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Caroline Kennedy (Schlossberg) has been in the media spotlight for most of her 51 years,but for most of those years, the press has maintained a deferential distance. Now that she's declared her interest in becoming the junior Senator from New York when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is confirmed as Secretary of State, political reporters are struggling to adjust their lenses. And Kennedy, who has spent most of her life trying to stay in the shadows, seems to be stuggling to adjust as well.
First, there's the matter of her name. The Columbia Journalism Review's Megan Garber noted that Kennedy's emergence as a political figure made many news organizations forget their own rules of atrribution:
Now that Caroline seems to be embracing her Kennedy side—which is to say, her political side—the media have been engaging in
a bit of selective amnesia when it comes to that whole, politically
inconvenient Schlossberg thing. (Schlossberg: not too sexy-sounding.
Not too Christian-sounding. Not too Camelot-sounding.)
[Camelot -- the nickname for the John F. Kennedy presidency -- was itself a media myth of her mother's making. Shortly after Pres. Kennedy's assassination in 1963, In an interview for Life magazine, Jacqueline Kennedy told writer and family friend Theodore White that the fallen leader loved the popular musical about the legend of King Arthur so much that he'd been listening to the cast album every night in the weeks before that fatal trip to Dallas.]
Another CJR writer, Jane Kim, thought the political press was still gripped by the Camelot mystique in their first articles about the prospect of the torch being passed to Caroline:
[Washington Post media critic] Howard Kurtz says
that the media are secretly glad about the Kennedy news, and that they,
“quite frankly, want David Paterson to name Caroline because they love
celebrities and are enamored of family dynasties.” Does the loving
accusation stand? Today’s coverage shows some fawning over the
reclusive Kennedy, but some strong skepticism as well.
Kim thought the New York Times was doing the best job of maintaining that skepticism.Indeed, the Times pressed Kennedy on her reasons for wanting the office in a Dec. 27 interview that reads like a verbal tug of war. The Times reporters wanted tried to get Kennedy to say how she'd improve on Sen. Clinton's performance in the Senate -- Kennedy refused. They tried to get her to say why she'd be a better Senator than other potental appointees -- especially New York's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo. (And of course, all mentions of Cuomo must be accompanied by the reminder that he is the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo and the ex-husband of Caroline Kennedy's cousin) Her response:
Andrew Cuomo is someone I’ve known for many, many years and we’ve
talked, you know, throughout this process, so, you know, we have a
really good relationship and I admire the work he’s doing now and what
he’s done, so I’m not really going to kind of criticize any of these
other candidates
It went on, like that, resulting in an article in which the Times' reporters said Kennedy
"seemed less like a candidate than an idea of one: forceful but vague, largely undefined and seemingly determined to remain that way."
At one point, Kennedy grew tired of being asked to detail her conversations with her family as wshe decided that she wanted the Senate seat and said:
Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)
I found myself wondering as I read, "Is this really what New York voters want or need to know? Wouldn't they rather have some indication of what Kennedy would do as a Senator? What would have happened, I wondered, if the Times' reporters had been more focused on that?
For example, Kennedy cited her experience as a fund-raiser for the New York City schools as a qualification for the Senate, but refused to express an opinion about substituing merit pay for tenure as a perk for teachers is a good idea. She said there were a number of good experiments. I wanted a follow-up -- what experiments? What criteria would she use to judge their outcomes?.
Alternatively, reporters might look through the seven books Kennedy co-authored or co-edited for hints. For example, in her introduction to the 2002 update to her father's acclaimed essay collection, Profiles in Courage, Kennedy commended a jurist who ruled against a colleagues' "defiantly unconstitutional display of the Ten Commandments in the courtroom." Another book, The Right to Privacy, which she co-authored
