end of a long dirt road

Sometimes when I read about presidents or other public people -- people who are known -- I feel like some of the authors treat the subjects as if they were paper dolls:  dressing them in different outfits, both literally and figuratively.  Selecting a story-line and then taking dates, facts, events, quotes, etc., and "shoe-horning" them into the pre-selected story-line.

JFK was a great guy.
JFK was a bad guy.
Jackie Kennedy was good.
Jackie Kennedy was bad.
Princess Diana was beautiful and nice.
Princess Diana was beautiful but not smart.

And there's a market for both kinds of books -- ones that compliment the subject, and ones that tear the person down.

Some of what I read in Mrs. Kennedy, I wonder -- how could the author know this?
"Tonight, in Franklin Roosevelt Jr.'s company, Jackie was wide-eyed, breathy, and flirtatious."  O-kay.

And when she writes that Pres. & Mrs. Kennedy were excellent "actors" -- that description would not "play" as a compliment to all audiences, though the author clearly means it that way.

Some passages, for some reason, seemed a little lonely and sad, or dark, though I can't say why....

"It was nearly 5 P.M. when the Caroline landed.  Accompanied by Secret Service men, Jackie descended the steps of the plane, her over-sized dark glasses in place, as press and another crowd of the curious watched her."

"Jackie plied her guests with Dom Pérignon champagne in the hope that they would be tipsy by dinnertime."

"Jackie hoped to stuff her guests with caviar so that by dinnertime they would be too full to care about the execrable White House food."

(She's "stuffing" the guests with caviar!  She's getting them drunk!)
I don't know about that.
And -- how bad could the food be at the White House?  For heaven's sake, are these people snobs, or what?
..."the cold, cavernous Family Dining Room...."
"...the finicky Alsop" --
"There had been no time to bring the White House food and décor up to Jackie's standards, let alone those of the finicky Alsop...."

And that finicky Alsop -- "Jackie knew that if all did not go well, Alsop, devoted though he was to the new president, would be only too happy to trumpet the news in the morning."
...one of those "With friends like that, you don't need enemies" sort of situations.
Honestly.

I liked the part where it said, "Characteristically, Jackie's strongest statement was a purely visual one."

=======================
This part in Chapter 13, toward the end of the book, registered in my consciousness:
------------ [excerpt]  Like her mother-in-law, Jackie craved solitude.  That summer of 1963, rather than stay in the Kennedy compound, she and Jack had rented an isolated house called Brambletyde on Squaw Island.  Jackie was the one who had first been drawn to the big, gray-shingled house set at the end of a long dirt road on the tip of a peninsula, with only the beach and water beyond.  When she brought her husband out to see Brambletyde, he quickly fell in love with the romantic location, where one heard the perpetual lash of waves against rocks and the whip and snap of the American flag outside the master bedroom window.  They thought perhaps they would buy the house, but, unable to come to terms with the owner, they negotiated a rental instead.

It was to this isolated location that Jackie, almost seven months pregnant, went to await the birth of her baby.  She arrived tense and troubled.--------- [end excerpt]
See, they describe this place, and the Kennedys love it, apparently, whereas to me it doesn't sound so good.  I know I'm supposed to understand how terrific it is, but -- what if there's a storm and the ocean waves get big and come into the house?  ("I hate it when that happens....")  And that flag outside the window.  Whip, snap.  Whip, snap.  Whip, snap.  Whip, snap. 
Oh.
Good.
(Once I was sick in a motel room and there was a noisy flag outside the window and some kind of metal clanging that went with it -- nonononononono...Different strokes for different folks....)

Right in the chapter before, in June, 1963, President Kennedy gives the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.  My dad used to talk about that speech, and refer to it:  it was the symbolism of saying "I too am a Berliner!" meaning we are all people together, and we must get along for the sake of world peace.
"I am one of you."
And saying it in German -- jumping over to their language -- was significant, as well.  Stories like that were in my awareness along with crayons, cat, sand-box, Barbie and Midge and Skipper, Schwinn bicycle....("Ich bin ein bike-owner!")

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{excerpts, Mrs. Kennedy, by Barbara Leaming.
2001.  Simon & Schuster.}

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