academics and some other free expression groups, the center for democracy and technology and other -- others began to convene conversations with companies about look, there needs to be some bottom-line principles here that we can all agree on for what companies will and will not do. when it comes to government requests for censorship and government demands for surveillance and handing over user information and so on. over the course of several years we hashed out a set of principles on free expression and privacy and google, yahoo! and microsoft signed on and they agree to be evaluated over the extent to which they actually adhere to these things in the first kind of evaluation is going to happen this year. so far, we are hoping that more

companies will join. it is still early days and very much proof of concept stage. >> host: rebecca mackinnon is a fellow with the new america foundation. people want to read your writings where should they go? >> guest: well i have a blog at our conversation.com. the latter r or you can just google my name, rebecca mackinnon and you will get my blog and my twitter feed and everything else. >> host: we have been talking with her on "the communicators." thank you. >> guest: thank you. ..

we don't have to have the microphone so i will repeat your answers. at the first question is going to be, if i can get my powerpoint going here. one moment. there we go. what is your first memory of a first lady? and i know some of you so i can call on you. if no one is brave enough to raise their hand. i know that you all have memories. tell me, yes. eleanor roosevelt when you were a teeny tiny child. barely, just an infant but somehow you remembered it all. what do you recall about her? >> impressive speaker. i have to recall looking back,

so to me she came across as rather dowdy, but i'm sure at the time she didn't. >> we will talk about that and certainly next week with marie beasley and we will be talking about her book on eleanor roosevelt and it was my pleasure to serve as a reviewer for that look so you will all be in for a real treat to hear arena and also to read her book. keep that thought about the impressive speaking abilities of eleanor roosevelt and of her fashions as we are going to compare and contrast jacqueline kennedy. other first ladies? your first impression, your first memory of a first lady? yes? >> i was born in washington shortly before the new deal. my mother was a reporter she covered eleanor roosevelt. i got invited to the white house. >> wonderful. we have someone here in the

audience who is based in washington at the start of the new deal. her mother covered eleanor roosevelt. this lady was invited to parties with eleanor roosevelt. this is a wonderful thing about speaking in washington d.c. because you have everyone here has a story, an interesting story. i must say i've given this talk very -- fairly frequently. i asked this very question, who is the first lady can remember and a nice lady and a friend raised her hand and said mrs. calvin coolidge. i said, we have a winner. no one has yet topped that for going back any farther. other more recent first ladies? anybody want to offer that is your first memory? yes. >> i remember thinking how goofy looking mamie ivan howser -- mamie eisenhower was. >> will talk about the looks, comparing and contrasting that mamie eisenhower was the immediate predecessor to jacqueline kennedy.

again if we can move on, tell me who is your favorite first lady? if you have already spoken you are not allowed to speak again. this is how the supreme court france's conferences. you are not allowed to give two opinions on a case that you are deciding until everyone has been allowed to give one. tell me who your favorite first lady is. yes. jackie kennedy. at a likely suspect since you are here today to hear about jackie kennedy and i'm told by dawn that this is one of the largest turnouts for the first three of these in a series on first ladies and i don't doubt it. jacqueline kennedy still has a tremendous hold on the american imagination. others that anyone like to volunteer? other first ladies you would consider your favorite? let's move on then. why is it that jacqueline kennedy maintains its hold on the american imagination? well, this is what my talk is going to be about today so all of these lights will illustrate why this is but here are just

some examples. i won't make you raise your hand to say if you watched qvc for home shopping purposes. i have course only see it when i'm racing through channel surfing. i would never stop but occasionally i do. i will tell you what catches my eye, when they have the check on kennedy jewelry for sale. when it be great if we could all afford the actual kind of precious stones and jewelry that she had? these of course were costume reproductions of jacqueline kennedy's jewelry but this is the kind of iconography that is available to all of us about jacqueline kennedy including anyway these heartbreaking photos and poignant photos of her with her beguiling children. just across the bottom here today these are some fairly recent books about jacqueline kennedy. there is hardly a year goes by that there are not several new books out on jacqueline kennedy and the most resent our two they same time about the times that she spent after her marriage to

aristotle onassis serving in new york as an editor, as a book editor and they are referencing jackie's books, the books that jacqueline kennedy edited so we get a sense of what she was like in that latter third of her life as she was a senior editor in new york city. now let's talk about why she again has such an impact on our imagination and 50 years. we are celebrating and commemorating 50 years of camelot of a kennedy administration starting this past january, the 50th anniversary of the cold snowy day here in washington d.c. when president kennedy was not rated as the 35th president of the united states and i would like you to take a look at this definition. this is a political science definition of political symbolism and i think indeed this photograph here is one of the symbols of mrs. kennedy. you mentioned eleanor roosevelt. you mention mamie eisenhower. how about bess truman? let's stop and think of those

three immediate predecessors to jacqueline kennedy. those ladies when they left office were all in their 60s. jacqueline kennedy was 31 when she came to the white house to be first lady. .. >> to see a first lady in riding clothes and to be as athletic as she, to be up on horse back in

itself was just different certainly from again the three predecessors. this horse was named sadar given to her by the president of pakistan when she made a trip there in 1962, a semiofficial trip. some of you might recall to pakistan and india in 1961. she was a huge hit there. she loved this horse, and many of the photographs you see of her from that time on during her time in the white house and out on her farm that she rented, and then built a farmhouse right at the end of the presidency, so oftentimes when she's riding, she's riding this horse, the pakistani president's gift to her. she had thrown for him and amazing state dinner in the springtime and early summer of 1961 at mt. vernon. in fact, she had everybody meet and catch a boat to go down the potamic river, take an evening

cruise, arrive at m. vernon and there were beautiful tents and marquees set up at mt. vernon with a lovely dinner and music for the president of pakistan and all those invited to the state dinner. it still sets the upper bar for amazing state dinners. this political symbolism, i want to say one thing about, note how it says it taps into emotional and psychological feelings. if she's in our consciousness, that's why. she tapped into our emotions. if people say, oh all that glitters is not gold. camelot there were things not so good, but that's the definition of a political symbol. it may not all be true, but taps ideas that people want to believe in as true, and certainly many americans want the to believe the legend and even the mythology of camelot.

how did they have an impact on her husband's presidency? this photo comes from the summer of 1962. she's with her husband in mexico on a state visit. notice who is in the front here, all right? here's president kennedy standing to the back. president kennedy was known not to have a facility or a gift for foreign languages. his boston accent made his english a foreign language for those of us in kentucky. [laughter] i was taught by nones in a catholic grade school from brother or sisterren, so i was -- brother orbrother orboston, so i was able to tap into that. look at how ms. kennedy is dressed. some say preaches first ladies to her, i would describe them as being matronly in their

appearance with old-fashioned suits and dresses. look at mrs. kennedy. it was not that common for women to wear sleeveless attire to a formal event, and now we take that for granted. mrs. obama brought the sleeveless dress back into vogue. note the color, a vibrant bright pink rather than a somber suit or a dark somber dress and full sleeves or a little dotty hat. i say she can wear this hat to the kentucky derby and be right in style. this gives her husband another boost of symbolism of youth and fashion. we also know that one of the other elements she's quite famous for and remembered for is restoring the white house. when i was doing my research for this book, i called the curator of the white house. this would have been in the late 1990s, and i told her i was writing a book, and i was playly

interested in the restoration of the white house, and betty moneyson was her name, and she said did you know restoring the white house is so associated with the name and memory of mrs. kennedy, that americans think that no one ever touched the white house since she left in 1963, and yet we know that everyone who moves into a new apartment or condo or house does some redecorating, so most first ladies have done some decorating. she undertook this project to restore completely the white house, take it from what she called a shabby 1950 faux colonial look, to a proper appropriate look for the age in which it was built and initially lived in, so she also established commissions and committees about the arts, antiques, about paintings in the white house, and she made sure that everything that was there as best as they coupled

determine, -- could determine, they were all authentic, paintings and antiques. this is a sad day in her life. this is the red room, and the reason i show this is because this is the first room she completed in the restoration, but this was the day of her husband's funeral and insisted she met those coming from afar. she stood with her brother-in-law, senator ed war kennedy to her right and greeted everyone who paid their republics to her husband. on a more glittery note, we remember her for her state entertaining. for the short amount of time she was in the white house, only a little over 1,000 days, they threw 16 state dinners. in the first term, first four years of the w bush term, they

had, i believe, two. mind you, 9/11 happened during that time. there were security issues, but the bush's, the second bush's from texas were not as interested in that, not as interested in state entertainment and bringing people from abroad and intertraining them at the white house. the kennedys loved that lifestyle. they both came, you know, from the northeast, had ties to new york city, president kennedy had ties to hollywood going back to his father's day there, the hollywood mogul in the 1920s, so they loved that glitter and that panosh of entertainment, but she also loved the arts. she would use each and every state entertainment occasion to bring artists to the white house. she brought play wrights and singers, opera singers, orchestras. she would have plays that would be done at the white house. this also then reminded her that there was no proper national

stage for the arts in washington, d.c., and you know eventually what that leads to. this particular photograph, and you might be able to see just behind, pull it up here, go back, just behind her, go forward, you'll see the mono o lisa. it's kind of dark, but i think that's a metaphor of mrs. ken singers. she's a bit mysterious to us today because she had a tight hold on her privacy. look at other first ladies sense. almost all of them have written memoir. she never wrote one. think of hillary clinton's memoir telling the finding out about her husband's infidelities and said i wanted toe wring bill's neck. well, maybe on occasion she wanted to do the same to president kennedy, but if she did, she never wrote about it,

went on opera to tell about it, but kept these things in her heart. it adds to the mystique and ora. it was perfect for her to facilitate the painting from the french. it's the height of the cold war, we need fraps as an ally. france and the president of france at the time could be prickly, and it could be difficult to dole with them at times, but notice how mrs. kennedy is standing next to andre. if you can see her shoulder, this is how she approached men of power. she would tuck her shoulder up underneath theres and use that whispering voice she had and whisper to them. these men unloaded their hearts upon her and told her all the things she wanted to know whether they are matters of state or perm --

personal issues. he was the minister of culture in france and he adored her, and she adored him. she's standing next to him, not her husband or the vice president, and that was part of her power as well, not just during the cold war, but throughout her husband's presidency. now, we also give her credit for saving lafayette square. imagine standing at the white house facing out towards the park. what if we didn't have the beautiful town homes that are there now and completely restored including dolly madison's home, the town home where she lived after her husband's presidency and into her retirementment. imagine if we had high-rise concrete federal office buildings. this is the plan that had been put into motion in the 1950s because the federal government continued to proliferate, and president eisenhower and

president kennedy signed off on the plan to raise, to demolish all the town homes in the square and use that prime real estate to put up high rice office blocks for the federal bureaucracy. she got wind of that and went to her husband and said, please don't do that. look at these, and here she is with the architect. look at these beautiful town homes. they can be restored. she then called on john carl, a west coast architect whose particular interest was how to preserve history while adding modern architecture to it, so he suggested putting in low rise office buildings and making them of red brick, not bright gaudy concrete, but beautiful red colonial looking brick that would then go with the beautiful brick sidewalks and pavements throughout lafayette square. next time you're there or go by,

think of mrs. kennedy and how she saved that. in the process, she kicked off a movement of historic preservation in the united states. she one time said i sometimes worried the bomb will hit and obliterate us all here in washington, and it didn't, and she saved this beautiful spot for us. now, that's just in the united states. we have not talkedded about what she did abroad. we only mentioned her semiofficial trip by herself. she took her sister when she went in 1962 to india and pakistan, but even in this day and age, imagine what it took for her to pull off a trip to both pakistan and india. she did that with great aplum. her first trip abroad as first lady with her husband an official state visit was to paris. it was hat that time that president kennedy famously said lot me introduce myself. i'm the man who accompanied her to paris, and i have enjoyed

it. in other words, he, again, was a bit in the background because she was so beautiful, and she spoke perfect french. she spent her junior year abroad in paris, spoke fluent french, and here he looked charmed. he looked happy, and she's wearing a gown. she typically would try to wear american designers in america and others with european roots, and so he was her primary stylist here, but she thought when in paris, do as the persians and the french would do which is why she chose this gorgeous gown. you might be able to see she had embroidered flowers. this is what she wore to the state dinner at versailles. the next part of that gorpny, the second leg was more

important in terms of cold war politics. it was important enough to keep the president op our side, but she met in vienna when her husband went to the summit with krusechev. he thought i'm young, i'm bright, i'm dynamic, charismatic, and that's how i won the presidency. i will be able to charm to come mewist russian peasant with no problem. one problem, he didn't, and as the stories go, he savaged the president to the point where the president came out of the first summit meeting ash in face. he took the measure of the man. mrs. kennedy, on the other hand, is meeting at the same time with mrs. krusechev, and they get along just fine, and i'm not

saying that saved the world, but if you have personal diplomacy going on behind the scenes, that helps. here's another point i want to raise with you. if you can see, she's wearing a dark suit, but a lovely little hat she became famous for. picture this, you're a third world country as we called them in those days. you have not aligned with the soviets, the communists, or the united states, and you have to decide, am i going to cast with the united states or with the soviet union based on how their first ladies look? which one do you pick, all right? it sounds fee facetious, but there's something to it. they looked alive and stylish, the soviets did not. next she meets with him himself. this is not an official summit meeting where diplomacy is occurring, but meets him at the

state dinner in vienna, and look at the facial expressions on chairman's face. again, president kennedy in the background, here's mrs. kennedy in this lovely beaded gown, and apparently she said this when she began to dazzle her with statistics about how many missiles they have and how many cannons they were producing and how many tractors. she supposedly in her breathy voice said, oh, mr. chairman, don't bore me with statistics. he broke into this wide smile and looked like a russian schoolboy at the start of spring when the ice is melting. [laughter] she just melted him with her charm. other images, of course, were of her life as a mother. think how perfect this was at the height of the baby boom. remember the baby boom goes from babies born from 1946 to 1964.

caroline was born in 1957, john j.r. in 1960. mrs. kennedy is part and partial of the baby boom. this is why i'm convinced my mother having her own baby boom packed my two older brothers and me in our 1956 sheafy, drove us to kentucky to see senator john f. kennedy come through and give a speech, a campaign speech. my mother loved history and politics on a grand scale, but didn't like the rough and tumble of political rallies, did like to drive downtown, and she didn't like crowds, and yet, this family, senator kennedy, mrs. kennedy, caroline at that time so drew my mother, a catholic housewife from louisville, kentucky to see her new political hero. she said, don't you remember, we were there early in front of the

podium, and your brother shook hands with soon-to-be president kennedy. i said, mother, i try to remember, but i was four. i remember the balloons and confetti and one of her earrings dropped off and got stuck in a pile of confetti and we found it on the way out. somebody stepped on it, but she bent it back. i told my mother she turned me into a political science at the age of four. this is why women resinate with them. this photograph is taken in august of 1963, another sad time for the family. mrs. kennedy just lost her son patrick, born prematurely a week before and had died of a lung ailment. she lived two days, and she and the president was shattered, and so was carolyn who was six at the time. young john was too young to

understand, but what president kennedy did this weekend, again, the week after patrick died was come back from washington and bring all the family dogs as well as new puppies just to try to lighten up the spirit of the time, and so here they are sitting out on their porch, on their patio. now, obviously the media played a role in all of this. it was not just mrs. kennedy putting out symbols and images and no one paying attention. think of this. in 1952 when president eisenhower was elected president, 20% of american households had televisions. by 1960, when president kennedy is elected, 80% of american households have television. mind you, they were all black and white. remember those days? i tell that to my students, and we had two channels. students couldn't exrend such a thing. the kennedys were on television a lot, and mrs. kennedy and president kennedy were beautiful

on television, even more beautiful in the glossy life magazine covers. think about those. practically every week one or more of the kennedys, and this is just president mrs. kennedy. think about brothers and sisters and brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews always being portrayed. as pop culture icons, they both redplect the time in which they live and become a lens in which we view that time in which they lived, and since advocacy was come -- television was coming on the scene, this is a still from the famous tour that mrs. kennedy gave with charles collins from cbs on value type's day 1962. she took him through the white house, showed him the rooms she redecorated, without a script, she just went through. she was not reading from cards or anything. she had all of this in her brain. she had remembered all of the

antiques, all of the portraits, all of the painters, all of the furniture, every story she could tell. she won an emmy award for that show, and that show was recorded and sent around the world to the extent we got it behind the iron curtain, we did. president kennedy made a cameo appearance in the last 5 minutes to talk to charles and said this white house is a soim -- symbol of american history. when we first became a country 200 years ago, there was a czar in russia, and look how much we have grown beyond that. in other words, if you're the third world wondering which way to go, pick us. pick us, we have great history. we have great art. we have great symbolism and a great first lady. sadly, we know how the story ends. on november 22, 1963,

interestingly enough, mrs. kennedy volunteered to go with her husband to texas. it was a fundraiser trip as well as a trip to try to bring together the two warring factions of the texas democratic party. mrs. kennedy had not gone out on a domestic trip with her husband the entire presidency. she had gone abroad, but not on a domestic trip. like my mother, she didn't particularly like the rough and tumble of campaigning. she was too refined for that, and so she rarely volunteered to go on the trips. this is just the three months after she lost her baby. she and the president according to all accounts had grown closer because of that shared experience. mrs. kennedy though was so distraught and depressed in the fall of 1963, the president urged her to go abroad. she went on a greek cruise with her sister's boyfriend and she came back much more refreshed,

much happier, and volunteered to go to dallas with her husband, and she said many years later, for all of the horror she experienced, what a blessing that she could be there when the end came. just an hour after this, we know how this story ends. in those six horrifying seconds in which the shots rang out in the motorcade in dallas, mrs. kennedy lost her husband, her home, and her job. imagine what that must have been like for her, and yet, she was willing at the request of the new president, lyndon johnson to come into the cabin and stand next to him when he took the oath of office. those of you remember that day, i know have this image burned in your brain. mrs. kennedy refused to change clothes. she was wearing her famous razz

berry suit and the hat came off in the chaos, but she refused to take off her bloodstained suit because she said i wanted them to see what they did to my husband. i was seven at the time and i remember watching that, and i can remember that we gasped when she came off the plane and was still wearing that suit, but she refused to take it off. she then became the mourner in chief for the nation. she had a few moments of shock, again, given the horror she witnessed in dallas, but quickly, she got wits about her. she asked her husband's family, sergeant shriver and cabinet members to plan the funeral and asked it be based on abraham lincoln's funeral. she was thinking of symbolism and history even in her grief. coming down the steps of the capitol with caroline on one

hand and john on the her. her sister pat and peter behind the group there, and i can only find in the videos one moment in public where she began to cry softly, and it was when they arrived at the capitol with the case bearing her husband's casket and as it was carried up, the band struck up "hail to the chief," and with that famous preface to the song, she dropped her head to her chest and began to cry a bit softly. this is the next step that she takes in the image making process. one week after the assassination she's with her family for thanksgiving. she calls journalist teddy white who wrote the making of the president in 1960, and she asks him to come from new york where he lived to write a story about her husband to put into "life"

magazine that week. mr. white said we are ready to go to press with that. she said, i don't care. stop the presses. don't print it. i need to tell you this story. a nor'easter was developing. teddy white's mother was suffering a heart attack as he left. he got a chauffeur through a nor'easter, and rives there, and mrs. kennedy tells the story of what she witnessed in dallas a week before, and she spared no details. she had to get this off her chest, and then she said to him, i want my husband to be remembered as follows: he loved the musical camelot. he loved the sound track, and at night his back would be hurting, it would be cold, but we went

out, put on the hi-fi and said i know it's trivial, but i can't get it out of my mind. don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment known as come lot, and so she is the one who picks that metaphor who picks that word picture, that image to describe her husband in the brief presidency, and i maintain shining. just to remind us, i have the cast here, richard burton, robert goulet, and julia andrews. the funeral in washington, d.c. in november of 1963 was to ask at arlington just down from the

mansion where her husband was buried, that there be an eternal flame. she had that idea from the tomb of the unknown soldier in paris where she studied as a college student and that that would be such an appropriate metaphor going back to the address where he said the torch is passed to a any generation. you might remember they all lit this eternal flame and also then hired john karl again, her architect friend to design this very grave site. i'm sure you have seen it, and she asked she be buried there when she died in 1994 of limb foam ma. she didn't ask to be buried this greece or with her second husband, but asked to be buried with her husband, and these are

the two headstones, and then two of the chirp they lost, patrick, and another daughter she lost as a stillborn child in the 1950s. to help you put this into perspective in terms where does she fall when it comes to literature, about first ladies, you may have been here for the first two talks about first ladies and may come next week. this is what scholars think of first ladies in the modern era. we took eleanor roosevelt in a category by herself. eleanor roosevelt is unto herself, no one like her before or after. i maintain kennedy is a bridge first lady bridging the gap between the very traditional ladies of truman and maybe eisenhower, and then the most modern first ladies really

starting with johnson. all of them have had public policy with the exception of pat nixon, a pet public policy they worked on in their husband's administration. if i did i game that was name that policy for every first lady, i'm sure one or more of you could say i know what that first lady is famous for. now i ask you, though, what about laura bush and michelle obama? are they in the category of the sportive spouses model wives or in the second category of a presidential partner or spouse to their husband? i would say think about this as a semifinal point, and that is that i think laura bush had to be the un-hillary. hillary in the minds of the people went too far op her health care initiative so people said, wait a minute, she's not legislated, not accountable, if we don't like what she's doing,

we have no way of reaching her. hillary dialed back a notch and became more of the traditional first lady be being in favor of women's issues like child add volunteered advocacy. that suited laura's -- personality and the times. right now she's acting the more traditional first lady with a policy in terms of women's issue about diet and children and exercise and antiobesity and also has two young children to focus on too, so here's my last question for you. what about future first lady? what model will they use, and what about when we inevitably have the first first gentleman? a word about the next project writing about another kennedy woman, rose kennedy. i believe she started the entire process of kennedy imagery by

creating images herself of her children, her family, and son as president, and so i hope you look for this in the next couple years from norton publishing company. there's books available in the back about all the first ladies there whom you've heard about the society. i'd be happy to sign mine for you, and we have about 10 minutes or so if you have questions. please, please feel free to ask. who would like to throw out the first question? yes? >> did you touch upon how she handled when all of this was going on as far as scandals and stuff like that? >> yes, the question is did i touch upon the so-called scandals particular of her husband. is that touched upon in my book? of course. this is a book of scholarship. it's a book of history. it's a book of fact, and so one

can want ignore -- cannot ignore that. in fact, what i think she was trying to do with teddy white the week after the assassination is get out in front of those stories. now, there's a whole book called the dark side of camelot written by investigative reporter which came out in the late 1990s, and it's about this and if one wants chapter and verse of the infidelities of the president on the personal side and mistakes made in foreign policy, be my guest, knock yourself out, read it from cover to cover, and you will see that side, the dark side of camelot. i don't know if mrs. kennedy was taken into mind a week after the assassination how history would view her husband's policies, foreign or domestic, but people think she knew at least to some extent of his infidelities, and there's indication she did. i think she wanted to get ahead

of that by creating this legend if you will, so what i do because i'm focusing more on the images she's creating, i make the case that, again, symbols are not always true. they tap into ideas people want to believe in is true, and people wanted to believe in camelot. they wanted to believe in this shining golden age that was the kennedy administration and she, therefore, succeeded in getting out in front of the stories coming out about her husband's personal life and revisionist's history that continues to come out. in the 50th year we are remembers the kennedy administration and calling it camelot because we use that metaphor she created, i hear, of course, people give both sides of the administration, the good things they did and the mistakes they made, and about president

kennedy's issues and by and large there's an interest in the presidency and in her and you all are testament to that to come out today. yes? >> what do you know or think about the movie due out this week called the kennedy thrown out by the history channel because of kennedy's objective, but it's still -- >> yeah ring thank you for bringing that up. there's a movie coming out week, the third week in april. it will not be on the history channel because the history channel is committed to telling the truth, and to being as factual as possible, and there were some questions about the validity about some of the portrayals of the kennedys and the personal side because the dark side of camelot, even if only half of its true is pretty bad, but one must ask could all

of these negative things be true? what happened with the movie was ted sorrenson, the speech writer with whom i met to do an interview about mrs. rose kennedy, met with him in june and passed this past october sadly. ted, when i said -- he wanted to know what the title of the book was, and i said rose, mother of the kennedy image. he looked a little negative and said, i don't like that word image. to him, he was trying to portray the substance of the kennedy administration, both when he worked for senator kennedy, president kennedy, and all the years after, so he nevermented people to think there was no substance in the style or the image. i understand why he took issue with that, but he was leading the charge against the upcoming movie because he believed it was filled with inaccuracies. it's like anything in the media whether it's a television show,

a movie made for television, books be they a scholarship or journalistic quality, it's up to us to decide based on our own reading and understanding of the record how much is true as portrayed, but what we should say is this is not a golden portrayal of the kennedy administration. in other words, it contains negative as well as some of the positives. >> [inaudible] >> well, if i can find it on my new digital service from comcast. i was just saying i came up with my friend, and i said, oh, you know, that movie is coming up, and i saw the channel when i got the upgrading package, but it seemed to disappear. i'll be on the phone, nothing else i'll say i'm a scholar of the skean diplomacy and i'll watch it where people say have you viewed it and what did you think? i'm sensing i'll say the same thing about it as i say about the book dark side of camelot

that if even half the bad things are true, that's bad, but it's up to us how we want to bring the balance of our view of the kennedy administration, first to me, policy, foreign and domestic, and then second, the personal side. if we disqualify every president with a marital affair, we're down to a low number of men who qualify for the white house. i think there was another question, i think was there, back here? yes. >> a few more words about eleanor roosevelt. >> i will say, you'll have that chance next week. if you want to compare her to mrs. kennedy, let's do. >> no, i just commented on your statement about chirp in the white house. for the first two years of the roosevelt administration, there was two grandchildren in the white house. >> many grandchildren and there's wonderful photos of her

and fdr in the white house surrounded by i would say at least a dozen of them, and i should say to you i had the pleasure this past december of dining here in the hotel george with a colleague and i said, did you see that gentleman who came in? i said, you know, that looks like one of franklin ruse veal's grandchildren, and they said, how would you know what one of franklin's grandchildren looks like? i said i've seen this one on c-span two years ago, so my colleague was too embarrassed to go up to the man, i, of course, showing no shame, go up to the man who is having dinner. i said are you roosevelt's grandson? he said, yes, i am. he said, how do you know me? i said i saw you on c-span two years ago on the democratic committee trying to determine whether mrs. clip ton or barak obama would get which of the

delegates as they got towards and closer to the democratic convention, so they are around, and we can still see them today, but, indeed, franklin roosevelt had a number of young grandchildren in the white house which is wonderful, and i'm sure the american people loved seeing it. it's not quite the same as the first couple having young chirp. it's just something that is beguiling about that especially if there's two young beguiling children as there are now in the white house and as there were in the kennedy years. you may have heard because she was concerned about privacy, her own and her children, shu drew lines about when the children and how the children could be photographed, but when she left the white house as she did alone to go out to northern virginia or abroad without the president or her chirp sometimes, president kennedy would go to the press secretary and say, it's time to get pictures of the children. some of those most wonderfully

compelling photographs that we have after president kennedy in the oval office and the clapping and the children dancing around him on the carpet, those were taken when mrs. kennedy was away. i think we have time for one more question. yes, sir? >> can you talk about her understanding of her image and how that would play out during the onassis marriage? >> certainly. how that played out once she remarried. she did remarry in the fall of 1968. remember the timing of that for her and for our country. her brother-in-law bobby to whom she had grown so close in those intervening five years from when her own husband died and bobby who was a surrogate father to caroline and john was himself struck down by an asass sin in 1968 and she commented our country is just going crazy and

if they kill kennedys, my children might be next. she was obviously looking for safety and security which onassis represented by having his own island off the coast of greece to which he could take her and the children, not to mention his own yacht, and not to mention millions and millions of dollars because even though we think of the kennedys as being wealthy, and mrs. kennedy was left fairly well off by her husband's will, it was not necessarily enough to support her in the way she had grown accustomed, so she was obviously looking for some financial security too, but i think what you're probably driving at is she did take a hit. her immaiming took a hit for two reasons. one is that he was viewed as a rather unscrupulous businessman, and he didn't look like president kennedy. [laughter] if you put yourself out as the

queen of camelot and you marry a troll, i'm just saying people take that personally, and i can remember my mother and others saying how could she after she was married to that handsome president kennedy, how can she marry him? in his defense, i should say about ten years ago, maybe a little less, first writing this book, mrs. kennedy's sister appeared on larry king, that very scholarly show i must watch as a scholar. he asked her what was it that your sister saw in him? she said, well, i had been interested in mr. onassis and said you just have to understand he was to charismatic and the way he moved through a room or out in public, and she said he moved so smooth. there was something compelling to him in addition to money

apparently that both the sisters were drawn to. you are right to infer that mrs. kennedy's image did take a hit. she dropped in some of the polls where people were asked who is your most admired american woman. she tended to drop in those years, but she went back up after he died and she continued to life a lifestyle in new york as a rather quiet life working as a book editor, but also working for the historic preservation and grand central station. she worked for that. she went up in the polls towards the time that she died in 1994, well up in the top ten category of admired women. her image came back. oh, time for one more? one more, then. >> are you -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> i did not get a chance to ask, and i'm not certain she

commented on that on the show. my sense was that perhaps things were winding down with that romance and that mrs. kennedy took over where that had wound down, but honestly, i don't know the exact answer to your question, but it's an intrigues one to be sure. with that, thank you all so much for your attention today and for your wonderful questions. [applause] >> this book is part of the university press of kansas modern first lady series. visit kansaspress.ku.edu for more information. >> so i ended that way because i think that children's stories, your stories are so valuable, and i want to hear them. i want to listen to you and to what you need because that will make me a better person. you were powerful because when

your parents and the people who love you do good things, guess who they do it for? you. that makes you very powerful. you inspire us to greater heights, make us be better and wiser, so this book is about a couple of things. one is that we have to remember that we are connected to one another in this country, in this community, in this world, that we are connected to one another, and what happens far away matters to you or it should, and we should be able to feel love and to understand people who are different from us and who are very far away even, and another

thing i want you to remember is that you are what? powerful. yes, and that means that you can serve. you can begin thinking about how to make others feel better, how to make the words matter, your words matter. be careful with your words. how to make the world a little more kind, a little more gentle, be sweet in your interaction, and then also it's about thinking about those who came before us, people who have perhaps passed on, but please know that you are loved by them, that their love comes and finds you and that the things that you

give are not lost and are here with us still. anyway, i want to make room now for your questions and it's nice to see you. thank you all so much for coming. does anyone have any questions? does anybody have any questions? yes. >> like how -- why did you want to write the book? >> i wanted to write -- that's a very good question. i wanted to write the book because i lost my mommy when i was 25, and although i was a grown up, i still needed her, and i missed her, so i wanted --

when i became a mommy myself, to share with my daughters and the president's daughters, my nieces, some thoughts about who she was and what she was like because i knew she would have loved to meet them and to know them, and she would have given them so much, and made them feel so strong, and so that is wop of the reasons i bought the book -- bought the book, i wrote the book. [laughter] thank you. i also wrote the book because i'm a teacher, an educator, and one of the things that i want to happen is for us to think about the world from more than one point of view, so you see in the beginning who wrote the

illustration who is clever, so here, tell me, kids, this is the moon from the earth's point of view; right? now look at the back. has it changed? >> yes. >> what is it now? >> [inaudible] that's right. the idea is sometimes we need to flip it. we need to make sure that we see things from more than one point of view because we can't understand things in the world if we're only looking from one point of view. as a teacher, you know what i get my students to do sometimes? you guys know about some current events and things happening in the world. do you read the newspaper yet? ..