Mina Richards’s Reviews > Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed > Status Update

“Working for social justice on Capitol Hill. Ideally for Bobby Kennedy. And someday in the White House, after she helped make him president.
Bobby, to Mary Jo, was the country’s best hope. It was he alone, of all the Kennedys and all the politicians, really, who cared about the things she did: poverty and racism and social inequity. Mary Jo called Bobby “The Answer.”

“Kick was Jack’s equal in every way, except when it came to sex: her father left porn magazines on Jack’s bed, open to particular pages, but her mother had a fit when Kick, still a virgin at age twenty-three, fell in love.”

She better than me. Jackie O was definitely devoted.

“Alone with her husband, or so she thought, Jackie kissed his naked body everywhere: His mouth, his chest, his leg, his penis. For all of Jack’s women, she was the last to possess him.”

Wow.

“It was Jackie’s performance as a wife (dutiful, domestic, sexual) and a mother (if she could even successfully give her husband children) that would determine the success of their marriage. Not Jack.”

JFK, Jr. was a trip!!! OMG.

“This John allowed Carolyn to excuse what could be his arrogance, his thoughtlessness: When they first started dating seriously, his shower was so filthy that Carolyn had to put a face towel under her feet.”

“Any victims who dare to fight back will find themselves confronting the awesome power of the Kennedy machine, one that recasts any woman, no matter how wealthy or famous or powerful, as crazy, spiteful, vengeful; a drug addict, a viper, a seductress. Whatever grievous harm a Kennedy man may have done to her, the message remains clear: She was asking for it. It was her fault.”