FICKLE PUBLIC

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32283, 29 April 1970, Page 2

FICKLE PUBLIC

tN.ZP.A.-Reuter— Copyright) NEW YORK, April 28. The best - selling author, Irving Shulman, in a book on the rise and fall of Mrs Aristotle Onassis’s popularity puts the blame on a class of poorly - educated fan magazine readers mostly women who ’wanted to drag her down from her heroine’s pedestal, United Press International reports. The book, “Jackie, the Exi ploitation of a First Lady.” i said Mrs Onassis’s photograph was sometimes on the coyer of 35 fan and movie maga- ; zines a month during her years as the widow of PfesiI dent Kennedy. I According to Shulman’s thesis, the movie magazines i decided to make Mrs Onassis a “star” when they found their circulations slipping during the successful years I of “Confidential Magazine.” I Their judgment proved to i be right and the fan rnaga ■ zines won a record audience I among “unthinking” Americans who believed that I although they were little i people who do not count, their ' lives were far better than j those of the rich and the ! famous.

Later, the slick women’s and picture magazines saw how well “inside stories” on her widowhood sold and almost outdid the cheaper magazines in making her a cover girl.

NO SUBSTANCE Many of the stories, Shulman said, were full of inuendo but without substance. Many readers told him they felt they had to read between the lines to find out what she was really up to, he wrote. Publications were virtually free to write fiction about Mrs Onassis because they were sure she would never sue them, and she never did. “Institutional press plans

for the future will eliminate the traditional privacy granted to citizens in a democracy, especially those men and their consorts who are foolish enough to believe in service to their communities," Shulman said. "JACKIE FACTORIES” “Jacqueline Kennedy suffered imprisonment for more than five years in the publish ing hell of the ‘Jackie Factor ies.’ Now that she has escaped, is her cell being readied for Ethol Kennedy or Joan Kennedy? or at some later time, for Caroline Kennedy?

“It is not too prejudiced to conclude that only in a nation where many of its Institutions and citizens have become clinically psychopa thic, would aggressors scream so loudly if even one of their innocent victims escaped per secution.” The press, in general, was furious with the former First Lady for deciding to marry Aristotle Onassis without telling anyone but Cardinal Cushing. As a result, even the International Press treated the

newly-weds with scorn, derision and the limpest humour, but it would be safe to say that these would have been minimised if the American media had truly wished the couple well and not behaved like the fan magazines, he wrote.