American Experience

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin on Jackie Kennedy and the Press

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Jackie seemed to have a really complicated set of feelings toward the press; on the one hand, once she became First Lady and especially I think when she went to Europe and DeGaulle loved her and Paris loved her, she got enormous pleasure from the celebrity of being First Lady and she courted it after that. But then at certain moments when she wanted her privacy back, she would turn it away. And I think she legitimately wanted to keep her children free from that kind of celebrity. It became an obsessive, and I think in some ways, very healthy response to want to keep them and let them have a life of their own but she wanted it still for herself, so she would find herself alternately at times, wishing the press would write her up and other times saying, don't touch me, I want you out of here. And I think she was confused about it in her own mind and that's why it came out in such a contradictory fashion to the public at large.

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