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An author deifies Jacqueline Kennedy

by Jeanne McDonald

On May 19, 1994, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, one of America’s most intriguing First Ladies, died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. This year, on the 10th anniversary of her passing, scores of articles and books are being published by those who knew her, and even by some who never knew her. One author who falls into the latter category, Tina Santi Flaherty, lived in the same apartment building as Jackie but never had a speaking acquaintance with her. In fact, the closest she ever came to the Kennedys was a brief meeting with John, Jr., in the lobby of the building as she returned from a walk in Central Park with her Labrador. “What’s it like to have a dog in a New York City apartment?” John asked. “It’s just fine,” the author answered. “Dogs just want to be wherever you are.”

That was the extent of the conversation, but Flaherty calls the incident “an endearing encounter.” This is only one of many stretches of reality that the author makes in her book, What Jackie Taught Us: Lessons from the Remarkable Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Perigee, $19.95). Even her choice of the soap opera star, Susan Lucci, to write the introduction seems part of the thin and celebratory facade Flaherty has established. Like the author, Lucci admits, “I didn’t know Jackie personally, yet I felt as though I did.”

Flaherty, described by Business Week as one of America’s top corporate women, cites a long list of sources at the back of her book, but most are secondary. Her previous publications, Talk Your Way to the Top and The Savvy Woman’s Success Bible, have been motivational books, and in a sense, so is What Jackie Has Taught Us, except that it reads like a long and repetitive introduction instead of an in-depth analysis.

One of the graver problems in this book is the constant reiteration of names, events, and anecdotes. Didn’t anybody at the publishing house notice the repetitions? Or since many publishers are financially stretched these days and now instruct authors to proof their own manuscripts, didn’t Flaherty herself notice them? For example, nearly every time the author mentions Jackie’s parents–sometimes even mere pages or paragraphs apart–they are re-introduced as “Black Jack Bouvier, Jackie’s father,” or “Janet Lee Auchincloss, Jackie’s mother,” as if sections of the manuscript were published separately rather than all of a piece. And that’s only the beginning: Jackie’s mother’s catalogue of what she considered her daughter’s “faults”—“she was not feminine... her hands and feet (size 10) were too big; her hair too frizzy, her shoulders too broad and her hips too wide” and her eyes set too far apart—is listed at least three times in the book. Her father’s dark complexion, his alcoholism and his womanizing are referred to at least six times or more, and Jack Kennedy’s womanizing is repeated to the point of exhaustion.

There are so many other examples of repetition that the reader begins to wonder if she has opened the book at a section she has already read once and maybe once again.

So what has Jackie taught us? Here’s where the stretch comes in. “Among the many lessons we can take from Jacqueline Kennedy’s life,” writes Flaherty, “is the necessity to believe passionately in what’s important to us... Jackie not only held on to her dreams, but she never looked to others to validate them... Jackie was always aware of what was important to her and what wasn’t. The greatness of Jacqueline Kennedy’s life is that she truly lived her beliefs until the end. And in doing so, she left the world a better place.”

None of these observations is rocket science, and you get the feeling that Flaherty had to dig deep for all these “teachings.” Take the “lighthouse look.” This was the brilliant stare Jackie leveled at people she was interested in, particularly men, and the author recommends that, to be noticed in a crowd, as Jackie was, we should learn from Jackie, who was following her father’s instructions: “To be noticed in a crowd, walk to the center of a room, put a dazzling smile on your face, and keep your chin up. Don’t let your eyes dart around the room. Never act as if you’re looking for someone; they should be looking for you.”

Flaherty ends her book by listing ways in which Jackie influenced her own personal life. One of the things the author claims she has already employed is the “lighthouse look.” Watch for that phenomenon Friday, May 28, from 7-8 p.m., when Flaherty will be signing and talking about her book at Borders Bookstore on Morrell Road.

May 27, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 22 © 2004 Metro Pulse