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on JFK Jr.'s George
Real value of Blow's tell-little 'American Son'
By Jeff Bercovici
Admit it. You’re at least a little bit curious about “American Son,” the new book by Richard Blow, former executive editor of George magazine.
Perhaps you shouldn’t be.
Critics who have condescended to review the book have dismissed it, and you will too if it’s inside dirt you're after on the George founder and only son of President Kennedy.
Save your 25 bucks. Though it’s subtitled “A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr.,” “American Son” offers few insights.
Blow worked closely with Kennedy for four years, but you would hardly know it from the book, in which their relationship comes off as distant at best.
When he needs to plumb his former boss’s thoughts, Blow resorts to a Kreskin mind-reader routine. So we get unconvincing passages like this one: “In editorial meetings, he often looked like he was one the verge of saying something, but then cut himself off. Telling us what to do apparently didn’t feel right to him…Maybe most important, I’m not sure John wanted to call himself a journalist.”
The beach-blanket readers and People subscribers for whom “American Son” is intended will find it distressingly high-minded.
About the juiciest dish is of the hot-tempered Kennedy in periodic screaming fights with Michael Berman, his business partner, and Carolyn Bessette, his wife.
As a book about JFK Jr., then, “American Son” is a waste of time.
But as a book about George and why it failed—despite a famous founder, an arguable premise and strong initial advertiser support—“American Son” is actually rather interesting.
It’s interesting, specifically, that Blow, while eulogizing Kennedy in almost unfailingly glowing terms, lays much of the blame for George’s failure at his feet.
When he began work on George in early 1999, Kennedy, a dilettante lawyer who had to take the New York bar exam three times before he passed it, had no magazine experience.
What he did have were preconceptions and biases, and those preconceptions and biases caused him to repeatedly make bad editorial and business decisions, especially in the early days of George.
Kennedy, says Blow, resisted using his name to sell George to advertisers or readers, neutralizing what could have been an enormous advantage for a new magazine.
He was opposed to doing anything that touched too closely on the Kennedy family saga, or on his status as the son of a murdered President.
Blow recounts how Kennedy flew to Los Angeles to interview director Oliver Stone, who was about to release the film “Nixon.” Kennedy scrapped a planned cover story when Stone, who also directed “JFK,” insisted on talking about President Kennedy’s assassination. The interview was called off, and the issue ended up featuring Robert DeNiro, who was then starring in “Casino,” a film that had nothing whatsoever to do with politics.
Similarly, against the strong urgings of his editors, Kennedy refused to interview then-First Daughter Chelsea Clinton. It surely would have been George’s biggest coup. He felt it would be intrusive.
In fact, at a time when politics was focusing more than ever on the private lives of politicians, Kennedy was averse to doing anything that he considered intrusive or off-limits, nixing even legitimate scoops that might have earned George some much-needed credibility.
He was particularly uncomfortable having anything to do with the media frenzy surrounding President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
This was a major problem, since that was the only political story anybody cared about at the time.
“The story had created a schism between John and his staff that was paralyzing the magazine,” writes Blow. “We knew that the human elements of this drama were perfect for George, but sensing our boss’s disapproval, we hesitated to cover the story full-bore.”
Again, Kennedy sacrificed George’s relevance to his principles, putting non-political actress Charlize Theron on the cover in August 1998, the same month Clinton made his famous televised apology to the nation.
As Blow tells us later in the book, Kennedy grew with experience. By the time Blow was promoted to executive editor in January 1999, Kennedy had loosened up enough to schmooze up advertisers and talk about his family history in a speech before the American Society of Magazine Editors.
It was quite possible that, had he lived, Kennedy would have become a very astute editor, or so Blow tell us, though in a way that seems to condescend to his former boss.
But it would likely not have been under Hachette.
In the months before Kennedy's death in July 1999, Hachette CEO Jack Kliger had all but decided to close George. Kennedy had been hoofing about New York looking for someone to take over Hachette's stake, and at his death, Blow tells us, Kennedy was in serious talks with News Corp.
It was after Kennedy died and Kliger saw the huge public interest that he decided with Hachette's French owners to extend the life of George, believing there was an audience for the magazine.
It was a period in which emotions ran high, and lurking behind every news story was the suspicion that Kliger and Hachette were out the exploit the Kennedy legend and the good name of the young man whose magazine they had previously all but shuttered.
Blow sets the record straight here. He makes it clear that Kliger was acting in the best interests of George and the Kennedys, and in doing so he does a service to Kliger and to Kennedy and his memory.
May 16, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
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