Work Twice As Hard
That’s Caroline’s promise, if “selected.”
“Anybody who knows me knows I haven’t really lived that way. And I think that in my family, I come into this thinking I have to work twice as hard as anybody else. Nobody’s entitled to anything, certainly not me.”
My first thought was, twice as hard as other Kennedys? They do work hard, when they work. Not necessarily to good ends. Twice as hard as other hack pols? (Whose greatest effort generally goes into fundraising, not exactly a problem for her. More time for troublemaking*) Or twice as hard as the rest of us peasants? Don’t be ridiculous. What I liked best about the AP interview was that it was conducted at a common eatery, where Caroline dined upon a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich, with a big pile of fries in front of her, much as any Jerry Springer viewer might. Deliciously fattening symbolism, the wedding of tabloidism and lefty political hackery. Anyway, here’s Howie Carr, cruelly:
Forget the Profiles in Courage award. For this interview yesterday Caroline Kennedy deserves the Profiles in Chutzpah Award.
See, JFK’s only surviving child wants Hillary Clinton’s seat in the U.S. Senate, although she has absolutely no qualifications for the position other than her last name, which by the way used to be Schlossberg until last summer.
Now all these dreadful, sweaty Albany and D.C. parvenus who actually had to run for political office are complaining about Ms. Kennedy’s ever-so-Kennedy-esque attempt to cut in line ahead of them. So Caroline grants - or should I say, grahhhhnts - an interview to the Associated Press, and she has the audacity to play the victim card. To get the Senate seat, she says, “I have to work twice as hard as anybody else.”
Huh? You’ve never worked a day in your life, honey. Your pampered-poodle existence makes Uncle Teddy look like a working-class hero. Poor Uncle Teddy is worth a mere $103.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Caroline’s gotta be good for at least three times that.
“I am an unconventional choice.”
No, Caroline, you are about as conventional as it gets. You’re operating under the oldest rule in the book, the golden rule. He (or she) who has the gold, rules.
“If I were to be selected,” she says, and that last word is the key one - selected. Not elected, but selected. “I understand that public servants have to be accessible.”
Wow. She pledges to be “accessible.” Her income taxes won’t be - that’s one pledge we can be sure she’ll never go back on - but she will be “accessible.”
You know just how preposterous this whole idea is by the convoluted paeans to her common touch that are being trotted out by the doddering sycophants of Camelot.
Remember Al Hunt, formerly of The Wall Street Journal and CNN, now of Bloomberg, as in Mayor Bloomberg, who is playing Cardinal Richelieu to her dauphin. Knowing quite well on which side his bread is buttered, Hunt wrote that Caroline is indeed One of Us - why, outside her mansion on Park Avenue, she has been known to hail her own cab! Was it raining too, Al?
She’ll have to work twice as hard, will she? You know how, when your basement or garage starts overflowing with junk, you have a yard sale? Caroline Kennedy knows what that’s like, only she calls one of her garage sales a “Sotheby’s auction.” In 2005, she made $5.5 million, which was a drop from the 1996 auction where she took in $34.5 million, including $2.5 million for her mom’s engagement ring.
OK, it’s probably not fair to say the woman has never worked a day in her life. Here’s Wikipedia … not the most definitive source, I know, the sycophantic quality of this entry suggests it has been edited by someone with her best interests in mind:
Kennedy’s professional life has spanned law and politics as well as education and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her family’s legacy and authored several works on civil liberties ...
Somewhat ironic for someone who declines to submit to civil niceties such as a political compaign, prefering to be anointed.
Kennedy “considered becoming a photojournalist (her mother’s original career) but soon realized she could never make her living observing other people because they were too busy watching her.” She worked as a photographer’s assistant at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1977, she became an intern at the New York Daily News; Kennedy reportedly “sat on a bench alone for two hours the first day before other employees even said hello to her”, for according to Richard Licata, a former News reporter, “Everyone was too scared.”
Being a tabloid intern, that could be work. Depending on whether she was tortured by her betters or given the kid-glove treatment. Gotta admit its a pretty game move by a Kennedy, headfirst into the lion’s jaws. Love to know the backstory on that. Maybe the Times editors, to the extent to which they have any shame, lacked the stones to give her a sinecure.
Subsequently, she began work as a research assistant in the film and TV department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1980, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg …
Kennedy is an attorney, writer, editor and serves on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations.
From 2002 through 2004, Kennedy worked as director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the the New York City Department of Education. The three-day-a week job paid her a salary of $1 and had the goal of raising private money for the New York City public schools. In that capacity, she helped raise more than $65 million for the city’s public schools. She currently serves as one of two vice chairs of the board of directors of The Fund for Public Schools, a public-private partnership founded in 2002 to attract private funding for public schools in New York City. According to The Politico, her children attended “one of Manhattan’s most exclusive private schools.” She has also served on the board of trustees of Concord Academy, which she attended as a child.
Sounds like the woman knows public education all right, if she knows enough to keep the kids out of it.
Kennedy and other members of her family created the Profiles in Courage Award in 1989. The award is given to a public official or officials at the federal, state or local level whose actions best demonstrate the qualities of politically courageous leadership in the spirit of John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage. In addition, Kennedy is currently president of the Kennedy Library Foundation. She is also an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics, a living memorial to her father.
She is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C. bar associations. She is also a member of the boards of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and is an honorary chair of the American Ballet Theatre.
Kennedy has represented her family at the funeral services of former Presidents Ronald Reagan in 2004 and Gerald Ford in 2007, and at the funeral service of former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson in 2007. She also represented her family at the dedication of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas in November 2004.
Who says being part the monied ruling class isn’t work? Anyway, I support the ascension of Caroline Kennedy to public service of a sort befitting her station, especially now that it looks like Al Franken is headed to the United States Senate, too. I’m a tabloid newspaperman. It’s good for business.
* Here’s what she theoretically would work harder at:
Through a spokeswoman, Kennedy said that she supports legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, is pro-choice, is a strong supporter of gun control, and favors restoring the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired in 2004. She believes NAFTA should be looked at again, supports the federal bailout of American automakers, and says she “opposed the Iraq War from the beginning.”
Kennedy has stated that she believes that Jerusalem should be the undivided capital city of Israel. She has also stated that “Israel’s security decisions should be left to Israel.” With regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kennedy has stated that she “supports a two-state peace solution for Israel, so long as there is a true partner for peace in the Palestinians, and so long as Israel’s security is assured.”
Yeah, well, she wants to represent New York. Even a Kennedy has to acknowledge some political realities.
Topics: pols
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:13 am on Saturday, December 27, 2008
One Response to “Work Twice As Hard”
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December 27th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
Caroline Kennedy has certainly kept herself busy, but I defy anyone to describe one day where she spent the day trying to beat a deadline or meet a quota, with the telephones ringing off the hook, a boss and clients yelling at her, higher-ups pondering the elimination of her job, and then went home to do the laundry and make dinner. Common touch my rear end.