The woman on the TV news tonight, a very young 50 next to the 75-year-old ruin of her uncle, talking about her daughter who will be old enough to vote for Barack Obama this year, called up a black-and-white picture of three-year-old Caroline Kennedy leaping out of her father's lap toward Richard Avedon's camera in 1960.
As a magazine editor then, I put that picture on the cover of Redbook over the howls of a circulation department that it would "die" in the riot of color on the newsstands. The issue sold out because the Kennedys were magic then, all youth and vigor after decades of old faces in the White House.
Endorsing a new generation now, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg brought back a sense of that time, a wave of hope beyond reason that the world could be younger and better than it had been.
Reality overtook those hopes then, as it may now, but for the moment, the image of that golden little girl was a reminder of how good it was to have those feelings, however fleetingly.
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Isn't it a bit ironic that Mr. Obama, who claims he is a uniter, a candidate of the "new politics" of hope, constantly seems to seek the endorsements of the old Democratic party hacks , including the Kennedy [dare I say it]"dynasty" and all of the former party congressional leadership that lost previous presidential bids?? Seems as though it's more of a dynastic war between the Clinton "winners" and the Irish [Kerrys, Kennedys]clans who never liked the "uncouth yahoos" from Arkansas who were always smarter and tougher than they were.
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