What Are the Magazines Saying, Dear?

The First Family can hardly guess these days what magazine will make painful reading on a quiet Saturday night. Old friends are faltering; old dependables are going into reverse.

> In Esquire, Playwright Gore Vidal, a dilettante politician, concedes re-election in 1964 to President Kennedy, then hands 1968 to Brother Bobby (over Nelson Rockefeller). With that out of the way, Vidal, whose stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss, is also Jackie Kennedy's stepfather, lets Bobby have it. "There are flaws in Bobby's person hard to disguise," he writes, with no intent to disguise them. "For one thing, it will take a public relations genius to make him appear lovable. His obvious characteristics are energy, vindictiveness, and a simple-mindedness about human motives which may yet bring him down. To Bobby the world is black or white. Them and Us. He has none of his brother's human ease; or charity." So far, so bad--and it gets worse. Bobby, says Vidal, would make "a dangerous, authoritarian-minded President." Why should anybody vote for him? "The general public," says Vidal, "can't have too much of their favorite family."

> The New Yorker, in a parody of the Saturday Evening Post's "inside" story of the Cuban crisis signed by L. L. Case, ended up spoofing the Administration more. The New Yorker traces "The Inner Inside Story of the Canadian Crisis'' as told by "Stewart Dawk and Charles Hove." The Administration has evidence that an innocent-looking ski lodge in the Laurentians "was in fact a 'snow cannon' emplacement capable of pelting New York and New England with more than 150,000 deadly, hardpacked snowballs!" The newly elected junior Senator from Massachusetts eloquently argues the "soft line" because he is worried about contamination of Gloucester fisheries; the Attorney General hawkishly snaps, "Let's get it over with," the same position he took "preceding the establishment of the Federal Rehabilitation Camps for Flabby Americans." In a twinkling, "the massive machinery of government swung smoothly into action . . . and all available carbon paper was requisitioned for the duration of the emergency." The little-known Committee for Outgoing Publicity Adjustment gets to work. "Its job," writes The New Yorker, "is to insure that the American people are kept fully informed, by so-called 'leaks' and briefings to responsible or otherwise accredited members of the press corps, of the correctness of all presidential decisions, whatever they may lead to." The rest, says the magazine, is history. Canada defies a 48-hour ultimatum to destroy all snowmaking machinery, and the Secretary of State makes his now-famous comment: "We're cheek to cheek, and I think the other fellow needs a shave." Concludes The New Yorker piece: "The 'shave' was administered--decisively, effectively, and with vigor."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.