Sometimes history can be fun. Like when we learn from Craig Unger on the Huffington Post that Norman Podhoretz, a founding voice in the neocon movement that you may have noticed is kind of destroying the world, has always been both totally full of himself and thoroughly wrong. How full-slash-wrong? Enough to think that he had a shot with a recently widowed Jackie Kennedy.
"He thought she was coming on to him and he had a terrible crush on her," says someone who knew them both. "She was just trying to make new friends," says another source with knowledge of the episode. "It was a very fragile time in her life. She wasn't looking to have an affair. She was just trying to have a normal life. But he thought she wanted one and he was telling everyone."
When Podhoretz finally cornered Jackie at a cocktail party and made his feelings known, the source says, she looked at him with an icy gaze the meaning of which was unmistakable. "Why, Mr. Podhoretz," she said. "Just who do you think you are?'"
Now to be clear, we're pretty sure that Podhoretz was, at the time, a lefty thinker and not the clueless, embittered chickenhawk that he is today. So we have to wonder... was this really the thing that sent him away from liberalism? More importantly: do you think Jackie looked anything like The Venture Bros.' Doctor Girlfriend when she gave him his chilly smackdown? Now that would be hot.