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 Topics of conversation
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Looking up towards the Citigroup Center. 10:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
12/17. Yesterday was a not so cold mid-December’s day in New York. Mid-day there were snow flurries. Late afternoon, early evening it snowed enough to accumulate on the cars but not on the pavement. By midnight it had turned to a light freezing rain. In all this there were parties all over town.
The talk about the financials enters into all the conversations in a variety of ways. Bernie Madoff, unknown to the world only a week ago, is the subject. Some people are still snockered. Others are angry and wish on him the most horrible endings. At the lunchtables at Swifty’s today the talk was about the victims. The Who-Are-They. The stories we are hearing are not about the very rich losing their fortunes but more about the very comfortably well-off losing everything. A lot of women of independent means. And advancing age. Today I heard about a very very successful media executive, now retired and living well. Now, the multi-million dollar co-op? She’s still got that. In a declining market.
Who are the losers? They’re all over the internet on sites tabulating. Many are banks, hedge funds, foundations, bigtime investors.
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East End Avenue, 11:30 PM. |
The other topic of conversation is the vacating Hillary Senate seat going to Caroline Kennedy. Since this idea was floated, according to yesterday’s New York Times, Mrs. Kennedy has hired some public relations advisors to push the cause.
Opinion in social circles seem to be running in Mrs. Kennedy’s favor. The reasons for favoring her are that she is intelligent, she’s written books and she has the name. The Times report also seemed to imply she’d be helpful to the Democratic party in fund-raising since she has done fund-raising.
Caroline Kennedy has remained largely aloof from this same community. Some have interpreted that to mean that she’s not interested in social life. It might be more accurate to say she’s only interested in her social life which does include celebrity, money and power.
Not exactly a recluse, she rarely attends public events unless it is for something having to do with her family or herself. Those activities that she has lent her name to have been largely cultural. Like many people who are public figures, she has different circles of friends and acquaintances. There are the contemporaries who have known her for a long time.
While I’m sure they might discuss her amongst themselves, I’ve never heard a word uttered about her outside of that circle. In the last several years there has been speculation about the state of her marriage, and although it has been intense at times, it has also been vague. Then there are those who are also in the public eye. Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendy, for example, were guests to watch the Presidential Election Results with Mrs. K and her husband Edwin Schlossberg.
All her adult life she has worn the mantle of very popular parents, and she has worn it with dignity. It was also enhanced by her very popular brother who walked with kings but had the common touch. Unlike her brother, she apparently preferred staying out of the limelight and above the fray.
So it is interesting that Mrs. Kennedy has decided at this time and under these circumstances to seek public office (albeit by personal selection). A latter day biographer may someday explain the motivation. While she has several cousins who either have sought and/or gained public office or worked tirelessly in some cases for matters of public policy, she has eschewed anything that required working and living among the hoi-polloi. Instead she has given a clear impression that she preferred her privacy above anything else, which is entirely understandable, having been the object of public curiosity all her life.
A more likely candidate for Hillary’s Senate seat would have been her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy is a great public activist as well as speech-maker. I’m not sure what Mr. Kennedy’s objections to holding office are, although presumably he has them. He has demonstrated that he carries the torch of his late father and late uncle more fervently than any other Kennedy of his generation. Furthermore he is smart and out there among the people all the time.
Even John Kennedy Jr., who had not got to the point of seeking public office, lent himself to the public arena when it came to politics. I’ll always remember one Saturday afternoon in Zabars when John Jr. came into the bustling coffee counter section with a running candidate for some local office. They were surrounded by a cadre of political advisers, PR people and photographers. And they came in like a merry bunch of bulls in a china shop. Young Kennedy, while being open to the experience of campaigning, looked a little awkward and uneasy in the new role, but still game when it came to putting it out there.
President-elect Obama told Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” when asked about Mrs. Kennedy’s possible Senate seating, would only say that they had become great friends in the last year and that he liked her very much. Her Uncle Ted, said to be the force behind the idea in the first place, is said to believe she’d make a great senator. He’s been there long enough and seen enough to know what is required (which may be surprisingly little).
Few recall that when Ted Kennedy first came to the office in 1962 (having actually gone out, campaigned, and won the election), his candidacy was considered cynically to be but a payback to old Joe Kennedy who “wanted a Senate seat for Teddy.” The result has been the longest and most illustrious political career of the three brothers. Back in those glory days, it was assumed all three brothers would one day be President. Teddy was thirty years old.
There is a prevailing political opinion that choosing Caroline Kennedy to assume Hillary’s Senate seat which has almost four more years to run, they will be effectively deflecting a candidacy of Andrew Cuomo.
However, there are others who are eligible, who might naturally even seek the office with a portfolio of legislative, governing and policy experience to trump Caroline Kennedy’s glamorous political pedigree, such as Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney or Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi. It is also true that it appears that Mr. Obama has forged a strong political bond with Mrs. Kennedy that he might not have with other possibilities. What they also lack, in comparison, is the glamour of the name. We are still living in an era when that is almost considered enough. It certainly was for a lot of “smart” people when it came to Bernie Madoff. |
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