JFK’s teen mistress addresses relationship in memoir (2012) | Hacker News Reader

JFK’s teen mistress addresses relationship in memoir (2012)

nypost.com

115 pointsloourr119 comments

Many posts here critical of JFK so far, including one agreeing with link calling him a monster. Somebody posted here "Its not sexual abuse when you're either the President or in Hollywood," as if his position or location was relevant. The relevant point is everyone was adult and participated voluntarily.

We are all free to share our opinions, but different people have different values. 19-year-old women and 45-year-old men are adults free to decide to do what they want. If they choose to do something you disagree with, others disagree with what you do.

Name-calling and criticizing adults for doing what everyone involved consented to is opinion and they go both ways.

Consent isn't such a simple concept. Just as in business, it is possible to use power differentials in ways that are legal but unfair and arguably immoral. The President of the United States telling a teenager to blow a member of his staff counts.

I'm interested to hear your reasoning for why it counts. Also at what point (age differential, position differential, gender differential) is it no longer unfair or immoral and why. Could we not argue that any sort of imbalance in a relationship makes it 'abuse'. If that's the case almost al social and commercial contracts are some sort of abuse of power.

You're asking for a clearly delineated line in the sand which I don't think is really possible with these kinds of things. Morals are just inherently fuzzy things. In other situations, this same behavior might be considered on the "crass, but reasonable" side of the line. In this case, I tend to agree that it was probably an abuse of power.

At what frequency is visible light no longer yellow but rather orange? If that line is not easily defined, does that mean there is no difference between violet and red?

Of course there's a difference. But in the case of morals who gets to decide? How do we know who is 'colour-blind' so to speak?

NB I'm not disagreeing necessarily with your assessment that it was an abuse of power. I'm just interested in your reasoning.

We get to decide for ourselves through educated dialogue with our community. That's why discussions like this are important.

Discussions like this get extremely emotional and dialogue reduces to the lowest common denominator. Tragedy of commons is very relevant to the forming of morals. This is evidenced by hundreds and thousand of years of various abuse of humans. And while humanity is arguably in the best shape ever, there is uncertainty if we are heading to global or only a local maxima.

So no. Argument from community consensus is a bad heuristic for searching global happiness maxima. Of course, if morals are means to an end, not a goal in itself.

I wasn't trying to make a plea for community consensus. I think individuals come to their own conclusions about morality, but those conclusions are informed by the information that they receive from their environment and community. A person who never experiences meaningful debate, thought, or contemplation is going to be morally stunted compared to those who engage in regular debate and discussion. That doesn't mean every person who argues a point is morally superior, but in the aggregate, engaging in moral discussions will enhance an individuals expertise in determining moral veracity.

If you treat community discussion as a search for optimal morals, I fully agree with you. However, I stand by my original point as top voted comment already decided on the immorality of the JFK-Mimi affair as immoral without meaningful debate.

I think you are improperly comparing community consensus with tragedy of the commons. Community consensus is more akin to regulation than it is to nash equilibria. It's the nash equilibria that has been a bad heuristic for finding the global happiness maxima, because it's through the nash equilibria that the tragedy of the commons occurs. In contrast, effective regulation can better ensure the global happiness maxima. So that's why community dialogue and a rough consensus of mores can be useful and productive towards the health of a society.

Juries.

So in other words particular people are unwilling to draw a specific line in the sand, but we nevertheless think that a democratic process is valuable?

Morality by committee. Wonderful.

Welcome to the world. It's been this way....forever.

There is a difference between recognizing the current state of reality, and embracing it.

Well, in so far as the episode by the pool was concerned, there was consensus among all three present--Kennedy included--that he should not have done what he did. Perhaps he was just shamed by Powers. That doesn't reflect well on him either.

This article from a while back supports your thesis: that Powers, who rarely gave heavy criticism to his boss, rebuked him. After accepting the fellatio, of course. Figures.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/02/12/mad-men/?sing...

He essentially told her to give oral sex to another man. That disgusted me enough to stop reading. The sex may have been consensual, but that was not - it was wrong.

How is it any less consensual or any more wrong than sleeping with JFK himself?

Perhaps one was more of a relationship than an instruction from an employer?

Every second thousands of much more disgusting things happen all around the Earth. You should thus never consume any media because the truth about the billions whose basic needs aren't satisfied show through various facets of human life if you dare to look. Your indignation adds little to the discussion, discourages readers to learn more by shaming those not feeling disgust and increasing the level of emotions in the discussion. I very much believe that emotional arguments should be minimized on HN, which for many users is a source of authoritative information about the world.

There are many studies that show how emotions negatively impact decision making[1] [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotions_in_decision-making

On the unrelated note, this bit was interesting: "I’d rather my children red than dead,” he told her."(Kennedy, Mimi)

Perhaps one of the reasons emotional language keeps appearing in this thread is that moral judgments can be viewed as nothing more than the expression of emotional attitudes, as opposed to propositions with any particular truth value. That kind of language may be essential to any productive conversation about ethics.

> ".. moral judgments can be viewed as nothing more than the expression of emotional attitudes.."

I sense that you hold an underlying assumption that morality cannot be attained through logic and reasoning.

Eh, I don't know but the 'open question' argument has always made sense to me: 'For any non-moral description of an action or object it seemed that competent speakers could without confusion doubt that the action or object was appropriately characterized using a moral term such as ‘good’ or ‘right’. The question of whether the action or object so described was good or right was always open, even to competent speakers.'

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-cognitivism/

You should read Timothy Noah's take, instead of just responding to the title. I found it compelling; maybe you will too.

Can you please link to what you're referring to?

http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/timothy-noah/100566/jfk-mons...

If she had been a private citizen, I might agree with you. But she was an employee of the White House, which makes JFK her ultimate boss, with the power to promote or fire her.

I don’t care who you are, it’s always wrong to take one of your subordinates, ply her with alcohol, isolate her in a room, and then pressure her for sex. That would be an insta-fire at my workplace. (And it applies equally to male subordinates too, of course.)

That would be an insta-fire at my workplace.

You might be insta-fired for such conduct, but (assuming you are not the CEO) would the CEO? Especially a successful CEO? I would hope so, but I think it's quite unlikely.

CEOs are not like presidents. If you leak the story to the press, a CEO can't contain the story because they have no power over the media. A president has the power to do a lot of things, including killing citizens who prove to be troublesome in some ways, and get away with it. And yes, even in democracies.

Huge power imbalance and employer-employee issues here. He deserves to be fully criticised for a lot of the behaviour outlined.

"I stood in the shallow end of the pool and performed my duties."

>19-year-old women and 45-year-old men are adults free to decide to do what they want. If they choose to do something you disagree with, others disagree with what you do.

The president was actively betraying the trust of his wife and family, so in fact it wasn't as libertarian as you make it seem.

Beyond that, the memoir clearly shows massively inappropriate behavior for a sitting president or anyone with such a power disparity, to include significant instances of coercion and actions which denigrate the position and shame the relationship he had with his wife.

Shame on you for equivocating.

Shame is toxic as it silences opposing views with emotional arguments. Please refrain from using shame as strategy to win discussions.

I feel I made a cogent, reasoned point and topped it off with a forceful reproach.

Some people are more swayed by the former and others the latter.

What you call a "forceful reproach" is nothing more than name-calling. If your argument is convincing, you need add nothing more.

Emotional arguments are the only way to sway many people, everyone doesn't respond to logic.

That may be so, but the problem with that avenue is that often people think they've made a logical argument when it is full of value judgements. In this case the comment in question was full of value judgements and assumptions based on incomplete information (they may be true, but they may also not be), and the final appeal to emotion was nothing more than a strong emotional restatement of an argument that did not rest on logic to begin with.

If an argument doesn't resonate with you it's easy to simply say I respond to reason rather than emotion, or vise versa. Or point out the problems as you just did, perfectly fine approach, but you can't ban emotional arguments because sadly, most people are emotional, and those arguments tend to work better. It'd be nice if everyone only responded to non fallacious logical arguments, but it just isn't so.

Sure, emotional arguments are a vessel to deliver rational, logical conclusions to those who are not persuaded by logic itself. But rational conclusions and analysis come first.

Equivocating isn't a bad thing, and I don't see how OP can be described as equivocating. He made his position quite clear...

The reason I state that is because the OP glosses over the positions and power dynamics at play, turning the prime actors into just two regular old people.

Context matters and purposefully taking it out to make a point about moral relativism is disingenuous in my opinion.

I was born after JFK and never really "got" the mystique with the Kennedy family. Whenever a Kennedy family special show used to broadcast (pre-cable) I'd always just switch the channel to something more interesting or just turn it off. On the few occasions my Grandmother or Parents insisted I always found the obsessive fawning very tiresome.

The brief bits I learned over the years seem to point to a pretty seedy family history full of unprosecuted white-collar crime and general hustling before anybody caught on and criminalized it. Then turned the family wealth into political connections (as organized criminals are wont to do) and was put in charge of "campaign contributions" and the rest is history. "America's Royal Family" is a shameful appellation. I never thought they were terribly photogenic or glamorous or really all that interesting.

Using that as a background framework, none of the "scandalous" things I've ever heard about JFK or the family ever really surprised me. This is just yet another thing to add to the list. So...meh?

I hate to say it, but quite a few US presidents have a psychological profile that closely, if not entirely, fits that of a socio/psychopath -- in fact, these traits are invaluable when you are running for president (having this condition, as pop culture likes to hint, does not make you a murderer necessarily). A sociopath is risk-adverse, does not take responsibility or feel guilty, and often is outwardly charming. These days more than ever, a president is required to "look the other way" or remain "blissfully ignorant" when the biggest lobbyists secure major contracts, enact laws that benefit them, or sidestep laws that don't. As a side note, both of my parents are psychiatrists who have dealt with every variety (including the criminally insane) - this does not in the least make me an expert, but they did teach me a lot (for my own safety) about spotting these types of disorders.

I don't know if this qualifies as sociopathy at all. On the contrary, he seemed like someone desperate for an emotional connection.

You could be quite right - there is no true way to tell without looking over a long, accurate history of their behavior. However, this would be my "best guess" if I were placing a bet. Something in your head has to be a little bit differently wired to have an affair when you hold the most esteemed political position and the entire world is watching your every move (or trying to).

"Something in your head has to be a little bit differently wired to have an affair when you hold the most esteemed political position and the entire world is watching your every move (or trying to)."

Or maybe the reason some males seek an "esteemed political position" is so that they can have access to more sexual partners...

Think about the ego required to run for President, not to mention actually continue functioning as President. Actually believing that you are the best choice to be the most powerful person on the planet.

> Actually believing that you are the best choice to be the most powerful person on the planet.

Even excluding the immoral or amoral considerations that could supporting run for or functioning as President, that's not required: you only need to think that you are a better choice than anyone likely to get the position if you don't.

That's a fair semantic point, but in terms of ego required, I don't think it makes a difference.

I think it makes a pretty big difference; while it requires some ego, it doesn't require nearly as much as the "best choice" presentation makes it seem if you have a justifiably narrow view of the objective indicia of potential electability ; seeing yourself as the best qualified of maybe a few dozen people well-situated to compete for the Presidency given the realities of the way such campaigns run -- a condition which is mostly do to selection for traits which, while they may be related to running for President, are arguably only loosely correlated with effectively performing as President -- takes a lot less ego than seeing yourself as the best qualified person for the most powerful position on the planet from either the pool of legally qualified options or, even moreso, the pool of everyone on the planet ignoring legal qualifications.

Those characteristics apply to narcissists. All sociopath are narcissists but not all narcissists are sociopaths. Sociopaths cannot feel empathy or guilt. Those who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder feel guilt and are driven by a deep sense of insecurity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disord...

Yep - that is entirely true. But wouldn't you feel guilty if you humiliated a girl like JFK did at the pool with Powers? It seemed that JFK had no remorse about any of his actions -- but again, this is just working off the material I am reading here (which matches some other accounts of his behavior).

He did apologize to her. He didn't have to.

Actually, the article mentions that JFK apologized to both of them afterwards.

Apologizing is different from feeling guilt (or doing it in the first place) - that said this is still very much the realm of hypothesis for me so I would gladly be wrong. Sociopaths are able to blend in fairly well exactly because of things like this - they can even put on the mask of caring or feeling guilty without being either. I used to work with a sociopath (99 percent certain of this) - he would do completely reckless things with company money, then when I would call him out on it he would apologize. Later he would repeat the same offenses. Similarly, I don't think this was Kennedy's last questionable action.

then when I would call him out on it he would apologize. Later he would repeat the same offenses.

Yes, that fits the profile of a sociopath - he manipulated you in order to get you off his back. The question wrt JFK is whether apologizing to her and his staffer was done out of a sense of guilt or was it just manipulation for his own gain. Unfortunately the article does not give us enough details to decide one way or the other.

He apologized after Powers called him out; the circumstance demanded an apology.

It could have been an insincere apology, but there's no way to know from the article. Whether he was sorry or not, what he did to his interns would correctly be considered rape by today's standards.

Personally, I detest JFK and people like him, but I'm not sure if he was a sociopath. There's definitely enough evidence to make us wonder if he was, but probably not enough to get a definitive answer.

JFK sex affairs would be typical cases of sexual narcissism to overcompensate for low self-esteem and an inability to experience true intimacy.

Or they are simply a reflection of the male reproductive strategy.

The low self esteem typical of those born to millions, decorated for their military service, and from a young age continually elected to public office?

Low self esteem is build in youth. He came from very weird family. Jack was ignored and his father favored Joe who was groomed to become the president.

please keep your pseudoscience in your pants. your silly book has been disbarred, and now proper mocked http://boingboing.net/2013/10/20/dsmv-reviewed-as-a-work-of-...

What on earth are you on about?

DSM-5 has been disbarred? Not that a book can be disbarred.

Mocked? Oh, wow. An online website of cultural criticism published an opinion piece on a medical classification and diagnostic tool. I guess we better throw it in the trash.

sociopaths are a subset of narcissists. sociopaths are narcissists.

narcassists feel guilt. sociopaths cannot feel guilt.

something you wrote is wrong - you are contradicting yourself.

No, what oseibonsu was saying is that we're starting with humans in general (who are capable of feeling guilt), to narcissists (still capable), to sociopaths (incapable).

then why make sociopaths a subset of narcissists? it adds absolutely nothing to what he was saying. they could be completely separate sets and it wouldn't change the argument.

the wikipedia page on narcissists has no mention of sociopaths - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disord... - while the page on sociopaths only mentions narcissists as a possible subtype or coexistence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder

in short, when someone on the internet says contradictory things it's much more likely they are half-remembering something they read in a magazine five years ago than that they are a subject expert.

I was only objecting to the way you presented your criticism: that one category couldn't be a subset of another because the subset seems to lack a feature that the superset has. Criticize for the right reasons, etc.

I hate to say it...

having this condition does not make you a murderer necessarily

If it doesn't mean a person is a murdering nutso, why do you hate to say it? Why does it matter? Not that it doesn't, but you go to all this trouble to convince us they were sociopaths and then you completely neglect to tell us why it matters. Don't leave us hanging!

A sociopath is risk-adverse

P.S. it's risk-averse

Thanks for the correction :) - just a figure of speech. A lot of people would take offense to being called a sociopath (even though its not always a harmful condition). I guess I would "hate to say it" because its potentially shameful that we elect people like this to lead our nation (or maybe we need people like this, I don't know)? Again, I cannot make any definitive judgments without a full, undeniably accurate account of their behavior. Even if not being murderers, it can be dangerous to have a sociopath in the President's seat because (among other things) a full-blown sociopath would not hesitate to enrich or empower themselves at the expense of others (i.e. the nation), by making poor decisions based off of lobbied cash.

it can be dangerous to have a sociopath in the President's seat

On the other hand, it seems to me like certain sociopathic behaviors would be ideal for someone in the position of the President. Boldness, ruthlessness, and a lack of empathy would all be helpful getting things done, even if they are unseemly or unpleasant.

Yes - all good qualities to have, it is a two-sided coin (sometimes). Sociopaths are also said to make good businessmen.

>I hate to say it, but quite a few US presidents have a psychological profile that closely, if not entirely, fits that of a socio/psychopath

The behaviour described in the article is fairly normal behaviour, so no idea where this fits in?

Are we somehow surprised Presidents are just normal people and as such must be psychopaths?

Loving his kids so much he names rubber ducks after them(While taking a bath with someone he cares about) Truly believing a better red than dead future for them at the height of the cold war?

Calling his mistress the see how she is and admitting he's almost crying when she left?

Their world is different but that doesn't mean they are.

Did you read the whole article? If not, go ahead and read the part about pressuring the intern into giving his assistant oral sex while he (Kennedy) watched. That is absolutely not "normal behavior".

This is standard stuff for people in power, don't you read the news?

This includes sports players and it's not psychopathy that would helps sport players, it's about driven people if anything.

Or are you confusing normal with 21st century, western moral?

I'm honestly a bit scared if you view this as normal. I would really consider seeing a professional, if I were you, just to get those assumptions of yours checked.

They might agree with you, in which case I'm wrong

There's a big difference between thinking something is normal and thinking it is right. Normal != right.

A sociopath is risk-adverse

The behavior described doesn't sound too risk-averse to me!

Noah's take on this story seems about right:

http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/timothy-noah/100566/jfk-mons...

Its not sexual abuse when you're either the President or in Hollywood.

Just out of curiosity, is it ever possible for two people at different levels in the same workplace's hierarchy to engage in sexual relations without it being sexual abuse?

Ask Melinda Gates.

Yes, of course. But only they would ever know that. It's impossible is for that to happen in a way such that outside observers can be sure it's not sexual abuse.

Schrödinger's pussy.

I'm not using the phrase "sexual abuse" in a flippant way here. Workplace power dynamics can make sexual relationships improper, but rarely rise to the level of abuse. But this story is classic sexual abuse. It's about using your power to humiliate someone. It's the kind of thing that a pimp would do to a prostitute. It reminded me of a recent Israeli art film about a woman whose boyfriend abuses her in this way. I can't for the life of me remember what it's called...

That puts a whole new light on the line, "the world's most human wasn't human at all." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7y2xPucnAo#t=125

Yes, but no:

Kennedy didn't just have a thing for Social Register girls; he had a thing for humiliating Social Register girls. He also had a thing for humiliating his fellow Irishman, Dave Powers.

Alford and Powers may have felt humiliated, but it's a jump to say that since a) they felt humiliated, therefore b) Kennedy had a thing for humiliating them.

Rather, he had a thing for power--power over others. A measure of his power would be, can I make this person humiliate herself? He could. Power was exercised, apologies were professed, and on he went.

This is much more damning than to say, he was a monster, he enjoyed humiliating others. It incriminates not just Kennedy, but a huge swathe of society, were such power differentials are common.

By characterizing the behavior as he did, Noah calls it out (good man!), but then quarantines it (phew!). You can see it when he contrasts Kennedy to Nixon and Clinton--even they were not so monstrous! We're still mostly decent people in a mostly decent world. Well, that's nice to believe.

One of the terrible things about Nixon's presidency was that when he got caught in Watergate, presidents stopped taping all their Oval Office conversations.

We are losing a generation of precious history. Nowadays, if you're anywhere national public office, you don't leave a paper trail and there are no smoking guns. Teams of lawyers followed Bill Clinton around getting affidavits from anybody that might have a chance of releasing anything salacious.

That's a shame, because presidents are all too human -- warts and all. In my mind JFK was a sexual predator and junkie, but it's better for history that we know the truth. Instead I fear that all we're going to get from 1975 onward is a plastic version of the people who occupied the office.

ADD: One point of interest about this particular U.S. President: Mimi Alford's story is nowhere near being unique. If anything, hers is a tame version of JFK's lifestyle. Dont' forget that Marilyn Monroe was a mistress, as were many other people. I've seen estimates of his sexual conquests that number in the hundreds. Then there's the drug use, including IV drugs administered in the White House by "Dr. Feelgood".

If anything, JFK's story reinforces for me the great amount of latitude we can have in a president without fearing that the world is going to blow up.

> If anything, JFK's story reinforces for me the great amount of latitude we can have in a president without fearing that the world is going to blow up.

For me, it underlines a stronger message, since JFK is widely considered to be one of our better presidents, and I personally rank him as one of the two or three best. It seems that how good of a person someone is, is not a good indicator of how good of a president that person will be.

Apologies for the directness, but JFK was ranked as some kind of awesome president because he was killed in office, not because of some magic power he had. Most people who weren't infatuated with the man at the time felt like he'd barely be remembered if it weren't for his tragic demise.

He was a terribly broken man. I doubt he would have been competent running a gas station at night, much less the country. His saving grace was that his family connections gave him a machine to govern with. There were tons of "special" insiders that helped facilitate both the philandering junkie and the presidency. It's those folks that carried the weight during his term. Those are the ones that did the awesome job.

Still, worked out very well. A good lesson in how regular humans can still be president, warts and all. As terribly flawed as the man was, he was nowhere near being the worst U.S. President. And that says something very interesting about the job.

Yes, he has a very high popularity ranking, and that's all it takes to be president: being popular.

>Apologies for the directness, but JFK was ranked as some kind of awesome president because he was killed in office, not because of some magic power he had.

Really? You're holding the secret microphone that allows you to speak for everyone else?

I can think of loads of reasons JFK stood out as an exceptional President, you sir are confused.

You can think of loads of reasons, but you haven't given any. Being assassinated young is probably the only thing most people know about JFK. It isn't rocket science to figure out that most people would see him as a sort of martyr because of it.

Thank you for that deep level of insight into other peoples thoughts.

You could start with his speech writers...

I think it'd be healthy if we realize and stop fetishizing the myth that the man makes the times not the other way round.

"I personally rank him as one of the two or three best."

Up there with Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln? What did he do that puts him there, in your opinion? Because when I think of JFK I think of starting the Vietnam war, the disgrace of the Bay of Pigs, and jeopardizing national security by knowingly sharing a mistress with mobsters. He handled the missile crisis well enough, but not in the way that accords with the popular imagination: he agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviet missiles being removed from Cuba. But I'm no historian. Please enlighten me.

This may seem like mere gossip but actually it's an interesting data point, not just about JFK but about how things were in the US in the 1960s.

> how things were in the US in the 1960s.

Less different from the 1990s (or 1890s, or 1490s in Europe) then one may have previously guessed.

It seems Time Dilation occurs much more rapidly as you travel vertically to power hierarchy than in physics!

> how things were in the US in the 1960s

Ylvis - The Sixties http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5F9_7XyaQQ

Maybe, but this rates as the most prurient gossip I've read (on HN or anywhere else, but I filter my input channels carefully) in recent memory.

I can't see that, unless you mean the complicity of the press in keeping this stuff quiet.

"Anyone who thinks they know what's best for 300 million people is a titanic asshole. So we're just voting for king of the assholes."

--Shit My Dad Says

There's a huge misrepresentation in there that a President thinks they or has any particular knowledge of what's best. Honestly, that's more like the legislative branch. ;-)

I always remember a psychologist commenting on someone asking why Bill Clinton, most powerful man in the world would risk it all, and their reason was pretty simple.

The point is the wrong way round, it's why you become the most powerful man in the world. Power, money, these are all just proxies, even if the people who have and want them don't know it.

Just being curious here: Is there anything "illegal" in that story? Sure, questionable morals of cause. But it looks a lot like a sexual relationship between two consenting adults.

> Is there anything "illegal" in that story?

There would be if sexual harassment laws had existed at the time. But at the time, no, making your employees have sex with you was not illegal.

I love how most of the general public (especially those who lived through it) think Camelot was so classy... like ya know that time the President asked his manipulated teenage mistress to blow his best friend in the pool.

> On one excursion, she met Vice President Lyndon Johnson. When she told the president about the introduction, he lost his composure.

> “Stay away from him,” he commanded, likely worried that Johnson could use knowledge of the affair against him.

This probably wasn't the only reason. For all of JFK's misbehavior, he was nothing next to LBJ. When one of his secretaries was staying at his ranch, Johnson confronted her in the middle of the night in her bed, saying "Move over. This is your president." He was also fond of urinating in public and once urinated on one of his secret service agents. In another incident, he got frustrated at some reporters asking why he sent troops to Vietnam, pulled out his (reportedly large) penis, and said "this is why".

This story is almost two years old, how about putting a (2012) in the title?

Don't know why this in on HN, but I enjoyed reading it. Hot stuff! This discussion about it looks pretty lame - arguing over whether or not Kennedy was abusing his power or sexually abusing this woman is ridiculous as it robs this woman of both her agency as an 18 year old and now. At 18, like it or not, she was an adult. There is not any "raping" described, and she acknowledges having thought deeply about why she agreed to do this or that. She used her own adult (teen, yes, but also adult) mind to decide what to do. Sure there is a power differential, and in this case an extreme one, but so what... THERE ALWAYS IS! All relationships, especially sexual relationships, involve a power differential / dynamic. This is what makes it fun. Each person is trying to achieve a certain level of "control" over the other, even if that is done counterintuitively by ceding that sense of control to the other. If one brutally and forcibly wrests control over the other, then it is rape. But, if both people are adults making their own decision, then it's simply a typical human sexual relationship!

This story is from February 2012.

"He taught her how to scramble eggs." Can somebody tell me what exactly is that? Urban dictionary didn't help much. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=scrambled%20e...

Two words: Character Assassination.

These seemingly mild form of abuse are precursors to physical violence. You really have to understand how clandestine operations work to fully grasp the concept.

I suggest you guys watch/listen to his final speech on youtube and really pay attention and listen to what he was saying before he got assassinated. Quite a few of the elite didn't like JFK.

You don't just get rid of someone arbitrarily. Especially if they have a public following and great influence. You have to destroy their credibility first and demonize them to prevent the public from inquiring and asking to many questions.

JFK and Michael Jackson are the prime examples of this. Listen to MJ's songs and the message he was trying to convey. Does it really align to what he was accused of? and ohh by the way the F.B.I. realized a statement after his death saying that none of the accusations were true and that he was innocent.

Never take anything at face value, do the research yourself.

Sorry I am not american.

Is it a fact that this really happened? Or just her word?

Did she work there?

have other people confirmed anything related to it?

Thanks

remind me what this has to do with hackernews? Maybe someone understood jacker news? Even so, this is not really new...

Thank you for saying that! Hacker News use to be an amazing resource — now it's a tabloid magazine that you'd find in a supermarket

Perhaps the people voting up this article think that it qualifies for the "intellectually gratifying" in the guidelines. In that case, one can only wonder where in their bodies their "intellects" are located.

Still a better love story than Twilight.

It's good to be the president!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com