My wife is a lot smarter about social stuff than I am. For instance, today she said that journalists should ask Ricky Jay how Madoff did it. That Ricky Jay understands the con; and Madoff's con was first to create this illusion that what he was offering was highly exclusive. So people were dying to get in. Also this played on Jewish prestige issues, exclusivity. Ricky what do you think?
Also, my wife was against the Caroline Kennedy idea from the start. It angered her: Complete droit de seigneur, the woman has no credentials. I asked her more about Kennedy and she had these observations:
Kennedy's looks are interesting. From the time she was little, her mother was probably pushing her to care about her looks and to have work done. Her mother had so much work done, in a kind of banal Park Avenue mode, that by the end she looked frighteningly like Claudia Cohen. The same toneless aesthetic. The daughter surely rebelled against this advice, which is why, her skin weathered by those summers on a Greek island as a girl, she looks somewhat haggard, and proudly haggard, now.
I asked my wife why Kennedy is so interested in the job. "Part of me thinks that her marriage is over and that she needs something to do. Her marriage is very long by the family standards, and people have always wondered what it's about. She has led a very cloistered life. She's shy, she's not comfortable with other people. Her mother was actually very public. She said she was private but she had a whole love-hate thing with the paparazzi. Part of me thinks that Caroline did a little campaigning this year and she found out how fun it was to get out of the cloister. She had fun for the first time in her life. So now she wants more."
Myself I like Caroline Kennedy, though not for Senate, and hope she sticks her neck out further. Runs for something, like Congress. Takes bigger chances.
I think your wife, Phil, is not far off; empty nest syndrome supports her take as well. On the other hand, Kennedy does have academic credentials. She's no slouch in the intellectual department, and she is aware of the higher angels of the Camelot aspirations. And what they cost her family personally. That so, who does your wife think is a better replacement than Kennedy? Your regulars would like to know. There's an awful lot of ignorant plutocrats in congress, and many totally beholden to lobbyists of the most selfish stripe. Sure,
its the question of de facto royalty, but also of who is the benchmark
that your wife is using as the one on "the list?"
Not that I think Meathead Kennedy, he of the dashboard fish and
ill-analyzed 1965 Immigration law ramifications, is anything to applaud.
What's one more plutocrat in the senate? Who on "the short list" is the benchmark for your wife's assessment of her? At least she knows
in a personal family way the cost of the higher angels of Camelot. On the other foot, I could've done without Ted's 1965 Immigration Act; it's clear he never really looked at its pernicious ramifications, which we are living with now.
Further, maybe she has empty nest syndrome, something Phil's wife
would have no personal experience with; and she has an intellect, and good academic credentials to support that.
Regarding Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act, he may have not fully understood what the act would do, but other co-sponsors certainly understood that it would dilute the power of the ruling WASP elite, as so it has.