A World Not Quite Post-Kennedy

Think what a monster he might have been--what a corrupt, misshapen brat might have emerged from these 35 years of glamour, political power, tragedy, money, fame and relentless, drooling hype. A grotesque egotist might have been the best-case scenario.

Instead, the John Kennedy Jr. who walks across the Manhattan restaurant (not one head rising in recognition) turns out to be modest, well informed in an insider's way, well read over an unusual range of subjects, focused, funny and 20 or 30 I.Q. points brighter than the tabloids think he is. This night some months ago, we met to discuss work that Kennedy had been doing for years, without publicity: helping New York City health-care workers who do the most menial work get more education and thereby build careers in the field.

It's possible, of course, that John Kennedy Jr. suffers a little from Woody Allen disease (a coquettish tendency to place oneself in optimum paparazzi zones and then act surprised when the flash goes off). Kennedy also has something of his mother's gift for the sly Cheshire's disappearance before your eyes. Some primitives have believed that every photograph taken of a man peels off a layer of his soul. If that were so, nothing would be left of John Kennedy Jr. without his mother's trick of metaphysically absenting herself from the frame--a way of ghost dancing with both gawkers and the jackals of the press.