I have a confession to make. Last week I got a request from Joanna Schroeder, our awesome Editor-at-Large, to write a blog post about Mimi Beardsley. I resisted mightily. I had caught a glimpse of her on the morning chat shows while getting my kids dressed for school. “Give me a break,” I muttered to myself. Haven’t we heard enough about JFK screwing every women within a 50 mile radius of the White House (or Hollywood for that matter)?
I’ve seen first hand the ravaging of a human life at the hands of priest who raped a small boy (“The First To Come Forward“), I’ve gone and interviewed the treatment team for teenage prostitutes as well as a Homeland Security Agent trying to bust the men behind sex trafficking.
I finally emailed Joanna back declining the story as off topic for GMP. “Why would a woman write a book about an affair some 50 years after the fact with a long dead President other than to make money? She’s this old lady talking about what happened when she was a teenager. Scottie, beam me up!”
Then I read Liesl Schillinger’s piece in the New York Times.
FRESH out of Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., a well-brought-up young woman named Mimi Beardsley (now Alford) went to work, in 1962, as an intern in President Kennedy’s press office.
Thanks to Ms. Alford’s memoir — which was released last week and well publicized — everyone now knows that, on the fourth day of her internship, after a trusted aide and go-between, David Powers, plied the 19-year-old intern with daiquiris, the president gave her a private tour of the White House residence and then took her virginity on the first lady’s bed. (Mrs. Kennedy, conveniently, was away.) They embarked on an affair that lasted 18 months, until Nov. 15, 1963, when she met the president at the Carlyle in Manhattan, two months before her marriage. He gave her a gift she used to buy a tasteful gray suit from Bloomingdale’s as a wedding present. The following Friday, he was assassinated in Dallas. Ms. Alford never made her full story public until last week, when her book came out.
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“God, I love ‘Mad Men,’ ” Ms. Alford told me. “All of it is exactly what was going on.” When she arrived at the White House as a teenager, she said, she “wanted to be Peggy” — an ambitious “Mad Men” character. But the part she ended up playing was closer the frustrated wife of the lead character, Don Draper. “I think I probably relate most to Betty Draper,” she admits.
Keeping a secret like that, she explained, “silences a piece of you inside.” For decades, she said, she felt disconnected not only from other people, but from herself. Leaning forward in her tailored dark dress and ladylike pearl earrings, Ms. Alford told me she applauded the societal changes that have given young women more sexual freedom.
In November 1963, during the weekend of Kennedy’s death, Ms. Alford was with her fiancé planning their January wedding. Overcome with grief, she confessed to him the affair she had hidden throughout their courtship. He ordered her never to speak of Kennedy again. To keep the peace, she pawned the diamond pins the dead president had given her; gave away her gray suit and ripped up the photo he had signed for her into hundreds of tiny pieces, depositing handfuls of the shreds in different corner trash cans, to disperse the evidence.
And yet, she says she does not regret the affair.
And yet, she says she does not regret the affair.
Wow.
Speechless quite frankly.
So WTF are we talking about then? The most powerful man in the world took advantage of an innocent teenage girl. She suffered for nearly half a century under the shroud of silence only to finally come clean and tell us all the graphic details of being pushed down onto the first lady’s bed.
But she doesn’t regret the affair? I am completely confused. If the argument here is abuse, of wrong-doing, of a man using his power to exploit, I am very willing to listen and even see the value of discussing what on the surface sounded to me like a woman looking to make a buck off her brush with fame. But if she is saying that despite all that she really enjoyed having her virginity taken by the adulterous President, that it was in fact one hell of a good time, and sexy the way Mad Men is superficially sexy, well I just have nothing more to say.
Sometimes when it comes to these gender conversations it does seem to me we get to the critical juncture and there is a profound double standard (I hate Don Draper for what he does to women but god is he sexy!).
Ms. Alford reminds me of several women I know–beautiful, smart, funny women–who married much older and very wealthy men who told them up front that they were willing to have kids but at their age they wouldn’t be able to get down on the floor and wrestle with them. Fast forward ten years and these moms complain, from the comfort of their massive homes, how their husbands refuse to take any responsibility for raising the kids. You married the guy for his money and he told you he was too old to raise kids. He’s now pushing 70 what the hell did you expect? I want to scream. But I hold my tongue. Male power and money are a great aphrodisiac which women love to hate, but for some women the much older man of significance in the world is apparently attractive no matter what the consequence to them and others.
I think the intern AND JFK are pigs. Any respect I may have had for the man previously is now gone. I hadn’t ever heard this story before. I believe the so-called sexcapades of public officials are a demonstration of their character and clearly JFK was morally bankrupt. Put him in the pig sty next to Schwartzenegger, Weiner, Gingrich, Clinton, Edwards…good lord this list is long. Depressing.
A lot of people are focused on the intern being 19 and a virgin…and some argue that she wasn’t drunk enough to not know what she was doing; but the fact still lies in JFK committing, not just adultery, but a “crime” because as a President he is held to higher standards than regular folks. Contractually, Presidents aren’t supposed to f*ck around with their staff, otherwise if you wish to, then take up a different career. It doesn’t matter if an Intern is 19, or a virgin, or 70 years old…if she had walked into his office with her b-day… Read more »
Victim, groupie. I’d be confused too.
Humans sure are complicated animals aren’t they?
“And yet, she says she does not regret the affair.”
I’m assuming that she loved her husband. So she doesn’t regret cheating on her husband for 18 months. What kind of a person does not regret hurting a person they loved? This person is so devoid of morals or human empathy, why is this even an issue?
Why should she regret the affair with then U.S. President? She should be feeling proud of it. How can a woman love a person who after knowing that his fiancee was doing some other man still marry her. Her husband asked her not to talk about it again, but she is talking about her glorious moments after fifty years.
What’s remarkable to me about all these revelations about JFK’s sex life is how little impact they have on his public image. If anything, they make him seem even larger than life. The mythology of “Camelot” is so Teflon-coated that these things just bounce right off. Whether or not he was a faithful husband, JFK was not the President people think he was. His Presidency was not a very successful one, his White House was very disorganized, and aside from a few foreign policy successes, it was mostly lurching from crisis to crisis. He wasn’t a horrible President by any… Read more »
This statement seems silly: it’s an example of male privilege at it’s absolute worst MALE privilege? So any man can have his way with any woman now can he? I must have missed that. Absurd. It’s an example of President of the United States privilege. And the real privilege is he didn’t have to rape her. Although he could have got away with that too, no doubt. But it’s certainly not presidential privilege at it’s absolute worst. Presidents regularly have thousands of people killed, if not millions most of them. That particular president played the odds and risked killing off… Read more »
Could be she missed her fiftieth class reunion and didn’t have a chance to ‘splain it all then.
Other problem with crap like this is somebody getting the goods on the guy and blackmailing him. Presumably the prez could have, say, J. Edgar Hoover figure out a way to off the blackmailer…. Wait….
It’s not illegal to get someone the age of consent drunk; but that doesn’t make it right either, if motives are less than honest. (Although drunk is never a good state to be in, in the first place). So regardless of the President’s title or position, any ordinary man who gets a woman drunk or drugged, in order to seduce, or rape her — is in the wrong. A good man would make sure there is mutual consent to sex, and you have to be alert and in the right frame of mind to give consent; you can’t give consent… Read more »
you can’t give consent if you’re in a drunken stupor and unresponsive. Neither description describes the state that she described herself being in at the time. She describes being poured and handed “a daiquiri” (by an assistant) some time before being invited upstairs by Kennedy, but not how much she drank or if she felt intoxicated. I wouldn’t trust her to have perfect recall, but nothing about the memory she describes involves any diminished capacity to understand or react to what was happening. It’s being spun into a story of “getting her drunk to seduce her”, but that doesn’t jibe… Read more »
“They embarked on an affair that lasted 18 months, until Nov. 15, 1963, when she met the president at the Carlyle in Manhattan, two months before her marriage. He gave her a gift she used to buy a tasteful gray suit from Bloomingdale’s as a wedding present. “
This posted before I was able to finish…. so you’re saying the fiance was only a fiance for two months until her marriage? Because two months prior to her marriage to him, she was still f*cking around with the JFK… if I’m interpreting the quote above correctly. In any case she cheated on her boyfriend/fiance. “I’ve heard many conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, but this is the first time I’ve heard the theory that it was karma for fucking around on his wife. If that’s true, there’s an awful lot of men and women walking around unpunished who should… Read more »
so you’re saying the fiance was only a fiance for two months until her marriage? No, I was saying I hadn’t seen any quote or reference about how the timing of her engagement lined up with the timing of the affair. Thanks for providing that. 🙂 I have no idea how long the engagement lasted, but I have no problem conceding that two months would be on the short side, which would make her fiancé a cheating victim, too. (Unless they had an open relationship, but his reaction upon finding out about the affair seems to rule that out.) This… Read more »
IIRC part of the story, JFK suggested she give one of his aides a blow job. She jumped right to it. Either there is huge mana in the presidency, from the view of a nineteen year old girl, or she was a lot less reluctant than we presume today. “getting the story out” implies–possibly accidentally–having thought better of it, whatever it was. Not necessarily.
Perhaps her 4101k tanked. Lot of that going around.
She was a 19yo adult and knew what she was doing, the same way that Monica knew what she was doing. They were both flattered that an alpha man would even notice them and this gave them the gina tingles.
“Okay, getting a 19 year-old virgin drunk and then forcing her to have sex in the White House just makes me want to puke”
Having a drink means she was drunk? She was an adult female. Was she drunk the 100 other times she had sex with JFK? Nobody forced her either.
It is possible she was so drunk she couldn’t say ‘no’ and still didn’t regret it afterward… I guess. Maybe she was only tipsy. Sometimes I get the sense that women of that era… really seemed to be passive in their morals. Was it socialized passivity that did it? “Sometimes when it comes to these gender conversations it does seem to me we get to the critical juncture and there is a profound double standard (I hate Don Draper for what he does to women but god is he sexy!).” Yes. This bothers me too. Personally I just hate Don… Read more »
“Okay, getting a 19 year-old virgin drunk and then forcing her to have sex in the White House just makes me want to puke.”
Forcing? Sorry Tom but you just made me puke.
“an example of male privilege at it’s absolute worst”
And again. Sickening.
Tom,
Is your point of contention the disclosure mechanics, or all of the chaff and conclusions being sifted-out of the book?
The things I’ve heard were pretty shocking and disturbing. Not sure if a 50 year old story is much fun to discuss.
However, this statement is pretty ridiculous:
“it’s an example of male privilege at it’s absolute worst.”
If it were male privilege, why can’t every man do what the President of the United States was able to do?
“Male privilege” does not exist. No such thing. Very few men are a President of the United States or a Fortune 500 CEO.
I’ll keep pointing this out as long as people use the term.
God, I’m asking for trouble, but…
Eric, you’re confusing “Male Privilege” for “Presidential Privilege”… I’m not sure which Tom intended to refer to, but both privileges DO exist.
Privilege is an ever-changing, dynamic set of assumptions that society (in general) makes about a person based upon any particular feature, which affords them certain advantages.
Tell me how that doesn’t exist.
Also, if you want to say that male privilege doesn’t exist, I hope you also believe that female privilege doesn’t exist.
@joanna: Please tell me then what these so called Male Priv are , based on your definition.
Not from your list, but from “THE LIST” <–posted on the net.
"When I look at the CEO of a major corporation or president of the US, I am more likely see a person of my gender".
To a male that is of course, this is a fact. BUT, by your definition, it isn't a priv. Why, because to most men there isn't an advantage to this. The fact that CEOs are mostly men doesn't afford most men an advantage.
To a male that is of course, this is a fact. BUT, by your definition, it isn’t a priv. Why, because to most men there isn’t an advantage to this. The fact that CEOs are mostly men doesn’t afford most men an advantage.
I can agree with that. With the exception of maybe “As a male I’m more likely to become a CEO.” the observation that most CEOs are men means nothing. Hell it could work against them just as well as work for them.
That being said I can certainly agree that male privilege does exist in some places/cases.
Like when?
Like Saidi Arabia, not places such as the United States of America.
Rich and/or well positioned people have privilege, regardless of gender. Hence, speaking of the west (not places such as the Middle East), there is no such thing as privilege that is enjoyed by all males, which gives them advantages in life over all females. The problem with your “male privilege” term is that it’s a ridiculously inaccurate, broad-brush phrase most often used to castigate males for being born male. Please explain how the son of the undocumented Mexican immigrant fruit picker enjoys “male privilege” over the daughter of my white female co-workers, who all earn well into the six figures? … Read more »
We learn a couple of things, here. Since she does not now regret the affair, it’s likely that trying to tell her then that it’s a bad idea wouldn’t get you very far. Okay. But let’s apply that to situations we’re likely to encounter in our own lives. I tried. You ever get the feeling you’re shooting BBs at a bowling ball? The presumption is that this youngster would have the same view we have, if only somebody had explained it to her. Wrongo. Next. The PUA folks talking about rankings on the SMP, male and female, alpha and beta… Read more »