It’s time, yet again, to take another bite out of the mythological Kennedy family carcass.
Several bites, actually.
First up: CNN’s trailer, which ran on the network about a month ago but has since vanished, for their upcoming – clearly very serious — three-part JFK Jr. documentary.
That’s a lot for a brief, undistinguished life. But that’s American legacy media for you: Still, despite all evidence to the contrary about this family’s depravity, misogyny and amorality, continuing to produce and promote fictions about the Kennedys.
Lest we forget: JFK Jr. needlessly caused the deaths of his 33-year-old wife, Carolyn Bessette, and her 34-year-old sister Lauren, when against all best advice he recklessly piloted his small plane into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
A guy who, as I wrote in ‘Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed,’ had a habit of bullying at least one prior girlfriend into risking their lives through all manner of dangerous — and, frankly, stupid — stunts.
Such as: Coercing one lucky lady into climbing on the roof of his Jeep while JFK Jr. spun the vehicle around and around as she clung on for dear life.
Or taking her camping at a naval bombing test site.
Oh, and out kayaking into the open sea, nearly drowning them both several times.
But yeah, sure: Great guy.
Undeterred, CNN is calling this slop heap ‘America’s Prince: JFK Jr.’
Describing it as an exploration of ‘the remarkable life and enduring legacy’ of its subject — pretty vague language for someone so allegedly original and accomplished — this show has, as consulting producer, one of JFK Jr.’s closest friends, Gary Ginsberg.
Doubtless we will hear, yet again, what America lost when he died — excuse me, when he stupidly, recklessly, and perhaps intentionally killed himself.
His wife was on the verge of divorcing him. His sister Caroline, his only sibling, was no longer speaking to him. His magazine George — a terrible, boring, unreadable vanity project — was about to be shut down by its publisher, Hachette, and JFK Jr. was struggling mightily to find another buyer.
It is not cruel to say that this spoiled scion, age 38 when he died, had accomplished nothing.
Pretending otherwise won’t make it so. Nor does it lead to a healthier American electorate.
Yet into this morass wades one Ryan Murphy, the uber-producer behind the forthcoming series ‘American Love Story,’ which purports to dramatize the real courtship, romance and marriage of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
Shooting has just begun in New York City, and the Internet is most displeased.
Murphy’s Carolyn, played by little-known actress Sarah Pidgeon, is coming up short, sartorially and otherwise.
Over at The Cut, New York magazine’s self-selecting group of style experts — and Carolyn, despite her many faults, was a true fashion icon — the general response is horror.
For Pidgeon does not appear to be outfitted in Carolyn’s capsule wardrobe consisting of Prada and Yamamoto. Instead, this actress is clearly wearing fast fashion — fabrics that read as thin, unstructured, and so cheap as to be highly flammable.
And her hair is all wrong. It’s thin and all one color — unlike CBK’s mane, which was thick and full of highlights and low-lights — what her colorist Brad Johns, back in the ’90s, infamously and all-too-often called ‘buttery chunks.’
Johns, by the way, has been silent for decades. But after Pidgeon-as-Carolyn was seen in New York, Brad has re-entered the chat, telling Vogue that Pidgeon’s blonde is ‘totally wrong’ and ‘if you show that on TV and fashion people see it, they are going to think: Why the f**k is she all ashed out with her hair only one color?’
This, by the way, goes to how little Carolyn, at the height of her fame and power, contributed to the culture. She was not active in philanthropy. She did not take any of the high-level job offers that came her way as Mrs. John F. Kennedy Jr. She partied, shopped, and smoked.
So this is the level of discourse: The clothes, the hair, the overall look — because really, there’s not much else.
CBK lacked the intellectual depth, the self-awareness, of her late mother-in-law, Jackie Onassis. It’s why there are so few biographies of her, and why the ones that exist are lacking. There wasn’t much there.
So back to the clothes.
‘What Bessette-Kennedy did with her wardrobe was tell you who she was,’ wrote The Cut’s Danya Issawi. ‘I can’t say the same for Murphy’s vision.’
Savage.
Indeed, Pidgeon — and her co-star Paul Kelly — look like Temu versions of Carolyn and Kennedy Jr.
And Ryan Murphy clearly knows this is bad, because on Thursday, he gave what can only be surmised as an emergency interview to Variety, defending himself, his actors, and the wardrobe department.
‘There were comments like, “I hate that coat, Carolyn would never have worn that,”‘ Murphy said. ‘That was just a coat we threw on for color’.
I’m not sure what that means, but okay.
He went on to say that he has conscripted a 10-member ‘style advisory board’ to oversee Carolyn’s wardrobe — but he can’t name them yet.
He also claimed that the media — the big, bad media of which he is a member — is doing to his Carolyn what they did to the real Carolyn.
Namely, bully her into a premature grave.
‘It’s not fair,’ he whined.
But it is. It really is. You can’t be part of the machine — whether you’re a Kennedy or a historian or journalist or filmmaker — and then say that you don’t like how the machine works.
Which brings us to Jack Schlossberg, that great irritant of Instagram, who weighed in on Murphy’s project.
Schlossberg griped that the Kennedy family has not been consulted about Murphy’s project — the Kennedys are, by their own generational design, public property, and the dead, per the law, cannot be defamed — and that there’s really nothing they can do.
Then, in a since-deleted chunk of Schlossberg’s reel, he said he would like Murphy to donate money to the JFK Library in Boston.
‘I hope,’ Schlossberg continued, ‘that those making these shows about him take seriously what he stood for in his life.’
Like defending convicted rapist Mike Tyson? Or supporting his cousin William Kennedy Smith during his trial for rape? A trial Jackie Kennedy Onassis refused to go anywhere near, despite Kennedy family requests?
Schlossberg is 32, has no job, and was apparently let go from Vogue as their political reporter.
‘For the record, I think admiration for my uncle John is great,’ he said. ‘What I don’t think is great is profiting off of it in a grotesque way.’
Says the overgrown man-child who only has a profile because of his family name. Talk about grotesque.
