Dear Diary,
What a rotten, you know, day. So glad, like, it’s over.
Spent an awful, sort of, just an excruciating hour talking to those know-nothings from the New York Times.
Who said the Times was, like, an elite newspaper?
Those guys are one step up from, you know, the gutter press.
Like if I hadn’t decided to be anointed Senator of New York, I wouldn’t have had to mix with such, you know, rabble.
Canaille!
Oh, dear Diary, I tried, you know, I tried for the longest time to keep from talking to those, you know, revolting types.
The press, I mean. Media creatures.
They are all the same, looking for the low blow, sort of.
But it seems there was no way out. If I want to be anointed to a job that should be mine by right of inheritance, you know, it seems like I shouldn’t have to speak to low-brows in the media. I should just be anointed and take my seat in the Senate so I can sort of serve the middle and lower classes as is my birth right.
But no. The selfsame press that demands I talk to them screams out ugly headlines that I’m shirking my public responsibility by ducking their questions.
I told my personal assistant, you know, okay, I’ll talk to those reporters. But not in my house! No way, you know. I won’t sully my classy, like, Upper East Side apartment with the presence of middle-class hooligans from the Times. Find a back room in some, you know, Coney Island diner, I said. Make sure it’s upscale, you know, and right around the corner from my classy Upper East Side apartment so I can get home fast if things go, like, south.
Can you believe those lowlifes wanted to know what made me decide I wanted to be a Senator?
Why, my dad was a Senator, you know, before he was President. And two of my uncles were Senators. Why, one still is!
I mean, you know, I have a God-given right to be a Senator, too!
Besides, what business is it of theirs why I want Uncle Dave Paterson, you know, the governor of New York, to anoint me Senator?
They tried to sneak that question in sideways, but I was ready for them.
Describe the moment, they said, when I decided to go after Hillary’s Senate seat.
Slime balls! Boy, did I hit them with, you know, sarcasm.
“Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? I thought you were the crack political team.”*
Boy, did that set them back, I think.
I gave them a big sneer, too.
Could you believe they, like, tried to get me to say bad things about Uncle Dave?
And so what if I sent my kids to private schools? I work for the public schools. Believe me, that sort of gives me ample comprehension of what it’s like to be a public school kid or have a kid in public school maybe, you know, I think, even more than the people who actually like are in public schools or you know have their kids there because they’re sort of too close to it and I’m not because, as I told those reporters, “I have lived a very advantaged life, and I am very fortunate, but our family tradition has been always to work for, as I said, for working people.”*
Which working people do I work for, dear Diary? The Times guys failed to ask, but if they had, this is what I’d have said: Why, I employ a household worker and a personal assistant and I, sort of, like, work for them. So there!
Oh yes, dear Diary, they tried to sneak in a political question. Can you believe it? I’m going to be anointed to the Senate, not some borough council! I mean, like, I’m a Kennedy, I can’t lower myself to run for some undignified lackey job like, you know, city council or state legislator or attorney general. A Kennedy does not dirty a Kennedy’s hands with low-level politics, so they think I don’t have experience. I was, you know, ready: “It hasn’t been sort of a partisan kind of career that I’ve had. So I think that at this point in time, that’s what people are looking for.”*
I know how to answer a question, believe me.
I told them if they don’t want to make me a Senator because of me, you know, me myself, Uncle Dave could do it for Uncle Ted: “He loves the Senate. It’s been, you know, the most, you know, rewarding life for him, you know. I’m sure he would love it to feel like somebody that he cared about had that same kind of opportunity.”*
I am a Kennedy, dear Diary. I hate to keep repeating it, but…
Then they really set a trap, sort of. They asked me about the “current crisis.” Boy, did I let them have it!
“This is not about the past,” I said. “This is really about the future and the moment that we’re in, and I think that everybody right now has an obligation to think about what they can do to help. This is, you know — nobody can sit out this one anymore.”
Wasn’t that laying it on the line, dear Diary? I don’t mince words, you know. The thing is, I DO feel this obligation because I’m a Kennedy born and bred that I should finally at age 51 try to help, ’cause, like, “nobody can sit out this one anymore.”
Hey! I said that! You can quote me! And if Uncle Dave reads it, maybe he’ll understand. But if he can’t see fit to anoint me for Uncle Ted, maybe he can make me Senator for my kids’ sake!
“I think they are really politically engaged, and kind of going through the campaign last year with them, you know, and with my uncle, and sort of having this kind of multi-generational effort brought us all closer together, and I think that’s something that I think I saw in families across the country, where grandparents, people my age, and people voting for the first time all really felt that this was kind of a moment in time that re-energized people in terms of the change that needed to be possible.”
Wasn’t that great, dear Diary? If Uncle Dave does anoint me Senator and I do get a chance to run in a real election, I want to use that line as a slogan: “The change that needed to be possible.”*
Catchy, sort of, isn’t it?
I think “multi-generational” sums it up, too.
But I’d sort of had enough of those guys from the Times. One of them tried to, you know, ask one last question. I cut him, you know, off.
“I think we’re done.”*
And believe me, you know, I was being sort of polite.
If I get to be Senator, just wait.
Like, noblesse oblige, or screw you.
*Caroline Kennedy actually said these things.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
