Much is being made in the media about just-released audiotapes on which former First Lady Jackie Kennedy can be heard oozing moral indignation at MLK – saying, among other things:
I just can’t see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man’s terrible.
(Associated Press, September 8, 2011)
She also calls him “tricky … [and] a phony.”
However, what is ironic, if not hypocritical, about her indignation is that it is based on tales Bobby Kennedy told her about MLK’s penchant for booze and orgies. For no matter the truth of MLK’s debauchery, it was probably no more immoral or promiscuous than that of Jackie’s own husband, JFK.
To be fair, reports are that Jackie later developed a high regard, even fondness for MLK. Never mind that this was probably the only way she could cope, or come to terms with, the legacy of her own husband’s womanizing.
Still, there’s no gainsaying that her utterances speak to a private side of MLK that makes a mockery of his public persona. But they reveal nothing new. In fact, here is how I commented on this dark side of his life over five years ago:
Thanks to wiretaps by former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, we already know as much about MLK’s womanizing as we do about JFK’s…
The only redeeming thing about this expose in TIME is that – by highlighting this aspect of MLK’s life – it might lead to a cognitive dissonance that disabuses Americans of their naïve and hypocritical regard for marital fidelity. After all, there seems to be such a probative correlation between great leaders and womanizing (think Thomas Jefferson, JFK, Bill Clinton, and even wannabe-great Jesse Jackson) that it behooves us to be more accepting of this “tragic flaw”.
(MLK was also a womanizer… so what! The iPINIONS Journal, January 4, 2006)
That said, it might interest you to know that these recordings are of interviews Jackie had with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1964 – less than a year after JFK’s death. Therefore, one might attribute a little of her self-righteousness to a combination of naiveté and ignorance (back then) of JFK’s extra-marital affairs.
But there’s simply no way this excuse can be sustained given what we now know – especially about her own adulterous affair with no less a person than the aforementioned snitch Bobby Kennedy, her own brother-in-law and the married father of 11 children. (Their four-year affair, which began soon after JFK’s assassination, was chronicled in the book Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story by critically acclaimed author C. David Heymann.)
I just think it’s unfortunate that these audiotapes, as well as a companion book titled Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, are being released right in the midst of the dedication of the MLK memorial in Washington, DC.
I understand the commercial opportunism that is motivating the publishers, but I would have expected Jackie’s daughter Caroline, who wrote the forward for the book, to use her considerable clout to force them to show a little more respect for MLK’s memory.
Anyway, for the record, Jackie disses a number of other public figures of the day; for instance, calling French President Charles DeGaulle an “egomaniac” and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi “a real prune – bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.” Indeed, even though the audiotapes speak primarily to her relationship with JFK, what is most revealing and intriguing is the portrait they paint of the purportedly coquettish and genteel Jackie as a tart-tongued, cunning, bawdy gossiper.
But I do not think this (admittedly more likable) side of her personality is worthy of any further comment. After all, it was her husband, not she, who was the public figure.
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MLK was also a womanizer…