Sons of privilege

New York

I was a bit tough on American women last week, but when I sat down to write I hadn’t as yet heard of Michael Bergin. Now I have, and I take everything back. Give me a shrill woman talking about whitening her teeth any day. Bergin is the lowlife who has just published a book about Carolyn Bessette, the wife of John Kennedy, who died along with him and her sister in an aeroplane accident five years ago. Mind you, in this Murdochian age, nothing surprises me, but writing about having sex with a woman who cannot answer back, and who died as tragically as she did, must have Dante turning in his grave. If anyone deserves a new circle of hell, it’s this scumbag. Still, Bergin has been ubiquitous in pushing his filthy opus, the pseudo scribe raking over the ashes of the two dead celebrities.

Is Bergin worse than those who write about Princess Diana or Princess Grace? Not really. Andrew Morton has been robbing Diana’s grave for years, and that other ‘gent’, who pretended to play polo for a while, has enriched himself like the greedy hyena that he is by assassinating Grace Kelly’s reputation. (I cannot remember his name, but what I do remember is that he ran out of moolah trying to play the gentleman.) The Kennedys, of course, have never been accused of being gents, except for the dead John-John. Heaven knows, I’m no friend of those Irish brutes and bullies, but isn’t it strange that the only gent among them is the one now described as a cuckold and a fool? And speaking of gents, a new book about the WASP ruling class of the Fifties sure brought back memories, mostly unpleasant ones.