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The beautiful and the damned
Much has been given to the Kennedys, and much has been taken away
By Jake Tapper
[07/17/99]

The last Kennedy
From the moment he was photographed as a three-year old saluting the coffin of his father, he had a place in America's collective heart.
By David Horowitz
[07/17/99]

A good man, very fair, very witty, very loyal
While the world waits, Christopher Hitchens reflects on the life and career of John F. Kennedy Jr.
By Christopher Hitchens
[07/17/99]

The war over KPFA
Stupid management tricks at a Berkeley public radio station make people care about free speech there -- even if they don't listen to it anymore.
By Anthony York
[07/17/99]

The short, unhappy return of Ibrahim Rugova
Kosovo builds an interim government without its elected president, who is sulking on the sidelines demanding a larger share of power.
By Laura Rozen
[07/16/99]

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Also Today + Can George survive without JFK Jr.? The star-struck political magazine was losing money, ads and readers even before its founder's tragic disappearance. + The beautiful and the damned Much has been given to the Kennedys, and much has been taken away By Jake Tapper + John F. Kennedy Jr.: "A good man, very fair, witty and loyal" While the world waits, Christopher Hitchens reflects on the life and career of John F. Kennedy Jr. + David Horowitz: The last Kennedy From the moment he was photographed as a three-year old saluting the coffin of his father, he had a place in America's collective heart. + Latest headlines

When I was growing up, I never understood the hysteria over the Kennedys, though my mother shared in it. She still proudly possessed a JFK campaign button and a yellow copy of the Daily News from the day he'd won the presidency. She boasted of how she'd shaken his hand once, and that he was the handsomest man she'd ever seen. But Kennedy died two years before I was born, and he and the rest of his family just seemed to me like tragedies I'd seen on the news or scandals we talked about at the dinner table. Then, around the time I hit high school, everything changed.

John-John, the boy we'd known only as the sweet faced tot saluting at his father's grave, went off to college and emerged, fully bloomed, from out of nowhere. Goodbye, Duran Duran. Au revoir, Matt Dillon. They were the heartthrobs of little girls. It was John who now seemed the logical idol of sophisticated young women.

At first, his appeal was largely physical. He had the thick, wavy hair of his mother and the straight, strong jaw of his father; he was lean and tan. In those days, we watched from a distance as he goofed around and dated, attempted and failed passing the bar a few times, and seemed for all the world like a very handsome, very privileged kid who didn't quite have his act together. Oh well, at that age, neither did we.

But then, in spite of his wealth and stunning looks, he grew up. He was a Kennedy, no doubt, but he was unlike the others. Poised and aristocratic, he looked in the news footage that followed his every move like a man who floated rather than using his feet. Head bowed slightly, striding quickly through the crowds that pursued him, he had the air of someone regal yet humbled. He never seemed quite convinced that so much fuss could be over him. Like his mother, he intuited the necessity of privacy, and like her, he was determined to prove himself in the working world when he could have simply coasted on his name.

The Kennedy men could probably have anything they wanted, but John was one of the few who never assumed that off-putting familial air of entitlement. He dated his share of starlets and he floundered for a while in his career, but we certainly couldn't picture him seducing a baby sitter or drunkenly running around the Florida compound with Uncle Teddy.

Instead, we saw him frequently at his mother's side, two shy, quiet, figures who didn't entirely fit in with the rest of the clan. So devoted to her and understanding of her maternal concerns was he that he only learned to fly after she'd passed away -- perhaps her own history gave her a heightened foreboding of disaster. And when rumors flew that Daryl Hannah was being abused by her soft-rock boyfriend Jackson Browne, the papers reported that it was her old friend and beau John Kennedy who'd helped her get out of the relationship.

It may seem like a bit of tabloid trivia to some, but to many of us, it was confirmation of why we were so enamored. He wasn't just the shirtless hunk sailing around the Vineyard, his perfect hair never moving in the breeze. He seemed a truly kind and decent man.

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