Is the Tragic Love of Bobby and Jackie a Hoax?
Recently we told you about a new book that claims Jackie Kennedy and brother-in-law Robert were engaged in a long-hidden affair. But just wait! There is an utter smackdown of the book and the man who wrote it.
Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story is not C. David Heymann's first book about the family and seems like perfect grist for the never ending nostalgia and scandal mill that the Kennedy clan has been running since the '60s. However, according to Andrew Goldman's piece in The Daily Beast it seems unlikely many of the stories in the book actually are actually true.
Heymann says one of the keystone accounts of the Bobby/Jackie love affair comes from now-deceased socialite Mary Harrington who claims she witnessed a steamy scene between the pair at the Kennedy's Palm Beach estate in 1964.
"[T]here," Heymann writes, "sunbathing in the grass next to the house, was Jacqueline Kennedy, wearing a black bikini bottom and no top. A door opened and out walked Bobby Kennedy in a white swimsuit. He approached Jackie and knelt by her side. ‘As they began to kiss,' said Harrington, ‘he placed one hand on her breast and the other inside her bikini bottom.'"
There is no way to check with Harrington about the accuracy of her story short of a Ouija board. Goldman says that it can't be true because the estate was walled at the time.
The only possible place where Harrington could have been staying was at a beach shack on the adjoining property to the south, which sat about 10 feet lower than the Kennedy residence. [Ned Monell, who was the Sotheby's listing agent for the property when the Kennedys sold the place in 1995] says that owing to the heavy vegetation planted around the house, she would have been unable to see anything on the lawn.
And that's just one story that Goldman rips apart. The pair have a history that goes back to 1999 when Goldman wrote a story in the Observer questioning the veracity of a story Heymann told the New York Post about the late John F. Kennedy Jr. In his Daily Beast, article Goldman accuses Heymann of routinely making up claims about the Kennedy clan for his own gain.
Goldman has apparently taken it upon himself to repeatedly swat down Haymann. It's like the journalism equivalent of when the ladies get in each other's faces on Rock of Love, and this is an oh-no-you-didn't of the highest order.