"'There must be a great deal of good in a man who could love a child so much,' is what the Atlanta biddies said, forgivingly, of Rhett Butler when he set out to redeem his reputation by showing off how much he adored Bonnie Blue, his little daughter. Rhett’s sins were many, but no one can resist an alpha male fussing over a small child, and his PR campaign did the trick. JFK’s family photos have done much the same for him over the years. With each new allegation (many of them witheringly well-supported) of risk-taking, womanizing, criminal behavior, overweening self-interest, and/or simple incompetence thrown up against matters of planetary importance, the vast legion of Kennedy fans are rocked backward. But only for a moment. Because by the end of the nightly-news report featuring a heartbroken anchor chewing over the broken glass of the latest bad news, there’s always the same triumphant finish—the montage of photographs of Jack playing with Caroline and John, smiling at his pretty wife, confirming all over again the things that, in our childish and stubborn way, we insist on believing about him."
In The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan reviews Jacqueline Kennedy's Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy and Mimi Alford's Once Upon a Secret.
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