The truth about Caroline Kennedy, cont.

In addition to the stunning vapidity of her thoughts and flatness of her personality, Caroline Kennedy’s “you knows” are even worse than previously revealed. Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald has some remarkable quotations from the wannabe U.S. senator that will certainly end up in an anthology.

Caroline Kennedy’s like, um, you know …

You know, I was wrong.

Do I regret it? You betcha!

Three weeks ago I, um, gushed, you know, over Caroline Kennedy becoming, you know, the next U.S. senator from, um, New York.

Little did I, you know, know.

She’s turned out to be a no-pulse flat-liner with the vim, vigor, enthusiasm and passion of, um, you know, a wet noodle. Worse, and here’s the campaign killer, she inserts “um” and “you know” between every no-pulse, flat-lining, is-she-awake or sleep-talking word she utters.

Oh—it’s an auditory terror ordeal.

A wince-a-thon, really, in one long monotone.

Poor Jackie, the literary agent, the lover of art and language and the Palmer method and Pablo Casals and his cello and all things graceful and refined.

Who’d have dreamed her daughter—raised in the White House, in Greece and on Park Avenue, a graduate of hoity-toity Concord Academy and hoitier-toitier Radcliffe, for God’s sake—sounds, you know, like, um, whatever, as if “some Valley Girl!” [LA comments: this is not fair to Valley Girls. Valley Girls have far more personality and animation than Caroline Kennedy.]

The facts here: Battered about for failing to answer reporters’ questions, the lone survivor of magical Camelot did interviews with various New York media outlets this week—and proceeded to say “um” and “you know” nonstop.

She said “you know” more than 200 times in a half-hour interview with The New York Daily News; at least 130 times with The New York Times [NYT] and more than 80 times in a TV interview with New York 1. Dozens of “ums” were sprinkled in generously, too. [200 times in 30 minutes! That’s 6 2/3 “you know’s” per minute, one “you know” every nine seconds. And she kept that up for 30 minutes.]

About tax cuts: “Well, you know, that’s something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know …”

About being a good senator: “In many ways, you know, we want to have all kinds of different voices, you know, representing us, and I think what I bring to it is, you know, my experience as a mother, as a woman, as a lawyer, you know.”

On why she wants the job: “Um, this is a fairly unique moment both in our, you know, in our country’s history, and, and in, in, you know, my own life, and um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges, our economy, you know.”

Now you could, um, argue, you know, that “um-ing” and “you-knowing” your way through life has nothing to do, um, with what you know, you know, or don’t know, you know. But I, um, don’t, you know, buy it.

Sayonara, Caroline.

From Caroline Kennedy’s occasional public appearances over the last 20 or so years, I’ve always thought that there was nothing there. But I didn’t think that it was this bad. How could someone with her upbringing and elite education, who has moved in high-level social circles all her life, speak so poorly and show such a complete absence of personality? Does she, like, talk like this when she’s with friends and family and prominent acquaintances, or does she, you know, have hidden reserves of charm and wit that are the delight of her friends but that, um, simply haven’t come out in her recent, you know, interviews?

Also remarkable is that she is not of the X generation, when a certain flatness of personality and lack of affect came in, perhaps in reaction to the excessive self-involvement and drama of the Baby Boomers. No, Caroline herself is a Baby Boomer, born in 1957.

There’s something uncanny and mysterious about it. Perhaps it’s the price of being the child of extremely famous parents. You’re so overshadowed by your parents, like a small tree kept from the sunlight by a large tree, that you never grow into anything yourself.

- end of initial entry -

Thucydides writes:

I used to live in Massachusetts, where radio talk show host Howie Carr regularly played clips of Teddy and RI Congressman “Patches” Patrick Kennedy speaking. Listeners were awarded a prize for who could most accurately count the number of “uh’s” in the short clip. Two or three sentences often contained 30 or more. The contest was known as “Wizard of Uhs.”

So poor speech seems to run in the family.

David B. writes:

Last night I talked on the phone with my liberal friend, Professor F, who had practically frothed at the mouth over Sarah Palin. The professor called Palin, “the biggest insult to our intelligence in recent history.” He says she is “dumb, dumb, dumb,” and there is “nothing there.”

I asked him why his party is apparently going to put someone as lightweight as Caroline Kennedy in the Senate. “Caroline is smart,” he says. “She graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School. That proves she is smart.” Professor F. thinks conservatives are “dumb like George W. Bush,” while liberal Democrats are “smart.”

LA replies:

Have you sent him any of Caroline’s speaking samples and interview videos?

David B. replies:

Yes, I did. Professor F. ignores negative facts about liberals. He said, “Her father wasn’t that articulate either.” Next time I talk to him, I’ll ask Professor F. if he ever saw any of JFK’s press conferences. F., by the way, prefers Robert Kennedy to John Kennedy. He is one of those starry-eyed liberals to whom RFK was a great principled liberal.

You have to remember that Sarah Palin really antagonizes liberals like Professor F. They hate everything about her. On the other hand, Caroline Kennedy’s unimpressive public persona is excusable. Liberals are always right, conservatives are always wrong. “I’m a party man,” Professor F. says.

LA replies:

He said that President Kennedy was not articulate?

David B. replies:

Yes, he said that he “was not that articulate.” Professor F. always reflexively disagrees with what I say. It was similar to when, in order to excuse Reverend Wright’s sermons, he said that white religious conservatives “riot every Sunday”

LA replies:

Oh, I get it. He thinks President Kennedy wasn’t a real liberal—therefore he was inarticulate.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Professor F. says that George W. Bush is dumb, but that Caroline Kennedy is smart because she went to Harvard and Columbia. I guess Professor B has forgotten that GW Bush is a graduate of Yale and Harvard himself. How to resolve the contradiction? What Professor B must mean is that an Ivy Leaguer who goes Democrat must be smart, while one who goes Republican must be dumb.

Maybe Caroline Kennedy is smart, but if so it’s unlikely to be because she was made so in Cambridge, Mass. or Morningside Heights. As for Bush, he isn’t dumb. He is cocky and intellectually lazy, which is worse than being dumb. Again, time spent in New Haven and Cambridge didn’t cure him of those afflictions, and likely made them worse.

There are few things sillier than assuming someone is highly intelligent or has good judgment based solely on what schools chose to let him (or, umm, her, you know, in Caroline’s case) in! HRS

LA writes:

To be fair to Caroline Kennedy, she does not always sound so bad. Al Giordano has many quotations from the six interviews she gave after Christmas and though she’s a standard liberal she wasn’t always saying “you know,” and she even showed some wit in parrying dumb questions from the New York Times.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 04, 2009 05:00 PM | Send