PNS editor Richard Rodriguez, author of Days of Obligation, is an essayist who contributes regularly to the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Harper's and the Los Angeles Times. I think Americans had every right to know that President Jack Kennedy was having an affair with a mafia moll. Kennedy's famous libido, so carefully protected by the Secret Service and by crony journalists, jeopardized the entire nation.
History is full of famous disparities.
The cruel dictator dotes on his granddaughters. The eminent educator abuses his children. But such lives are gross distortions. For any of us, there must not be a clear line separating our public from our private life. The kind of people we are in private should influence the kind of persons we are in public.