ambassador and first Irish Catholic ambassador to the court of st. James. He became the ambassador to Great Britain, and it was one of the worst decisions roosevelt ever made. He knew but somehow believed he could keep kennedy in check, but he could not. Kennedy was to maine. When he talked to his children he was a cheerleader, an optimist, but in his relationship to the world around him and to the 20thcentury he was having made his pile of money convinced that it was going to be taken from him. Convinced that democracy and capitalism would be taken from the United States. The United States entered the war, entered the world war ii on behalf of the british nothing was more important to have been making sure that there was no war coming keeping britain out of the war first, and then keeping the United States of the war, and he did everything he possibly could. He violated protocol, did not follow orders, met secretly with german diplomats. He was convinced that as a businessman he knew how to negotiate and deal and that if he were put in a room with hitler that two of them would negotiated deal. He refused to see that hitler was a madman, that hitler did not care about, you know, the german people. Heather had other fiers that drove him. He believed him there would be a rational and a actor. He told the leader of the zionist committee, and going to go meet with him. Bear working now. He became so anti churchill, anti british, antiwar effort that the british open open the file on immense pile by them, which i found in the National Archives in britain called the kennedy. And that german archives there are records of his conversations with the german diplomats, wanted to get to berlin to negotiate an end to the war. And to negotiate a settlement that would prevent war and that would rescue the jewish refugees again, not for the first time, he had gone from being an insider to being an outsider because he did not know not to be a team player. He returned to this country in disgrace. He supported roosevelt for reelection in 1940 which is all roosevelt wanted for him and why roosevelt did not fire him as he should have. He retired and kept plugging away. He gave an interview in boston in which he said that the british are finished. This is during the battle of britain. A britisher finished. Any money we give the british, you know, is wasted, thrown away and then he went to hollywood. He was invited to speak at the studio about the future of films , what the Film Companies would do if they could not export to your. Instead of talking about that he lashed out at an audience that was almost all tuition. The last out at him and said, you guys, unless you stop making anti yet live films, the great dictator, unless you stop making anti chairman, and tied him there, anti not see films, you are going to cause the next war. Believes american boys will be spilled. The worst outbreak this world has ever seen because everyone will blame everyone in this country will blame the jews. By 1940 he was the total absolute pariah. Nobody wanted to touch him. If he wanted to get have joined the american First Community and signed upland bird, but he did not want to do that. He stayed quiet. Number i just part of the story as a part that im not going to be will tell you. You will have to read. In 1940 the kennedy name was dirt. Among the isolationists who want to protect his children so they could be insiders. It third among the rows of the people, the jews, everyone who wants it or believed that american said to support the british. Twenty years later his sun was elected president to the United States. Once again the outsider had performed magic and become the ultimate insider, the fall of the president of the estates. Im delighted to take questions. Thank you. [applause] [applause] thank you. Theyre is a microphone. To not speak and tell you get the microphone. I have been warned. Wonderful speech. Isnt it true that Roosevelt Center into england almost to get rid of him because he considered in such a pain in the neck . In part. That is a great quest great question. But he also roosevelt did not trust anybody, and he was a brilliant charmer and can never, the greatest president we ever had, but he always said to three people to do ones job, play them against one another, and he believed that he needed kennedy because kennedy would immediately break and report to him correctly rather than to a state department and the kennedy was smart enough to be his eyes and his years. What he did not know was that kennedy would quickly develop this obsession that made him useless as a reporter on conditions in europe. And roosevelt, for the next two years, would send over a variety of personal representatives to do the job that kennedy should have been doing and report on british prepared this, whether mussolini was going to enter the war on the side of the germans, the stuff that he had hoped kennedy would do. He was worried that he would come home and support a republican for a run for president himself. Okay. Theyre is a question here and then over here. Like the dog that did not bark, we have not heard anything. [laughter] you know, one of the things i hope the was going to write about in this book was bootlegging. What could be more fun then to write about booze and bootleggers and out capone and meyer lansky and all the rest. Regrettably, it aint true. None of it is true. Kennedy gave another sorry to mike kennedy supplied his harvard reunion class with liquor that may and may not have been illegal. He got it because his father was an importer. When prohibition came then youre allowed to take all your liquor and put it in your basement. Aside from that, no, no bleeding whatsoever. The only the stories tell began its of the 1970s when nixon runs against jfk in 1960, nixon brings out researchers, hires researchers all of the country to find every bit of dirt that they can about the Kennedy Family. And they find plenty about joe kennedy, but no one accuses him of being a bootlegger. Its only the 1970s when writers higher try to figure out the assassination. It cant be on assault. It has to be the mafia, what would they go after jfk . End these explanations are put together. And all sorts of retired mafia can you retire as a mafia person . You know, miami, is thorough, europe, the bombers that it all, of, oh, yeah, heres a good friend of mine. We did a lot of work. Then the writers to leave no, seeing his story, would not let it go. Everything is tough trying to track down every rumor, every story. And to you know, the credible witnesses include help capones piano tuner and who gives an interview in which he says he was turning the piano when el at kennedy met together. They include the exwife of the chicago mobster who says, yeah, yeah, has been to was a good friend of joe kennedy. They quoted the people who came out of the woodwork to talk to me, including someone in a penitentiary in canada who insisted that his grand uncle had been killed by kennedy who was in partnership with germany as a bootlegger. Where did they get the booze into kansas . None of it made any sense. There was one credible piece of data, one terry that was that the canadian government was great. They did not give a damn. They supported as much booze as possible coming across the border as long as the ship was paid an excise tax. Joseph kennedy limited in vancouver refused to pay the excise tax. And you know, people said, oh, theres the proof, theres a smoking gun. I found this kennedy, elected to Business Records and tax records in business directories in vancouver and discovered that it is david Joseph Kennedy who lives in vancouver, born and died in vancouver, not our joe kennedy. So the of bootlegging of any sort. Year in the will go across. Could you talk a bit about the relationship between joe kennedy and his son john and to what extent john kennedy knew of his fathers relationships with multiple women and whether that influenced him to follow that same path . Yes. [laughter] yes. I think there are no kennedys in the audience here, either . Check was much more predatory, even then his father was. Joe kennedy and rose at an arrangement, slight roses father had an arrangement with roses mother. I dont embarrass you and to what arenella want, and she tried not to embarrass her. I dont think jack had that same total. At think he embarrassed jackie in no way that is inexcusable. Gloria swanson, one of the things i found is i went to austin, texas to see the glorious once in papers. I teach ph. D. Students. Appro with the only historian has made the trip to austin texas, which says these great archives, including the lbj library, to let the glorious slauson papers, and then then i found her handwritten notes that she gave whoever wrote her autobiography the autobiography had none of this. Red without much participation from her. Remember when will the chamberlain or Charles Barkley or someone was asked was a barkley . What is this doing . He said to i dont know. I havent ready yet. Gloria swanson in these handwritten notes said the she tried during and after her affair with joe to figure out how this devout catholic who went to confession in mass kitschy of his life. She said and loyal as communal, had her own prejudices she didnt like shes very much. She said it was because confession was like washing his sense. He would go to confession, washes hands all over again the next day. This is part of the story after tell. Yes, sir. Over here. Would you elaborate a little more of what you i think you said they you did not think that there was evidence that he was an antisemite. How hard did you look . I didnt say that. What i said was his son said that he was not an antisemite. Now, this was not easy to figure this out. It was not easy in large part because when you look at washington in the 1930s, and especially the state department, everyone is an antisemite. I mean, the state department is frightening. Washington outside the state department is only a little bit better. When you Start Talking about who is an entirely semite, the better question is what kind of antisemite. I happened to find for myself. I define it as someone the feeling about the genetic makeup in the blood of jews that makes them sinister, corrupt, and unable or committed to destroying christian morality. Limburg was an antisemite. Henry ford was an antisemite. The astor, kennedys different ball was antisemite, according to the seven mission which has become my definition. Breckinridge law who was in the state department and ran the Refugee Program and kept out hundreds of thousands, as much blood on his hands as most germans, was an antisemite. Kennedy was not in that sense, but what kennedy was was kennedy, as taiwan, of sort every antisemitic mythology. He used league which, made speeches that were in virulently and frighteningly antisemitic. He believe that the organized Jewish Community to one not of use, but the most powerful ones, including those in the white house, frankfurter, brandeis to benjamin cole, sam rosen mend, there were all doing everything they possibly could to push the United States into war against germany to somehow get revenge against ciller. He believed that the jews were warmongers, looking after only their own tribal address. There were up patriotic. The funny lady accused the jews and everything that Billy Grahams and protestants accuse his son of when he ran for the presidency in 1960. It is now believed was possible to be a jew in to be a true patriot at the same sense. Those who oppose his sons election because he was a Roman Catholic said that polygram among them, once this appeal right up there in front, you could not be a catholic and a true Blue American at the same time because the vatican was going to give you wars they couldnt turn down. A question over here. Is it true that kennedys views about the future of the stock market was influenced by this . One day giving him advice. Supposedly kennedy has said of his way to his office he does something was wrong when a boost later can give me advice. A great story. Ive found no evidence for it. It may be true. I did not included in my book because i could not verify it. But kennedy did not need his but black to tell him that. He was really smart. When you look back at the crash of 1929, as when you look back at the crash of 2008, you find that there are a lot of people and those coming and that nobody was listening to. Bernard barack knew it was coming at the get his money out of the market. Kennedy knew it was coming, and he took his money out of every kind of speculative stock because it is the insiders who had to have known that the market was oversold. I mean, you know, mark doubt. He can be absolves of being stupid, but the people who were his brokers had to have known it was coming. Kennedy certainly knew. Was there a calculation involves . His ameristar rose kennedy, burying them to political royalty . The Catholic Irish power influences. And i have a little story which you may or may not know. Throughout partially in palm beach. She would be about 95 years you were still alive now. There came a time when she stayed home. Everyone in palm beach shunned her. Bobby kennedy came and said, our fathers said that we are allowed to play with you. I wish you had told me that before. Yeah, it rings true. It makes sense. It makes perfect sense because nobody likes the kennedys in palm beach and kennedy at that time said the hell with you call we will make our own way, and he did. He did his entertaining. His own house what he wanted to and went to the bradleys which was the casino that he claimed had the best food in palm beach. The question is, did kennedy married Louis Fitzgerald because she was the daughter . Did he quarter . Did he make her his girlfriend and go aisle with her and then marry her . Her father was the mayor. The s l. He was the most you know, she was the most eligible girl. She was smart, pretty, vivacious , had this carefree attitude, she was an extra variable bid. And i think kennedy was john turner and kennedy knew i dont know what came first. Kennedy said new that his store friend was the mayors daughter and that by marion rose he was going to climb a step. One of the difficulties was that kennedys father who was also very important in irish politics had been an opponent. So for a long time they were not wanted to be married, not because of the prospects, but because his father had been anti after it in the election after election after election. Kennedys father believe that Catholic Paula 65 Irish Catholic politicians did not have to appeal as clowns. He was it plan. Rabblerousers, the worst kind. Judge kennedys was not. One of the reasons why joe himself did not enter politics was that he was totally fed up with this Irish Catholic, what he had seen as the dominant Irish Catholic posturing. Only an Irish Catholic can look after you. Any comments on the lobotomies story being done said she would not embarrass the kennedys and keep the boys from becoming president . Yeah, i spent a lot of time and an awful lot of research and found all sorts of stuff. We can blame kennedy for lots and lots and lots of stuff, but not for this. He love that child. When he moved all the other children back to the United States, but when germany, when World War Two began his captors marry within in england because she was doing really well in the school. He looked after her. When you see the pictures, read the letters, he left this terms. Everybody knew. But that was okay. She didnt it was okay. But she was slow this month not to understand that her brothers decisions, going out in the world and the dancing, sailing, playing golf, her brothers and sisters ten years gender could live by themselves on the front lawn. She could not. She was the love to hear. She became increasingly angry, violent, had a temper, no longer this with that girl. And a great, big woman of 1920 got 21. At kennedy, as he did with all his children cut charge. He would and sought the best medical advice and that was to get her a lobotomy. In this time the lobotomy was the preferred intervention. There were critics, of course, but the menu did the lobotomy was the inventor of the lobotomy and won a nobel prize for the invention. The team that performed the lobotomy was a neurosurgeon from yale. You know, they had it done at johns hopkins. They said to kennedy, she will still be slow, but we are going to do this operation and she will be angry, and happy, discontent. She will be a happy child the. And the lobotomy went tragically wrong, and she came out of it a vegetable. She eventually learned to walk, but never spoke again to my did not communicate, did not write. Her intelligence was had been that of joseph p. Kennedy, seven, eight yearold and now was that of the seven month yearold. And kennedy was the only one that kept in touch with there. Riding of family and say x is doing this, why is doing this, rose mary disappeared from the family correspondence. Kennedy continued to visit her and finally found a place for her, wanted to put her in boston. A home for retarded children. The cardinal said, dont do it because you cannot protect the familys private privacy worry around. You cant protect your privacy, was a ball. So they moved here to a convent home in wisconsin. All of that, i understand. What i dont understand is that once he put her in this home and she was well cared for, he never sorry get. And the family only began to visit raspberries again after kennedy had his debilitating stroke stroke and they never told her. The only way to make sense of this was kim shriver. Began their work for the mentally disabled because of what the family went through. And in a strawberry and lenny who runs the Special Olympics now. You know, you have to understand the shame. They could not do enough for their sister. And kennedy convinced himself against the rest of the family that she was better off by herself with the nuns making her own community for herself in jefferson, wisconsin. I dont i still dont understand it as much as i want to. One last question. What was his relationship with his sons . What did they think of them . Is kids absolutely love him. They adored him. I thought it was an authentic and the beginning. I could not believe. I hope my boys speak of me half as well as his boys. And his daughter sue had more of our reason to dislike him. They loved the guy, and it was only after i did my research that discovered why. He was an extraordinary father. What could be a thousand ways and be an extraordinary father. And he was. He supported the boys. I will tell one story, the bay of pigs. We now know that jfk was absolutely distraught. Jackie in her interviews that were recently published talks about seeing her husband, you know, just cried, a grown man to sob because of the loss of lives he had sensed these men over to die on the beach or be captured. It was a major, major, major crisis. Ed kennedy, the president to commend kennedy attorney general and bob were trying to make sense of this bobby said, lets call that and make us feel better. He always makes us feel better. Somebody picked up the phone to call that in palm beach. That gown on the phone. He said, look, this is a fiasco. A debacle. It was the beginning of your 4year term. By the time you get to the end everyone will ever get bit. The fact the you apologize, the American People love that. You watch, your polls will go up in two weeks. Kennedy was right, kennedy the father, and bobby was right. They felt better. In the polls to go up in two weeks. That was the kind of father he was. One of the reasons i enjoyed writing this book, a lot that distressed me from beginning to end. Antisemitism, the appeasement, the ruthless stock market racketeering, the lobotomy that i never understood with catching rose mary off, but his relationship with all the children was truly remarkable. So of that up note i think you all for your attention. [applause] on the next washington journal some people say if we get the military we will have the temptation to go fight as much. If the japanese want to fight, let them do it. We are better off staying up. If we have a small group to the starter military we will be disinclined. I know want to fight the chinese over the islands, but leave that aside. If you like it when we fight and we dont to my dulce et poor relation. The world wars began when we were unprepared. The korean war began when we were unprepared. In vietnam war, and if we now fest for it to the reagan years, and many ways there still people can correct me if they wish after words or whenever, but they are still seen as the golden years of American Defense policy because we built up the budget did that use the military isnt that wonderful not come . Of not saying its always great judgment that led to that. Happy circumstances, but there was no correlation between increasing the budget and increasing the proclivity to a lead momentarily. Upcoming Defense Department budget cuts in the morning into 00 eastern on cspan book tv. The history of the Muslim Brotherhood and its influence across the middle east saturday evening. And on American History tv, a look at the internment of japaneseamericans during World War Two and the political battle for redress. Journalists took part in a discussion about how the news media cover politics. The Panel Offered advice to the and journalists on how to use social media. Part of a conference hosted by the association for education and journalism and Mass Communication in washington d. C. [inaudible conversations] okay. Thank you for coming. Me will be started. Welcome to this panel, welcome to our cspan audience. We have five topnotch political journalists to think a little bit differently. Im excited about this panel of looking for to for months. The university of iowa, vice chair of the committee on responsibility. Some other folks as well are sponsoring this panel, so it is a special session from us