Who am I? It was the existential question John Kennedy had been asking ever since the death of his mother. Never before had he found himself in such a serious search for identity, but now it was his most driving purpose. He sensed that marrying Carolyn would be a major puzzle piece in completing the picture of his life, but he knew there had to be more. John Perry Barlow recalled, “He once told me, ‘You know, this is going to sound incredibly arrogant, but it would be a cakewalk for me to be a great man. I’m completely set up. Everyone expects me to be a great man. I even have a lot of the skills and tools. The thing is, I’ve been reading the biographies of great men, and it seems like all of them, my father included, were shitheads when they got home. Even Gandhi beat his wife. What I think would be a much more interesting and challenging ambition for me would be to set out to become a good man—to define what that is, and become that. Not many people would know, but I would have the satisfaction of knowing.’”
As a Kennedy, of course, an integral part of being “a good man” had to do with giving back and being of service. The question by the summer of 1995 was: Just how would he achieve that goal?
While it’s difficult to imagine that a weekend seminar about magazine publishing that his sister, Caroline, had suggested he take at the New School would have such an impact on him, it really did change John’s life. He had always been fascinated with media and the way it had covered his family. Whether intrusive or from a distance, he realized that the press had been shaping public opinion about the Kennedys for decades. A student of political literature, he was well-read, even if he’d had so much trouble in school. He kept his library stocked with political biographies and other books of history, including many about his father, the President.
When John told Carolyn he was interested in starting a political magazine, she encouraged him in the idea. She even wanted to be a part of it with him, and he appreciated her support. John told her that a friend he’d known for more than ten years, Michael Berman, whose background was in marketing and public relations, had an idea for a magazine that would merge politics with personality. It would not be ideological but would instead find an intersection between government and pop culture. He felt that one reason people were so misinformed about politics was because they were bored by it. Carolyn was intrigued, as were many others in John’s life when he explained the idea.
Some were surprised, though, given the Kennedys’ sometimes acrimonious relationship with the press. In 1998, at a publication party for Max Kennedy’s Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy, a book of quotes his father had loved and an examination of the way RFK had been influenced by the powerful thinkers he so admired, the author said, “I think there’s a perception that we Kennedys are opposed to the public having a fuller understanding of who we are, of what makes us tick,” Max, who was three and a half when his father was killed, added, “But it’s not true. Yes, we have been opposed to much of what’s been written about us, mostly because of the inaccuracies or because it digs too deep into private thoughts. But we Kennedys understand history and the importance of history. In fact, my mother has been my greatest encourager. She’s the one who urged me to read my father’s journals, to go through his notes and all of the index cards he had assembled during his life with quotes and other thoughts that had meant so much to him. My uncle Teddy had written a book about his brother called Words Jack Loved, and it was always my idea to do sort of the same thing for my father. But it was my mother who pushed the idea along, who felt it important.”
John, as a magazine publisher, would certainly not shy away from being provocative. His mother, Jackie, had taken the same approach when she worked as a book editor at Doubleday. Although she was determined to keep her own life private, she understood the value of dissecting the private lives of public people to learn more about them and, maybe, in the process, more about ourselves. She once said, “I love people in the public eye who I sense have an inner life that is somewhat…” She paused. Then, with a conspiratorial look, said, “Secretive. I guess you could say I love people who have secrets,” she added, laughing. “Isn’t that just awful? But, really, what would be the point of writing about a celebrity if you weren’t going to reveal his or her secrets?”
Such analysis of public figures had its place, though, where Jackie was concerned. If it was done with care and objectivity and the result of in-depth research, she respected it. However, if it was just done for purposes of titillation, she had no time for it and, in a sense, this was something she and Carolyn Bessette had in common. “At first I liked it,” Jackie once told John Perry Barlow of being famous, “but then it made me feel like prey. Gradually, I realized that all this stuff in the press really wasn’t about me. It was actually a comic strip that had a character in it that looked like me and did some of the things I did but wasn’t me. It was something they were making up. And I read it quite avidly for a while, and then I realized it was making me sick, so I stopped.”
In 1994, John said, “As I see it, even the trashiest tabloid writer has a responsibility that he clearly does not take seriously—shaping the way people think of others, and by extension, the way they perceive themselves. It’s all tied together. When it’s about politics, the way the media reports and distorts or otherwise makes decisions about the way to ultimately present information to the masses can, obviously, have huge ramifications. This is a subject that has long interested me.”
For the next few months, Kennedy and Berman went about the complex business of trying to raise funds for their enterprise, which they’d come to believe would cost in excess of $30 million. John wanted to call the magazine George (an homage to George Washington). In a short time, enough advertising space was purchased to fill eight issues, and that was long before the first one was even published. Kennedy and Berman spent the next few months staffing the magazine’s Broadway office space, starting with its creative director, Matt Berman (no relation to Michael), and its senior editor, Richard Blow (now Bradley; he uses his mother’s maiden name).
In September 1995, John officially announced the publication of George at a much-touted press conference in Manhattan’s Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street, which stands on the site where America’s first President, George Washington, was inaugurated. He then displayed the cover of the first issue of George, featuring Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington (it would be the October/November issue).
Later, John stood beaming with Carolyn as the couple posed for pictures. He was wearing a sharp, well-tailored blue suit, which she had picked out especially for the occasion, and a white pocket square, which he always wore for luck. “It felt like a victory not just for John, but for Carolyn,” said Richard Bradley. “She was excited about John, about his drive and determination and the fact that he’d found something that gave him purpose. She wanted to be with him the whole way. She told me she had a sense that this was the first of a series of magazines John might publish, and she had an idea about a style magazine for men, something like Esquire but more mainstream.
“When you were with them, you felt John had really put forth a new power couple in the family, and there had been a lot of them, like Jack and Jackie, Bobby and Ethel, Sarge and Eunice. John had always had a thing about the Kennedy power couples of the past, and this was how he wanted to view himself and Carolyn. So, I guess one could say that Carolyn was becoming the woman behind the man, and John was happy and proud about it. I think his mom would have been as well.”