THE OTHER MRS. KENNEDY/Ethel Shakel Kennedy: An American Drama of Power, Privilege, and Politics. By Jerry Oppenheimer. St. Martin's Press. 540 pages. $24.95.
THIS IS an unnecessarily cruel, vicious biography of a woman who has never run for public office. Not content to attack the late Kennedy husbands, it seems that writers now must assail their widows as well. Kennedy lovers will hate it, and Kennedy haters will love it.
The book has particular relevance for Marylanders, however, since Ethel Kennedy's eldest child, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, is now the Free State's first female lieutenant governor, and thus a likely future gubernatorial contender.
Ethel Kennedy's public image perhaps is frozen in time on that June night in 1968 when she knelt over the body of her mortally wounded husband, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy of New York, who had just won the California presidential primary.
Bobby Kennedy had been Ethel's main focus in life along with their many children (the oldest son is Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III of Boston), and his death provides the dividing point of this book. It is Mrs. Kennedy's widowhood that is particularly examined here, and in scathing detail.
RFK was not Ethel Kennedy's first choice for a mate, according to the author, whose previous biographies include one of Barbara Walters. She had her eye on John F. Kennedy initially, Mr. Oppenheimer says.
After she married Bobby, he writes, "Ethel all but disowned her own very rich, very scandalous family, the Skakels. Desperate to win favor with her in-laws, she would do anything to keep her own family's secrets from seeing the light of day, and there was a lot to hide -- including adultery, arson and even suspected murder."
As for Bobby, he was unimpressed with the Skakels, stating once, "If I wasn't married to Ethel, I wouldn't give those micks the time of day."
Mr. Oppenheimer claims that, "Contrary to popular myth, Marilyn Monroe was not Bobby's only extramarital fling. According to one of Ethel's friends, 'just like Jack, Bobby thought nothing to doing the wives of friends. He felt honor-bound to have a sample of them, and never gave it a second thought. These women were like a great silver tray of canapes, and when Bobby felt like popping one in his mouth, he did.' "
The night Bobby was shot, Mr. Oppenheimer tells us, "Ethel, along with members of the Kennedy clan, decided in a sad, secret meeting to pull the plug on Bobby's life-support system because he had been brain dead for hours, a fact that has been kept from the public."
