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.
