in the first of what may or may not become a recurring series…

FACT TIME WITH OLINE!!!

oh hey, ya’ll. i’m a legit doctor now so please note the new, highly over-educated gravitas of my lit crit here.

good timing too because with the release of jackie, lo! a kennedy season is upon us.

translation: prepare yoself for some really ridiculously counter-factual daily mail reports.

et voilá!

(via the daily mail)

technically, on the whole, this is not inaccurate. according to multiple sources, she did speak about suicide in the months after JFK’s murder.

what i would like to draw your attention to is this…

(via the daily mail)

now, i realize that this is not actually the central claim of this article, but it is repeated multiple times…

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

and it is not true. as the gentlest of googles would reveal.

because, once upon a time, this was a huge big deal… in 2003.

when thomas maier was given access to letters by a jesuit priest- rev. mcsorely- with whom jackie kennedy had spoken at length after the assassination. maier included elements of these letters, which were available at the lauginer library in georgetown, and his conversations with mcsorely in his book emerald kings. and a big stink ensued. (which you can read about here and here and here and here and here– and which had long-term implications you can read about here.)

it maybe is or isn’t significant that the daily mail says these conversations “were revealed” in barbara leaming’s the untold story, as that does leave room for them to have been first revealed somewhere else. (and leaming’s book does have revelations of its own… the correspondence with mcnamara which was sold at auction is extremely insightful.)

but, based on this…

(via the daily mail)

i’mma go out on a limb and assume that the daily mail based this report entirely on vanity fair‘s 2014 excerpt of leaming’s book. and took her use of widely known already established facts as REVELATIONZ.

(in contrast, this week’s people correctly identifies maier’s book as the source for the mcsorley conversations. so it is possible to get these things right.)

it may seem like i’m banging on about a small thing, but these are significant things: the origin of a story and a detail (misleadingly repeated three times) in a news source.

we live in a time when facts seem increasingly hard to come by and so details matter all the more.

i know, i know. it’s the daily mail. their articles are characterized by 1000 photographs, 500-word captions and few facts. but still. they can do better. i insist.

(side note: what IN THE WORLD is happening with the daily mail‘s captions??

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

i mean these are the people who brought us this:

dear daily mail, oh come on.)

the comments are an interesting melange…

(via the daily mail)

NO, NO, LIES! DON’T BELIEVE IT. HER VOICE WAS NOT ELEGANT AND MEZMERIZING… BECAUSE SHE WAS A MONEY GRABBER. am i correct in reading the logic there?

this take down is instructive…

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

and suggests that we, as a people, are not completely credulous.

as does the sad little plea from this person, who appears to actually know something about the origins of this story:

and, for the first time, i realized just how much biography may have in common with the daily mail…

(via the daily mail)

oy vey.

oh, hello!

we’re baaaaaaaack…

FACT TIME WITH OLINE!!!

i should have known that, in writing about the daily mail in conjunction with facts, FACT TIME WITH OLINE was bound to become every freaking post from now on.

today will be brief.

i present for your consideration:

(via the daily mail)

which could seriously also be part two of our series of Stories The Daily Mail Picked Up After They Were Originally Reported in People Magazine.

my problem here is “new evidence.”

(via the daily mail)

which people also uses.

i’d read the people article earlier in the day and disregarded it because it wasn’t clear that there was anything that was actually new.

upon close reading, i think that there is.

the existence of the handwritten note has been known since 1994, though i’m not entirely sure we’ve actually seen it, so there you go.

also the sherif’s department has apparently opened their files and shared a transcript of an interview with shawn eckhardt. so that’s new.

plus, there’s a picture. of harding and gillooly smoking in their backyard. so that’s whatever that is. what it proves, i have no idea. that they knew each other? that they weren’t exactly all over each other? #thingswealreadyknewin1994

so, “new evidence”? yeah, not so much. we’re getting to see one thing we’ve known about forever but maybe hadn’t seen before. we’re getting a picture of a married couple taken when they were under investigation for this incident. and we’re getting a transcript of an interview with one of the dudes involved. hold that. it’s not a transcript. it’s a list of evidence which mentions a transcript.

HOT STUFF, ya’ll.

hands down the most interesting part of this article is this:

(via the daily mail)

this makes me question whether the daily mail lifted the bones of this report from their contemporary reporting on this incident. because the two have not “separated since.” that is a completely ridiculous characterization of these events.

this was not a new development within the intervening twenty-two years. it happened at the time. this is 1994 news. and it was a huge part of that news at the time.

harding argued that she had received threats from the international skating association that her marks would be adversely affected by her disorganized personal life, that she would not fare as well score-wise as a divorced woman. and so, she claimed, she tried to reconcile with gillooly in advance of the nationals and the olympics in 1994.

to present this as a straightforward thing- they were together and now they are not- is to radically distort the story. it streamlines it, to be sure, and it fits the current way we tell this story, but it also oversimplifies the circumstances of harding’s possible involvement. (more on this here and here.)

he is her husband and so, of course, she was involved in the conspiracy to injure kerrigan.

the questions that arise and which go unexplored: why was she with him? what impact did that have on what happened? and how did her being with him affect the way her story was told?

clearly it did. because, in the story as it’s being told here, she was unambiguously with him at the time of the events described. never mind that things are seldom so unambiguous. or that the ambiguity is what makes them compelling.

after nearly a century of intense fabulousness, zsa zsa gabor has died.

cue the daily mail‘s celebration of her life as a woman who got married.

(via the daily mail)

the problem here is not that gabor was married nine times (because she was). the problem is that the daily mail repeats this SO REPEATEDLY, so that- almost pavolvianly- we emerge from this article knowing nothing else.

but first, a turn about the room…

(via the telegraph)

(via the guardian)

(via TIME)

(via the boston globe)

(via the washington post)

so there were other ways to write this story…

(via the NYT)

and then there was this way:

(via the daily mail)

NINE HUSBANDS!!! OH MY. 

i don’t want to set up a false equivalency here, because gabor’s career is really not comparable to, say, that of mickey rooney or elizabeth taylor (both of whom were huge stars and both of whom married eight times each).

what i do want to do is to critique the daily mail‘s assertion that she was best known for being married nine times- as i did not know that and i’m assuming many other people did not as well.

i remember her from her appearances on day time talk shows when i was in middle and high school and home for the summer and watching trash TV. she was one of those people who, in the 80s and 90s, was past their prime but still in the air, like a perfume- glamorous, obviously famous, though one, as a kid didn’t really know why. (i cannot think of a modern equivalent…)

unfortunately, the mail‘s report tells us nothing else about her so it does appear as though marrying was the only thing she did.

but what happened here, for instance?

surely there must be a story in that!

but no. the only story here is that she had a love life.

(via the daily mail)

oh but wait…

(via the daily mail)

she spoke! she was witty!

(via the daily mail)

she was a celebrity!

she was in film!

(via the daily mail)

does that matter? nahhhhhh.

(via the daily mail)

omg, dear daily mail, TELL US ABOUT THE “NUMBER OF THINGS” she was known for besides being married!!! truly, i would like to know.

alas. one has to plod through a slideshow of all nine of the husbands before getting to her career.

(via the daily mail)

though one would be forgiven for concluding that her sole contribution to the world was calling everyone “dahlink.”

(via the daily mail)

and enjoying the company of men.

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

the interesting thing here, which is suggested rather than explicitly stated, is that- when it became clear her acting career was never going to pay the bills- she found a way to monetize a complicated private life.

(via the daily mail)

i suspect that the comparison to kim kardashian will be made frequently in relation to gabor and that it will be cited that they are both “famous for being famous.”

but this is reductive, and also a tired definition of fame that obscures both the labor and wiliness involved.

just as saying kardashian is famous for being famous obscures the fact she is an entrepreneur, so saying gabor was famous for her love life is to ignore the fact that she leveraged stories from that love life to succeed at a time when beauty was a woman’s primary asset, to survive in an industry that is not kind to aging women, and to remain relevant for half a century in a culture that typically allots 15 minutes for fame.

(anne shirley would’ve wept over these sleeves)

“I pay all my own bills,” she told gerald frank who helped her with an autobiography in 1960. “I want to choose the man. I do not permit men to choose me.”

1960, ya’ll. damn.

ok, so that happened.

the daily mail, as you can imagine, was ON IT.

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

and the new york times.

(via the NYT)

(via the NYT)

the thing is, i don’t think this is so much a testament to MC’s temperament- which is what words like “MELTDOWN” and “DIVA” and “lashed out” imply- as a testament to how incredibly amateur the team of people around her has become.

are you watching mariah’s world?

you should be watching mariah’s world. if only because, in 95% of the scenes where she is being interviewed, she is in lingerie on a chaise lounge.

but also because mariah’s world raises many provocative questions about truth, the construction of reality, and the creation of good crap tv.

watching mariah’s world, it is impossible to believe that any major musical superstar could be so badly managed.

it is possible to believe that this is all entirely unreal, a sideshow constructed for the cameras and the purposes of this show. because it is that crazy.

and not crazy as in out of control like trishelle on the real world, season 12. but crazy as in totally, utterly, completely inept.

the backup dancers are fighting with a backup singer and threaten to quit.

the hair stylist is fighting with the manager and threatens to quit.

the only person who doesn’t threaten to quit is stella, the manager, who probably should.

the show assistant appears to have been hired solely for her ineptitude. her greatest accomplishment is her commitment to stella’s command not to cry.

her unsuccessful episode-long attempt to install apple TV makes for painful viewing.

and yes, this is a reality tv show primarily concerned with managing staff. it is like downton abbey without the upstairs. and that is the problem.

mariah’s world is more about the inept people within that world than about MC herself. which (1) is waaaaaaay less interesting (with the exception of kristofer buckle, whom i heart hard.)

and (2) which, ultimately, makes MC bizarrely relatable, because haven’t we all been here?

there’s a scene in mariah’s world where they’re flying to a show in luxembourg.

upon landing in luxembourg, they discover that luxembourg is one hour ahead of the UK, where they have been based.

this apparently occurred to no one prior to landing.

at which point they discovered that they were already late to their own concert.

in the context of mariah’s world, this revelation is both completely ridiculous (how could they not know??!) and almost predictable. OF COURSE, of course they would screw this up.

we live in a cynical world. we’re quick to assume we’re being manipulated. and we gravitate towards simple stories. so it’s easy to imagine that the events of new year’s eve were a publicity ploy.

because that’s a line already blurred when you’re the star of a show about your struggles to successfully mount a stage tour and when there’s a decade-long tabloid narrative already in place about how you’re a “diva” in “meltdown” and wherein your work is consistently diminished.

AND when you have encouraged that narrative because it’s a certain kind of glamour that you have built into your brand.

the diva is a template for being a woman in public.

it stirs our emotions and it sells.

it also represents a faustian bargain of sorts.

if you are a diva, you are known for being a diva. and being a diva, always always always eclipses the work.

i’ve written about this before in relation to carey. back in april, in particular, with these headlines.

(via the daily mail)

(via the mirror)

we always get the simplest story possible and the simplest story here is that mariah carey had a diva meltdown on new year’s eve.

the more complex story is that of a woman trying to do her job, who has somehow (through plenty of fault of her own) surrounded herself with people who do not help her in that. the question this leaves me with is: WHY?

wondering what someone with a PhD in jackie thought of jackie? wonder no more! my review on movies, film, cinema is available here.

The Way Up! ’tis here.

the totally (well… ish) amateur podcast you didn’t know you needed and hopefully very soon will not be able to live without. wherein the uh-mazing sarah hosein and i talk about life and death and culture and stories and feminism with assorted amazing people.

we are online at www.thewayuppod.com.

if you are like DUDE, i do not want to listen to a website all day, we are also findable on itunes, where you can downloads the pods and listen to our dulcet tones whenever the heck you want.

and, because it’s important to debut with more web presences than content, you can also follow us on facebook and twitter.

aaaaaaand, you can participate! send us yo feelings/thoughts…

so i have been putting this off for daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaays because, HOLY MOSES… i don’t even know.

i mean, that has captured your attention, non? you are RIVETED, right?

let’s dive in.

(via the daily mail)

so this headline pretty much says it all, yeah? it is three sentences long, so it’s essentially a paragraph and you can fit a lot of (1) info and (2) emotionz into a paragraph.

ok, not really “sentences” per say since “Her cynical manipulation of JFK’s legacy” doesn’t exactly stand alone. (true story: this blog post is going to contain many things that are, technically, not sentences, but which we’re all going to pretend stand alone.)

questions arising…

why is “brothers” in all caps?

who the hell is this peter cook person?

and why does the daily mail keep trying to make him happen in jackie’s posthumous love life?

um… is jackie a “blockbuster”?

why is there no “the” before truth?

and, what in god’s name is occurring in that last exclamatory clause?

so we have “cynical manipulation,” “rumored affairs,” “a blockbuster,” “sex and scheming” and whatever it means to have “the O put in jackie!”

basically the daily mail article equivalent of game of thrones directed by michael bay.

something i’m quite sure no one on the internet ever wanted to see. alas, here we are.

for the record, i hate everything about this headline. i hate that JFK and his BROTHERS all appear to be victimized whilst jackie is cast as a cross between anastasia steele and lady macbeth. i hate the mail‘s inability to adhere to any sort of conventionally acceptable grammatical structure and i cannot stand the exclamation point.

people: this headline was the article’s high point.

here is what this article is allegedly about:

(via the daily mail)

for everyone out there like me (dr. jackie, mind you) wondering who in the hell is this peter cook? peter cook is a british “comedic genius” (so sayeth the mail) with a posthumous sex life all of his own.

(i look forward to the day when posthumous sex life intersectionality becomes a thriving academic field.)

long story short: cook died in 1995. in 2009, someone he was in comedy with in the 60s (alan bennett) made what the daily mail, at the time, called a “surprising claim” and said he thought jackie and cook had an affair.

(via the daily mail)

how did this “surprising claim” sound??

WAREHOUSE OF SALT, people:

(via the daily mail)

while i appreciate the journalistic restraint in not linking jackie to dudley moore, just as a rule of journalistic thumb, it seems fairly safe to say that when your source begins a claim with “i may be libeling her,” there may not be much there there.

and, for the record, cook’s widow thought not…

(via the daily mail)

“flirtations were sometimes all you needed” must be the motto of the club for people who make ambiguous statements about dead celebrities’ sex lives. because flirtations are clearly all you need.

lo, and we’re still in 2009, 3 days later…

(via the daily mail)

wherein the “most compelling evidence of all that Peter once bedded Jackie, too” stuff is that cook later told his wife that he had had an affair with lee radziwill. and, the author concludes, because jackie and her sister were “viciously competitive” and “brought up in the same careless social whirl,” surely they would’ve both slept with cook.

so that was 2009.

now we return to 2017.

welcome home.

this article opens with the opening of jackie- a film about which my primary criticism was that it is a film about the distortion of truth to make a good story, and, as such, the ways in which it distorts the truth for the sake of the story are deeply problematic.

here, the mail‘s preoccupation with the film is mercifully short, but its pivot to the “rumours that have been rumbling for years [which] have resurfaced that she had a string of celebrity affairs” is sloppy.

enter peter cook.

(via the daily mail)

who apparently wasn’t of enough consequence in jackie’s posthumous sex life for me to have written about these rumors before. though he does appear to have been in the mail‘s standing tally of MEN ALLEGED TO HAVE SHARED JACKIE’S BED.

for those keeping score: Bobby and Teddy Kennedy, Gianni Agnelli, Rudolph Nureyev, Marlon Brando, William Holden, Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, Charles Addams, Dr. Christian Barnard, Peter Cook, Pete Hamill, Robert Lowell, and Frank Sinatra, “to name only a few.”

which is a problem not because people shouldn’t sleep with other people but because these stories are presented as News when they are, in fact, second and third-hand biographical whispers. the evidence is flimsy. the claims are just that: claims. albeit recounted as institutionalized truths.

this article seems to mimic the collagiastic, post-modern approach of jackie in that we swing wildly between unsubstantiated claims and commentary on the film, prompting an intellectual whiplash where one feels paragraphs must be missing.

(via the daily mail)

film! claimz! portman! whew!

can i get an amen?

this word choice seems pointed…

(via the daily mail)

you can read the whole article if you want. i’mma pull my own pivot now and focus on whatever the nonsense is that is unfolding towards the end.

let’s pick up here…

(via the daily mail)

christopher hitchens was aggrieved, ya’ll! jackie’s “virtual sainthood” (which sounds bizarrely internet-based) wasn’t real.

and about these tapes…

(via the daily mail)

a line which elides A WORLD OF NUANCE and “bitter and twisted” conniving from j. edgar hoover (which you really should go read about here.)

yo, feminists were aggrieved too!

(via the daily mail)

grievances4every1!

because a wealthy white woman, who just saw her husband murdered, spoke to someone in 1964 and expressed ideas shared by many, many people in the 1964.

we are of our times and we (hopefully) move beyond our times. that doesn’t always look pretty in retrospect. how embarrassing does everything you believed in 1992 look now?

the mail seems to think we are all always the same and more and more information is just uncovered re: our general nastiness. at least that is the case with jackie.

here come the historians!

(via the daily mail)

file under: THINGS PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT IN 1961.

(via Battle Creek Enquirer, 23 Jul 1961)

are you noticing what is happening here? we have slipped into Jackie: The Greatest Hits.

jackie made christopher hitchens and the feminists mad! the historians say jackie wasn’t a perfect first lady like we thought! jackie is said to have had affairs with oodles of people!

(via the daily mail)

THE BROTHERS! oh my.

if you’ve been reading my writing about the sex lives of dead people, you may’ve been waiting for a certain name to pop up. wait no more, my friend…

et voilá!

(via the daily mail)

enter gore.

whose musings on the sex lives of dead people- jackie, in particular- have yielded a veritable cottage industry of equally unverifiable claims which will bedevil me to my own grave (who will they say i have slept with???!).

i wonder why the mail went with andersen’s 20 year old book here. why not this one? or, god forbid, heymann’s? (have we finally, finally stepped away from heymann??)

oh, but wait. this sounds familiar, non?

(via the daily mail)

remember when everyone in the kennedy family slept with nureyev??! cause that happened.

plus peter cook.

so, you’ve got this, yeah?

christopher hitchens and the feminists are aggrieved. jackie wasn’t as great a first lady as we thought. omg, she had some alleged totally unverifiable affairs.

geez, this is like “the twelve days of christmas: the sex lives of dead people edition”… OH BUT WAIT. there is more.

(via the daily mail)

safe to say i have an especially high tolerance for the mail‘s bullshit but this is spectacularly vile. and the mail’s use of “it’s been claimed” seems especially craven here.

surprise, surprise, guess who…

(via the daily mail)

with his circus ‘o crazy…

(via the daily mail)

(whilst we are here… when i die, please don’t worry about cutting me out in the stars… just include a pic of me holding my book and wearing elvis glasses in my obit. that’ll more than do.)

do you understand the gravity of the universe in which we are dwelling here? actually, having written that, i’m realizing that perhaps it is just the case that the broader culture is now starting to mirror what has been going on in the culture of jackie biographies for years… hmm…

you know we’re not done, right?

thesis statement time!

(via the daily mail)

so clearly the mail would’ve preferred a film about jackie’s alleged affairs.

perhaps someone is out there among us reading this article right now and thinking, ohmygod, i will adapt this for a feature film!!!! 2020 here we come…

(sidenote: there’s a total absence of other women in this story excepting the aggrieved collective of feminists.)

but then the mail‘s fun was ruined by hollywood snowflakes…

(via the daily mail)

i know, i know what you’re thinking. you’re all like, but oline, jackie was more than her alleged affairs and her bitchy comments and her failing widowhood. and don’t worry, i hear you.

she was also a pink suit.

BEHOLD.

(via the daily mail)

i seriously do not know, were i to set out deliberately to write a story about jackie onassis using all of the narratives peddled within american culture in the last five years regarding jackie onassis’s life, whether i could do a better job than this article in the daily mail.

it is a staggering accomplishment.

the only thing missing is 400-word captions.

the captions in this article are entirely too short.

though they nonetheless still manage to capture the general insanity contained therein.

you know we’re not done yet, right? final thought…

(via the daily mail)

seriously, what about this article, which basically shat on the notion of a flawless first lady, suggests that there is any room in our contemporary culture for retaining memories of a flawless first lady?

tell me. i really want to know.

(via the daily mail)

personally, i don’t want perfection or a “virtual saint” (whatever that may be).

i want a woman portrayed fully, with all the complexities and contradictions that implies.

a STAUNCH character.

staunch characters, staunch women, they don’t weaken. no matter what.

watch this, then let’s chat…

so what does it say about me that i am already more excited about this mini-series than i was about the natalie portman film? hmmm….

(1) first and foremost: BOOM.

one hundred thousand times one thousand times yes.

even matthew perry himself is like yeah, i know. i am winning here. this is the part i was destined to play. I AM TEDDY. (i mean, in some ways, we’re all kind of teddy, but still…)

though i do wonder if, in an alternate universe, charlie sheen might have also played this part…

you can see it, non?

(2) MY SWEET LORD, what is happening with diane hardcastle’s rose kennedy voice?

one the one hand, yes, rose kennedy had a distinctive, k.hep-esque voice.

on the other hand, WHOA. i thought portman’s acting was too visible in jackie (at times, it appeared she was literally biting the words), but this is even more arduous.

(3) while we’re here…

(4) and hey, jfk jr. is here:

played by some dude who looks like the love child of matt dillon and jonathan rhys meyers.

(5) jackie’s italian restaurant table cloth valentino midi with bell sleeves, ftw!!!

dear people, please please let this be historically accurate and let her be wearing this dress during a trip to iran.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, left, and Aristotle Onassis, wearing dark glasses, appear with host Fallah and his granddaughter in Iran, May 1972. (AP Photo)

i do so loathe this tendency to put people in clothes they wore and set them in scenes where they did not wear them. (here’s looking at you, diana.)

alas, given that ari is wearing a white suit in the trailer and a black suit in tehran, i’mma conclude sartorial accuracy is not top priority.

(6) but i do look forward to this…

because 70s skorpios jackie is one of the best jackies.

but will we get to see this??

(via LIFE)

also (7) could they push the water theme any harder?

lastly, this has literally nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about, but for the record:

holy moses, it’s been awhile.

mostly because the hubbub over this english lord nonsense was so nonsensical that it was exhausting, so i just did a big eye-roll and lived my life. a sloooooow big eye-roll mind you because the story of these letters has been like a dripping faucet, where you know it’s dripping and there’s nothing you can do about it but people keep coming into the room to say, OMG, IT’S DRIPPING!!! as though this is a revelation.

while the existence of letters is exciting and the existence of actual words is indeed a legit news story, the enthusiasm with which these particular letters and these actual words have been met- in particular, the GUSH of ink- seems a bit out of proportion with the letters and words themselves.

but then mayhaps you are like, OLINE, WHAT IS THIS OF WHICH YOU SPEAK??! let’s take this double-quick…

jfk and jackie were big friends with the ormsby-gores.

(via JFKL)

david ormsby-gore was the british ambassador to the US.

they all lived in washington when the kennedys were in 1600 and everyone had high spirits and fun times (though the photo evidence makes it look a wee bit staid).

(oh, but wait… ponies!)

(via JFKL)

then jfk died. jackie was sad.

and then sylvia ormsby-gore died in 1967. david ormsby-gore (by then, lord harlech) was sad.

at the time, the press went HARDCORE HARD on the story that jackie and the lord were romancing.

which they were. but the HARDCORE HARDNESS of the press coverage was insane.

please note: i am in NO WAY exaggerating this. i actually myself had underestimated it until giving a talk on jackie in london a few years ago to an audience of people aged 60+ and literally all they wanted to talk about was how the press had misled them about jackie’s love for david ormsby-gore.

at the time, in 1967, an editor actually told a media outlet (paraphrasing here, but barely), “when i was writing sylvia’s obituary, i was thinking how jackie and david would be perfect together.”

seriously.

sylvia died in may. in november, jackie and harlech went to cambodia and everyone was a-tizzy. by december, liz smith (yes, that liz smith, the liz smith) had a multi-part series in syndication about how harlech was going to win jackie. and then, of course, where liz smith leads others followed.

“a deepening friendship” being FOREVER LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE.

ormsby-gore was the “front-runner” in a race in which no one else appeared to be running.

anyway, if you’ve done any reading about jackie, this is a story you know and you know it well.

SURPRISE: they do not marry.

she marries onassis instead. (that last headline, ya’ll, is 24 ct. gold.)

harlech, evidently, was surprised (alongside most everyone else), though this always seems to have been a case of her just not being all that into him. (and, i know, i keep switching between his names- for years, as a young reader, i thought he was two different people.)

so these letters, what do they say?

basically they attest to the fact that harlech did want to marry her and that she did not inform him she was going to marry someone else.

and they claim to be laying down a story of NOW WE KNOW FOR ABSOLUTE SURE WHY SHE MARRIED ONASSIS.

which, well, no.

because people are complicated, human emotions and motivations are complex.

jackie told this one person, whom she knew had romantic feelings for her, that she wanted someone who wasn’t from her world and that onassis was “lonely and wants to protect me from being lonely.”

(via pinterest… ‘A 1968 sketch from the Italian magazine “Grand Hotel”, showing Jackie wanting to marry Lord Harlech, but still emotionally drawn to the tragedies she endured. This was the way the public wanted her to marry – a sophisticated aristocrat who was also a widower.’)

but that isn’t necessarily the end-all be-all to the story and it certainly isn’t the most interesting part, to me anyhoo, of what she reveals here.

“i know it [the marriage] comes as a surprise to so many people,” she writes. “but they see things for me that i never wanted for myself.”

this is the line which most interests me. this and also this one she wrote in june 1968: “one’s private despair is so trivial now – because wherever you look there is nothing to not despair over – i keep thinking of what jack used to say – ‘that every man can make a difference & that every man should try’.”

it’s expected that this is always THE STORY OF NEW FACTS ABOUT JACKIE’S BED (bonhams head of fine books and manuscripts in the UK: “These letters now show without doubt how close they came to marriage and why Jackie decided to marry Onassis instead), when actually the interesting fact here is simpler: WORDS!!!!!!

so few of hers are publicly available.

i’ve seen more than most because i’ve made deliberate efforts to dig through the correspondence of everyone she ever knew, but every letter that goes up at auction still represents a boon.

it is another piece of the puzzle, another affirmation that there was more to her than clothes and style and dignity or that damn jackie film.

there was an individual, complex and contradictory, which women are so seldom permitted to be.

wherever you look there is nothing to not despair over. we could use that now, no?

it was a small delight when, in accepting the democratic nomination for president, HRC quoted jackie, on what would have been jackie’s 87th birthday, no less.

I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.

technically, this was 1 december 1963, so not so much “after the cuban missile crisis” as immediately after her husband’s murder, but still… where does this come from? a letter she wrote to chairman khrushchev.

a letter. would that one day my genius will be recognized and i will be recruited by The Family to edit the ten volume boxed set of JACKIE: THE COLLECTED LETTERS, because so much of what she wrote in the letters i have seen, what she has to say about love and loss and grief and american life and the mess of living and trying, wanting, needing to stay alive, it is so relevant.

in the meantime, mourn with me that more isn’t available. that we’re reliant upon articles with titles like “well, now we know for sure she spurned the besotted englishman” for just a handful of her words.

are you aware that prince william was in verbier this past weekend? is this a story being covered outside the daily mail?

(i ask from deep within my daily mail echo chamber…sometimes i am so deep into the daily mail that i cannot see the light…)

(via the daily mail)

in case not, HELLO. welcome to this story.

prince william was in verbier, switzerland over the weekend. thursday to tuesday (i think, without confirming… possible #FakeNews!). monday was commonwealth day. the royals were out in full force. william was not there.

because william was in verbier.

skiing!

drinking in daylight!

dancing in the dark!

this plays into a preexisting narrative of “william is workshy,” which the mail busted out at almost exactly this same time last year.

which is a combination of this being the narrative the mail has given the duke of cambridge, the duke of cambridge generally appearing not to do a lot ‘o work, and the duke of cambridge willfully pursuing winter life choices which result in similarly bad optics, further reenforcing the narrative that he doesn’t do a lot ‘o work.

the mail, of course, is never less than 2000%-all-in and so has pursued this story with their standard rigor.

(via the daily mail)

the release of two short videos (one on tuesday and another on wednesday) have, of course, led to a bonanza of dance moves analysis.

but there are other complexities here.

there is, of course, the standard daily mail negging of the woman with whom william was photographed exchanging a high five at a lunch where alcohol was on the table.

(the daily mail)

she is a model. the mail has reprinted a topless modeling shot of her in literally every article they have run about this situation. and, by my count, there have been 16 articles in the last 3 days (a number, admittedly, in part, due to the fact that people related to this woman keep speaking to the daily mail).

key themes have been (1) The Women…

(2) the workshyness/CAN’T YOU HEAR THE CALL OF DUTY?!?!?! critique

and then… (3) THE DANCING…

anyhoo. back to here…

(via the daily mail)

so i wanted to go to here so that we can behold together the bitchiness of this daily mail article. because ’tis FIERCE.

all our favorite elements are present.

dramatic narrative accounts of things we could see for ourselves in video footage/photographs:

(via the daily mail)

some truly outstanding caption work:

with an attention to detail which rivals analysis of the zapruder film: plus a nice metaphor:

and some high quality shade:

for the record: the dance moves in these videos are moves we’ve seen before:

(though- i will admit- it is something altogether else to see them set to florence and the machine’s “you’ve got the love”)

and be real. don’t we all pretty much dance like carlton?

when we dance- unless we have trained rigorously in advance for hours a day, weeks on end, with a professional and subsisted on nothing but kelp and lemon water- don’t we all pretty much look like idiots? isn’t this the lesson to be learned from dancing with the stars? that dancing done well takes a hell of a lot of work, and even then the nation might still vote against you for an insufficiently convincing impersonation of a tango pro. (god, life is hard.)

i am reminded of similar critiques made against leo’s 2015 coachella moves…

which begs the question that perhaps we, as a society, have unrealistic expectations of the dance moves of men?

but then women are expected to be this in everyday life:

when, really, we mostly just wanna be this…

so maybe a lack of grace around dance moves really isn’t so bad…?

so this first caught my eye because of the horrible HTML error.

(via the daily mail)

which i briefly believed to be an accurate portrayal of a company’s brand name.

which, in turn, led me to try to figure out how one would pronounce “Bar62328562dot” and what kind of corporate committee thought that was a hip way to do business.

then i was like, oh yeah, that’s an html error.

and THEN, i was like, oh yeah, this is a great way to start a blog post. which i maybe should’ve thought further about being it’s not been particularly gripping in practice…?

anyhoo… SURPRISE! this article is GROSS.

i know. i know. you are like, but oline! this is the daily mail! this is an article about a pregnant, black woman, and casual misogyny, racism and objectification are what the daily mail does best! 

well, yes, that would be true. this is a typical daily mail piece of celeb reportage, and it succeeds in being gross in all the ways one would imagine. so, since the mail has fixed their html flub…let’s talk about language!!

(via the daily mail)

and then everyone’s eyes rolled… but no really, the daily mail has an amazing history of using antiquated language no one ever uses in real life.

on 8 september 2016 (gosh, what another world that was), i took a screenshot of a celebitchy comment strand which succinctly mocked the daily mail‘s rhetoric and which now comes in handy:

(via celebitchy)

such phrases recur with such regularity in the daily mail’s reporting that i imagine daily mail reporters, on reporting to work their first day, are handed a laminated sheet with these words printed upon it.

so above, when we were parsing”Bar62328562dot,” did you catch this?

(via the daily mail)

which seems a contestable historical point (uhhhhummmmm… J.LO.) but one probably not worth making as it’s more than a little sexist in itself, but really, were we aware that this was an official post? Queen of the Derrieres.

and does anyone, outside of the daily mail and the lyrics of britney’s “piece of me” (probably directly quoting the daily mail) and actual french people talking about their bottoms say derriére anymore?

i warn you up front that my point here is very small, in that i want us to consider words.

but my point is also enormo in that those words are connected to broader discourses: about women- especially black women- and women’s bodies, and the way media outlets talk and write about women and women’s bodies. and they way they often do that through talking about what women wear.

(via the daily mail)

translation: a pregnant woman, who is married and has a child, wore a form-fitting dress and uploaded some selfies.

(via the daily mail)

translation: in these selfies, you could see this pregnant woman was pregnant and that she has a butt.

(via the daily mail)

translation: this woman wore clothes pretty much like the clothes we all wear now. she has hair and put beads in it.

(via the daily mail)

translation: this woman has a daughter who also knows how to stand in front of a camera.

(via the daily mail)

translation: this woman’s daughter also wears clothes.

am i being shrill? strident? SASSY? i do wonder, because tone seems so important, always. and perhaps this seems silly. and, i will acknowledge, it’s more complicated than the words. because the mail is looking at pictures here, providing a narration. and, when we look at images of people, the narrative route we take is typically via what they’re wearing rather than what they’ve done in the past.

the thing you have to know though is that this occurs more often with women, because men’s clothing is typically less diverse and also because clothing has historically been the mode through which women have been able to express identity. (a recent, GLARING exception being tom hiddleston’s “I ❤ T.S.” shirt.)

so, on the one hand, this article may appear benign. LOOK AT THE PRETTY PICTURES!!! it tells us.

on the other hand: LOOK AT THE WAY THE DAILY MAIL WOULD HAVE US LOOK AT THESE PICTURES!!! i tell you.

it’s the intensity of the looking that is troubling (much as it was in 2015 when the mail wrote fan-fic about taking teresa may’s dress off). if the principle way that we write about women has to do with what they wear, then the way we write about what they wear matters a whole hell of a lot.

(via the daily mail)

it is standard in gossip journalism to be constantly reminded of everyone’s ages. (this is why i’ve a startlingly encyclopedic knowledge of obscure celebrity ages- every time i read about jessica beale, i am reminded she is now 35.) already this article informed us that beyoncé is 35, jay z is 47, blue ivy is 5 and the twins are a few months away from being born. so it’s not odd that we would be reminded tina knowles is 63.

what’s odd here is the message conveyed collectively: tina is 63. she is still stunning. through her clothing, she appears ageless.

i was about to say, SEE!!! every woman introduced in this article is introduced in relation to her clothing, except wait. that is an untruth.

kelly rowland is introduced through her marriage and her son.

(via the daily mail)

the biographer part of me appreciates the inclusion of the- within the context of this article- seemingly totally irrelevant detail that they dated for three years.

the human being part of me resents that, in the context of this article, kelly rowland is the only one given a speaking part and it is three paragraphs on motherhood, whether she wants to have more children, and whether her two-year-old son and five-year-old blue ivy should date.

hmmm…

predictably, the article ends in classic daily mail style, with a series of “meanwhile” pivots:

(via the daily mail)

(via the daily mail)

a link through which we can buy £500+ shoes and BE LIKE BEYONCÉ:

(via the daily mail)

and a reminder of events we already lived through:

(via the daily mail)

the thing is this: in all that writing about “her blossoming bump and bodacious booty,” “her enviable figure,” her “hot selfies” and “smoking hot” look, “her naturally plump derriere,” “her burgeoning baby bump,” her “adorable” daughter and “stunning mum,” did you get any sense that we were talking about human beings here?

(via instagram)

or was it just a collection of body parts and clothes to which names, ages and light love dramas were attached?

i’ve written about this before. AT LENGTH. so i’mma keep it short here. try to anyway.

but i was doing my annual pre-birthday perusal of kennedy things on etsy…

nothing new to see, ya’ll. the gang’s all here.

the wine glasses…

the paperweight… 

the “feminist” art (feminists have no eyes??)…

the frightful art…

that damn “inspirational” quote (#JACKIEWASMORETHANDRESSES)…

the gratuitous exploitation of jackie’s image to sell clothing that looks nothing like anything jackie wore…

even more frightening art…

the stamps…

the plate… 

plus at least one zillion dress patterns…

though, truth be told, this looks more like phyllis lindstrom than jackie o.

cloris leachman as phyllis lindstrom

just saying.

there are also, as ever, The Dolls. which are what brings us together today.

jackie and the fashionz…

jackie bound… 

jackie in the casket…

BUT THEN.

oh no.

i worry that in setting the stage so briskly/insouciantly i’ve simultaneously numbed you and oversold what is yet to come.

i worry that the pathos will not be as pathétique because you have been bombarded by this barrage of pathotic (yes, it’s a word i’m making happen) stuff.

but then…

i think maybe i’m giving you too much credit.

for whom could fail to be moved by this?

RIGHT?!?!?! 

and you know what, i have only just this very moment realized that these people are our old friends. well, this jackie is anyway.

remember her?

from here?

SAME JACKIE!!!

except for it’s jackie beneath camelot, jackie beyond the faceplant, jackie after clothes. and with more eye makeup…? so maybe not the same jackie but a sister jackie?

plus, of course, JFK.

with their wooden limbs, pierced bosoms, cotton bodies, excessive blusher and trompe l’oeil hair.

WHAT.AN.ODD.PAIR.

she looks like the leader, non? and he her servant or younger brother.

it’s something to do with her power brows, his use of cat-eyeliner and total lack of lower calf definition.

he seems to serenely accept his wooden condition whereas it appears she does not. the strain visible in the varicose vein cracks in her wood, the arm risen in alarm to her pierced breast.

this makes me grateful i do not live in a culture where we pierce our chemises to our nipples, just fyi.

it also makes me reluctant to do anything that may one day result in my being a doll.

you thought that was humbling? it gets worse.

ahhhhhhh, MINE EYES.

our president and first lady.

this angle really brings out the trompe l’oeil in their hair. and also reveals that they have both stained their pants. though perhaps this should not be surprising as they’ve been wearing them now for 50+ years and god only knows when they last parted from their clothes.

in this view, it appears as though they have fallen, sullied, from the good graces of heaven and been stripped of their wings, no?

i am grateful they have one another. i am grateful that they are not alone.

(stare at these dolls long enough and you’ll be grateful for everything. profound gratitude seems to be a side  effect.)

look as they gaze upon their destiny…

her nails are red, her blush is FIERCE. his left brow appears to be recovering from botox gone wrong.

both of them ready and accepting, if not entirely willing, poised for… electrodes? torture? getting dressed?

the slope of her shoulders in relation to the placement of her breasts is disconcerting.

i’m just going to leave that observation there.

in my previous post on the pathos of jackie dolls, i made some big, broader point about the casualness of celebrity and the everydayness of our consumption of celebrities as products. i’m not going to go for anything that grand here.

except…

we’ve been looking ultra-close here. i’ve talked about nipples and lashes and nails.

i have, here, been feasting on the details of these dolls, acknowledging that they are supposed to look like a particular something and that they do not- for that is a key part of this- while also consuming every angle and detail with pleasure, for the most part indifferent to the discrepancies beyond my initial glee.

i’ve enjoyed them so much that it’s easy to forget what i knew at the outset: they look hilarifyingly NOTHING like the people they were made to represent.

hmm… might there be a metaphor here?

so a new jackie book, in the genre of Books Written By Former Employees Post-Jackie’s Death (as opposed to the vair vair more controversial genre of Books Written By Disgruntled Former Employees Whilst Jackie Was Alive), is arriving in the coming weeks.

perhaps you knew this. perhaps you have seen the burst of jackie news in your jackie google news alert.  perhaps you joined me in this eyeroll…

and were also like, what the what is going on with everyone caring so much about jackie’s shoes?? 

because it seems they really really do…

(via Refinery29)

OMINOUS DRUMS.

so there’s this one thing we never knew about jackie’s shoes.

which would imply that we knew all sorts of other things about jackie’s shoes and this one remaining unknown thing (spoiler alert: one leg was shorter than the other and so she wore a lift on her heel) is somehow shocking given how very much we already do know.

how can it be, these headlines seem to ask, there was anything left that we did not know about jackie’s shoes!?!?!?! 

my first thought was that this was beyond stupid.

then i remembered, oh yeah. it isn’t.

because while you personally may not know that much about jackie’s shoes, there was a time where knowing about jackie’s shoes was kind of like knowing… hmm… i’m not sure of the parallel here. maybe it is like nothing we know now, but discussion of jackie’s feet was strangely common during her lifetime.

this was not always so.

during the campaign, whilst one knew many many things about her which one would no longer need to know about a candidate’s wife in 2017, her shoe size was not included in the tally.

(via The Orlando Sentinel, 22 February 1960)

and then, during her india/pakistan trip in march 1962… LO! factbomb.

(The Honolulu Star Bulletin, 16 March 1962)

this escalated quickly.

(vis St. Louis Post Dispatch, 16 March 1962)

(via The Anniston Star, 20 March 1962)

then the pollsters got involved…

(via The Morning Call, 19 July 1962)

and the shoe salespeople weighed in…

(via The Corpus Christi Caller Times, 14 March 1962)

as did the national shoe institute (no lie)…

(via The Daily Telegram, 29 August 1962)

but this detail didn’t disappear after the furor died down.

it was there on the occasion of her remarriage…

(via Waco Tribune Herald, 20 October 1968)

in the movie magazines a few years later, it was presented as though it were totally new…

(via The Clarion Ledger, 22 May 1972)

it migrated into the biographies…

(in Stephen Birmingham’s Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, 1978)

(in Kitty Kelley’s Jackie Oh!, 1979)

in a narrative characterized by unverifiable statistics (how much did she actually spent? how much did she actually get in ari’s will??), this is the one quantitative detail upon which everyone seems to agree. and thus, it becomes The Thing.

(via The Courier Journal, 5 March 1989)

a detail so small that it actually set our knowledge of her apart from our knowledge of the real people in our actual lives…

(via The Philadelphia Inquirer, 29 July 1989)

because, really, do you know the shoe sizes of the people in your life?

i know my mother’s because i played with her high heels as a child, but that’s it. and her feet have changed since then so i’ve no idea what they are now.

perhaps it should come as no surprise that this fact was, of course, repeated upon her death.

(via The Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 May 1994)

it is, in part, why, as an adolescent, i insisted my parents outfit me in size 10 shoes.

because, in that messed up summer of 1994, when i was trying and failing to be a lady and taking all my cues from jackie and dr. michaela quinn, i thought size 10 feet where an essential element if one were to play the part.

go big or go home?

so, in light of all this, given that we- up to now- actually only knew one thing about jackie’s shoes- that they were size 10- and we clung to that detail for decades for dear life, perhaps it is rather stunning to learn that even this knowledge was tenuous, it was incomplete.

we knew her feet were size ten. now we know one of her heels was infinitesimally higher than the other.

forgive me for being ungrateful, but i’m not sure that actually adds anything to my knowledge of who she was.

so this was the year that i realized my interest in the met ball has entirely to do with sarah jessica parker’s presence at the met ball (i literally just wrote “at the mall” just then). i realized this when i realized that, this year, sarah jessica parker wasn’t present and my level of care promptly plummeted.

you know who was there though? caroline kennedy.

and you know what? she kind of brought it SJP-style. which is a fact, my feelings about which remain uncertain.

i’m a little wary of being arrested for copyright infringement, so let’s play a game.

(via the daily mail)

i’mma recreate her look based upon the description provided by our (wo?)man on the street: MR/MS DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER.

ok, so we know it was floral.

(via the daily mail)

and we know it “quite closely resembled an antique lampshade.”

i’m unclear on whether quite is being used in the british or american sense here…

(via)

this is the daily mail and they’re quite (american ver.) british, so presumably caroline kennedy’s dress didn’t very closely resemble an antique lampshade so much as it fairly closely resembled an antique lampshade.

google image search suggests antique lampshades typically look like this:

we’ve got that and then this…

so…?

oh no, wait.

so that’s interesting. and in keeping with the theme of “rei kawakubo/comme des garçons,” with its emphasis on deconstructed womenswear, hybridity, and in-betweenness.

is it a dress or is it a lampshade? idk. and maybe that’s the point.

the mail seems to have one problem with this dress right off the bat. and that is that it is “VERY unflattering.”

(via the daily mail)

this is, as we have discussed, a publication OBSESSED with women’s body parts.

(via the daily mail, sidebar, 5/5/17, 11:50 a.m.)

with pins and derrierés and curves and assets. on any given day, the mail‘s side bar reads like an anatomy course relayed through the language of the 1950s. tits and ass are their bread and butter.

is it any wonder then that the mail would find a dress which conceals everything, including its wearer’s arms, “VERY unflattering”?

that is against everything for which they stand. a stance on which the mail‘s own 2014 article on “Man REPELLING fashion” (wherein kim’s husband charlie plays the part of DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER) sheds some light.

so odds were the mail was never going to like this dress caroline kennedy wore to the met ball. but they seem especially galled that she was, prior to wearing this dress, cited by vogue as having previously worn an iconic met ball dress.

(via the daily mail)

SHOCKING. given how irredeemable her ensemble was sixteen years later.

i swear, DAILYMAIL.COM REPORTER really does have the attention span of a dog.

the pivots are so inelegant. it’s like: shocking! unflattering! no arms! vogue! RANDOM VELVET PIPING!!

(via the daily mail)

but fear not!

(via the daily mail)

by wearing to a day event what one would wear to a day event rather than what one would wear to an evening event, apparently. whew.

as is its wont, the mail swings wildly here between incredulity and downfall and redemption and fanfic.

oh, and also the amplification of extremely small actions into Brave Choices and Assertions of Personal Identity.

(via the daily mail)

for the record: this is a woman who dared to attend the met ball wearing a fashion-forward garment akin to a series of extra-large floral reusable bags refashioned into a three-tiered lampshade.

and the daily mail is finding bravery in her decision to attend an indoor event sans sunglasses.

i’m deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeply immersed in kardashian world at present, writing a paper on KK’s social media abstention in the wake of the paris assault.

people, i am committed.

and, i believe, going way above and beyond.

“In pre-mobile phone days, all the schoolchildren had beepers with different coloured cases that would clip onto a belt or a bag. A beeper was a pager that they would usually carry to keep in touch with their parents or, more usually, their friends.” (KIM, p. 75)

the paper is very nearly there (though, still, it contains more words than ideas but ah well…) and so today i embarked upon the quest for powerpoint pics and et voilà! i saw something strange…

no, it was not this:

(via in touch)

though that was pretty strange and, as far as tabloid headlines go, points for originality there.

no, what i noticed was this:

so, wow.

were i a psychoanalyst (spoiler alert: i am not), i might suggest this points to a  cultural desire for dumping: to see kardashian dumped, to rid ourselves of the whole kardashian empire and what they represent.

i like them and- having now actually consumed a significant chunk of their television programming- i do not think they represent the apocalypse, though the notion that they do has been so regularly stated that it’s probably an image they will now never escape.

but what is happening here with this dumping? did you know this was a word so regularly applied to KK? in much the same way that jennifer aniston is “sad and lonely” and george clooney was a perennial bachelor. so KK is DUMPED.

i mean, this is by no means the only narrative…

and it is typical of celebrity mag reporting- basically from the beginning of time (ie. the 1960s) onwards- that the female protagonists are dumped and humiliated.

the ebb and flow of tabloid stories is that people HAVE to get together and then, once they do, they HAVE to fall apart.

thinking about this led to my pulling down off the shelf my academic crush wayne koestenbaum’s book on humiliation.

two passages…

1)

I haven’t eliminated Humiliation as teaching tool, flash card, and rallying cry. History hangs together in baffling clusters, like swollen grapes, but without beauty, and without the possibility of offering nourishment; the clusters may add up to nothing but a command to remain curious about the chance circumstances that led the awful episodes to fall together into one moment in time, one moment of remembrance or speculation.

–Humiliation, p. 138

2)

Language hurts. Language humiliates. And not just when it’s ungrammatical or unsanctioned. Language, as a system of displacements, substitutions, links, finessings, and crosswirings, fucks someone over. Someone is always being screwed by language.

–Humiliation, 150-151

so often, i think, what celebrities reveal is how little control we any of us have over what happens to us.

clearly they have no control over the words applied to them on tabloid covers.

but, more broadly, things happen, which are beyond our control and which, as a result, may be humiliating. because we flatter ourselves we have control when, in reality, we maybe have very little. even a family such as this one, which is widely perceived as calculated to a machiavellian degree, cannot control what happens to them.

because shit happens.

and the shit that happens, in turn, is folded into the tabloid narrative.

the first time i felt i connected with a celebrity story on a new level was in 2005.

when, two days after i was dumped, an issue of InTouch on jessica simpson’s break-up landed in my mailbox and the advice of a “medical expert who has never treated her but is familiar with her case” resonated deeply.

this is not a story i tell with pride but it is 100% true.

it also conveniently supports my point.

these stories matter because we (well, some of us) use them, actively, in our lives. they can actually be helpful. reading about jessica simpson’s break-up helped me feel less alone in my own.

however, the way these stories are told matters. it reenforces certain pre-existing narratives, many of them NOT. AWESOME.

and i’m not sure what my point here is… that we need feminist gossip, maybe?? because gossip ain’t gonna go away. might there be a more thoughtful approach?

that feels like maybe the dumbest thing i have ever written here but i’mma leave it because who knows. maybe it isn’t?

i mean, i had you at hello, right? you are like, holy moses, this woman is ambitious. for seriously, is there a more prodigious sex life of a dead person than that of JFK? haven’t we all of us, by this point, slept with JFK?

ok. so that’s taking it a step too far. but seriously. and i say this as a biographer. it is likely that JFK slept with a whole load of people. i’m not contesting that.

there seems to be a lot of compelling evidence that his sex life was extensive.

having written extensively about his wife, there seems to be compelling evidence that she knew his sex life was extensive.

what i would do is suggest that we not take every single claim about his extensive sex life as absolute truth.

given what we know about how the sex lives of dead people work.

(new life goal: to some day teach a master class on the sex lives of dead people. just fyi.)

so here we are with the man of the hour:

who just turned 100, btw.

and you know what? this is a prodigious task because it’s a prodigious sex life we’re tackling here so i’mma bring a friend.

i’ve called us all here today to talk about this:

(via the daily mail)

first things first, just YESTERDAY i lamented the lack of kardashian biographies and lo! the lord giveth:

(via the daily mail)

this is the man who brought us the unauthorized biography of anna wintour, and also the unauthorized biography of martha stewart which, in turn, yielded the gift that was the 2003 made-for-tv cybil shepherd martha stewart movie, martha, inc.

rather hilariously now billed online as a “comedy-drama” (i swear, at the time, it was marketed as pure drama) and, in terms of nationally televised docudrama horrors, possibly the closest rival to the 2003 rudy guilliani movie.

yeah, that is a story that needs to be updated, stat.

my love of popular forms is well known so surely i do not have to explain that the enthusiasm expressed above was, in fact, entirely sincere.

but that is not to say that popular biographical forms are not without huge, big problems that need to be acknowledged and condemned and fixed.

with that in mind, let us return to this daily mail article, written by a biographer.

what, for example, is happening here?

(via the daily mail)

this is the daily mail, as always, so, as always, perhaps it is too much for me to be crying out for attention to language but, as my seven years of blogging here have probably suggested, i ain’t gonna give up.

(via the daily mail)

so…

(1) lem billings and jfk were lifelong friends

(2) lem billings is believed to have been gay

this is maybe biographically interesting (if you’re biographically interested in JFK) for what it tells us about JFK- a man who grew up in a time and culture that prized hyper-masculinity and a family that- for the men, anyway- was defined by the what the historian garry wills has characterized as a “competitive discipline of lust.”

that he was able to sustain any deep and lasting relationship with anyone strikes me as rather astonishing. that it should be with a man is equally astonishing. never mind whether that man was gay or not.

JFK is not exactly a figure known for profound or enduring intimacies. that he sustained a close friendship for thirty years tells us something about his character which is, to be honest, not apparent otherwise.

but that is not what oppenheimer is getting at here with the suggestion of a dynamic beyond “a simple bromance.” (and are bromances really that simple?)

oppenheimer is suggesting a romantical or physical (it’s unclear) component to this “intimate relationship.”

what is the evidence?

um… someone please attempt to diagram this sentence:

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING THERE?!?!?!

attempted translation:

oppenheimer interviewed someone for this book on RFK, jr.

(the hardcover of which came out TWO YEARS AGO and the paperback last autumn, so i am deeply confused as to the point of this article… is it to publicize his forthcoming kardashian book?? or is it for JFK’s birthday? it seems to be framed as a birthday present…)

that person characterized billings as having “a high-pitched, effeminate voice” and noted that he wore spectacles.

and because he used drugs and was gay and hung out with RFK, jr., he could be said to have “intense romantic feelings”? for RFK, jr.? and so he… would’ve also been lovers with JFK? maybe? is that what this is saying?

maybe he did or maybe he didn’t, but that isn’t what interests me.

what interests me is the mobilization of a series of stereotypes to suggest that a gay man could not possibly have non-romantic relationships with straight men. and also that there is a specific way that gay men are.

but note: that nonsense paragraph above?

(via the daily mail)

true story: i didn’t find that credible. AT ALL.

so for it to be “one of the most credible accounts” is alarming.

and would indicate a paucity of credible evidence.

there is perhaps some archival evidence to suggest billings had romantic feelings for JFK. i will allow that. letters. a reference to something written on toilet paper and thrown away. but it’s all pretty ephemeral. there is no written documentation that explicitly says anything.

and in lieu of that, as is usually the case with the sex lives of dead people, we are dealing with “feelings in the air.” (hard to footnote those.)

HOWEVER. there’s a difference here. because “feelings in the air” are leavened with stereotypes.

look at the tenor of this rumor’s presentation:

(via the daily mail)

this is 2017.

this story is, i would guess, maybe coming from quirk in the 1990s or early 2000s (he died in 2014). oppenheimer says quirk met billings in the late 1940s but doesn’t say when billings allegedly recounted details of his relationship with JFK to quirk or under what conditions.

billings died in 1981 and, during his lifetime, was never openly out. from the late 1960s onwards, he was heavily involved in drugs. and so, much as with truman capote and gore vidal (much as with all of us [and i would argue this is something the biographer is charged with doing!!!]), billings’ own reliability should be questioned depending upon the period in which he is providing evidence, just as quirk’s should be.

but look there at oppenheimer’s presentation of quirk’s testimony.

(via the daily mail)

so quirk is an expert on identifying gay people. which is no small deal here, because vital to this whole story is that billings be “pegged” as being gay, and submissive, and also as a joke.

oppenheimer repeatedly points to the mannerisms about which billings was insecure:

(via the daily mail)

as a testament not only to billings’ sexual preferences but also as support for biographical claims.

this article provides compelling support for the belief that men with high and/or nasal voices are always gay. and that gay men cannot have platonic relationships with straight men.

i don’t know what happened with billings and JFK. that is actually not my point.

my point is that there is a problem when we write about something that might have happened as though it were inevitable simply because JFK had lots of sex and his best friend had a high voice.

those two things actually tell us nothing, beyond the facts that JFK had lots of sex and his best friend had a high voice.

yaaaaaaaaa’ll, remember the sex lives of dead people: jfk edition (emotions via britney)?

remember jerry oppenheimer?

let’s refresh.

this is the man who brought us the unauthorized biography of anna wintour, and also the unauthorized biography of martha stewart which, in turn, yielded the gift that was the 2003 made-for-tv cybil shepherd martha stewart movie, martha, inc.

and remember how at that time, there was this:

(via the daily mail)

he’s baaaaaaaack. it’s commmmmming!!!!

heralded apparently by some seriously guns blazing articles about kris jenner’s love life. behold!

(via the daily mail)

i mean, props where props due, that headline is A-MAZING.

“EXCLUSIVE”! “Serial cheater”! sex in the home gym!

what more dramaz do you need??

larry kraines is oppenheimer’s source here and so if you know anything about the kardashians then you are thinking of this:

which is always good for a laugh.

having read two biographies and watched eleven seasons of KUWTK in the last four months, i’m quickly losing contact with what the general public knows about the kardashians, but suffice to say that if you are moderately interested in their universe, then there is nothing news here.

the todd waterman stuff already came out in the tabloids and was covered during episodes on their vacation in thailand.

this is not new news. it’s old news recounted in a biography and slapped under a headline of “EXCLUSIVE! bedhopping sex gyms!” and peddled to an audience (possibly?) less familiar with the minutia of the family’s lives.

or maybe not. maybe we enjoy reading things we already know. because they confirm what we already think we know?

the only other thing you need to know about this article is that the last line is a cliff-hanger and very badly proofed:

(via the daily mail)

oh but wait. there’s more.

(via the daily mail)

again. not new.

a circumstance which points to one of the many provocative things about this family- their sheer openness, their willingness to violate their own privacy.

i firmly believe there are things that happen to them which occur off camera. so it’s not that the whole story is filmed. it’s still a story, a narrative, a performance and, i believe, comprised of fragments.

but the level of exposure is intense by any standard.

sometimes with just banalities.

sometimes with bigger stories, usually after the details have already come out in the tabloids.

so that, using their show, they can offer a corrective.

the true story? well, no. more like their official account.

or at least a story which is engaging with other stories.

to me, this is one of the most fascinating elements of their shows: the way they consume their own press on-camera and the way that consumption, in turn, shapes the story of a given episode. it becomes the story.

their consumption of themselves is a product we consume.

to the degree that, reading these excerpts of oppenheimer’s book in the daily mail, i wondered whether this would be the stuff of a future episode.

it doesn’t seem implausible, given the way they work.

and it is work.

i’ve said this before, i’ll say it again. what we are watching is work.

i wonder if part of the appeal of it is that it is about appearances…

and beauty…

and family…

and feelings.

which makes it one of the longest running, most visible narratives we have of what women’s work looks like in the 21st century.

which is FASCINATING.

saturday morning: writing about tonya harding, 1994 and the olympic games.

to the kid in a nearby flat who does piano practice for 15 mins every saturday morning and has been working on the jurassic park theme for months now: BLESS YOU. it’s getting better.

i work in a bookshop.

in many ways, it is deeply lovely. but the level of sexism one encounters working in a bookshop is STAGGERING, fyi.

thursday night, a customer went ON AND ON AND ON about how i look perfect for working in a bookshop.

and how i am probably one of those girls who looks like they work in a bookshop but has a real naughty side at home.

to this- because this is my workplace and it is my job and because these things happen so quickly that, in coping with them, you act on instinct rather than intelligence- i smiled.

exiting the bookshop, he turned from the doorway and called out, loudly, one suggestion: i should dye my hair just a little bit darker.

i am at work on a thursday evening, and a man has just discussed- in front of other customers and at high volume- my body, my sexuality and my hair.

i work in a bookshop, often at nights and often alone. more than once, a man passing by on the street has leaned into the doorframe and shouted into the store that he likes my hair.

(there is a way of thinking in which this is all my fault- because i have had the audacity to dye my hair red…)

when i work with a male colleague, some female customers will only make eye contact with him, even as what he is telling them to do is to talk to me about a book i have read.

a male customer once complimented my jewelry by saying it was so unique that the man who bought it for me obviously knew me very well.

i bought it myself.

are these things the end of the world? no.

are they part of a broader awkwardness many of us have towards the people serving us? maybe.

but do they happen to the men i work with? no.

is that a problem? BIG BIG YES.

because i’ve just been talking about my own experiences in one bookshop over the last eight months. multiply that by all the women working in bookshops, all the women working in libraries, all the women working in other service jobs, all the women in other sectors, all the women working (and riding the tube and walking down the street and being on the internet and on and on and on). and what have you got?

that isn’t a problem. that is a calamity.

(please note: at the end of the film funny face, audrey hepburn MARRIES this douchebag. blurgh!)