In yesterday’s front-page story exploring Caroline Kennedy’s name recognition in her bid for New York’s vacant Senate seat, The New York Times made an observation: “Ms. Kennedy, who declared last week that she would like to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as the junior senator from New York, is in many ways embarking on a test of the enduring power of her politically royal name.”
Too true. Yet one can’t help but pause for a moment, reading this meditation on the “enduring power” of Ms. Kennedy’s name, and remember that, until recently, “Ms. Kennedy” was, per the Times, not “Ms. Kennedy” at all, but “Ms. Schlossberg”—the married name by which, for the past twenty-odd years, the media have generally designated the princess of Camelot.
Now that said princess is making movements toward reclaiming her crown…the media seem to be having a bit of a vicarious identity crisis on her behalf. What should they call Caroline? Should what they call her really matter? (Insert your favorite what’s in a name? cliche here.) Technically, Caroline Bouvier Kennedy’s name is…Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, or “Caroline Kennedy” for short: When she married Edwin Schlossberg in 1986, Caroline didn’t become, strictly speaking, a Schlossberg. (“You don’t use the name Schlossberg, do you?” Larry King asked her in a 2002 interview. “I mean, you do and you don’t.” To which she responded, “Right. Well, I never really changed my name.”)
But Caroline’s own Kennedy-uber-alles attitude toward her surname didn’t stop the media from re-naming Jack and Jackie’s daughter on her behalf. Between 1986 and early 2008, according to Nexis and newspaper archive searches, most publications generally referred to Caroline as “Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.” As if to solidify the point, they generally shorthanded her subsequent references not to “Ms. Kennedy Schlossberg”—but simply to “Ms. Schlossberg.”
In answer to the what’s-in-a-name question, then, the media have been suggesting: Caroline’s a Kennedy, sure, but she’s something else, too. For better or for worse.
And yet, of late, “Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg”—the name that tacitly represented Caroline as more than the sum of her ribonucleic parts, as a person independent of her famous family—has lost a limb. Now that Caroline seems to be embracing her Kennedy side—which is to say, her political side—the media have been engaging in a bit of selective amnesia when it comes to that whole, politically inconvenient Schlossberg thing. (Schlossberg: not too sexy-sounding. Not too Christian-sounding. Not too Camelot-sounding.) In that, they’re showing Caroline de-facto favor: “Kennedy,” star power aside, connotes innate political ability, talent that exists regardless of political experience; “Schlossberg,” meanwhile, serves as a reminder of the largely apolitical existence Caroline has carved for herself for the past several decades. In hacking off the Schlossberg in their coverage of Caroline, the media are essentially giving her a free pass when it comes to the issue of her experiential preparedness to become a U.S. senator. Because, “let’s face it,” Amy Holmes declared on CNN the other day, discussing Caroline’s legislative aspirations. “If we were talking about Caroline Schlossberg, this conversation would be absurd.”
The media, perhaps aware of that fact, have occasionally come up with creative ways to dodge The Schlossberg Problem. To wit: the old Skirt The Issue With A Nickname trick (referring to her as “Princess Caroline” and the like); the Have It Both Ways approach (referring to her as “Caroline Kennedy” and “Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg” in the same article); the Parenthetical Compromise (referring to her as “Caroline Kennedy (Schlossberg)”); the Maiden Name Reversion (referring to her as “Caroline Bouvier Kennedy”). But for the most part, recent media coverage of the erstwhile “Ms. Schlossberg” has simply sawed off the inconvenient appendage with nary a nod to the phantom limb. (Caroline Kennedy…! Caroline Kennedy…! Caroline Kennedy…!)
For the record, Ms. Bouvier Kennedy Princess Camelot Mrs. Schlossberg Ms. Kennedy Caroline is still married to Edwin Schlossberg. Though the National Enquirer and other gossip sites have speculated about Caroline’s de facto separation from her husband, those rumors are unsubstantiated. And, anyway, it’s her political patrons who are compelling Caroline’s nominal reversion to Camelot. At her appearance at the Democratic National Convention this summer, Caroline, introducing “Uncle Teddy” to a boisterous crowd, spoke with a giant marquee—emblazoned with CAROLINE KENNEDY in an all-caps sans-serif—behind her. Compare that to her speech at 2000’s DNC, in which Caroline was deemed not “Caroline Kennedy,” nor even “Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg,” but rather “Caroline Schlossberg.”
“People call me whatever they call me,” Caroline told Time magazine in 2002 in response to a to-Schloss-or-not-to-Schloss query, her rhetorical shrug at once dismissing and enabling the media’s surnominal free-for-all.
To an extent, fair enough: Names shouldn’t really matter, after all; their value should be purely referential. And yet one doesn’t need to be Jhumpa Lahiri to know that, for better or for worse, we’re always judging people by their names, by those most personal of book covers. And the stakes of that judgment are particularly high in politics, where one’s good name, literally and figuratively, can be a strong asset (just ask the Bushes, the Clintons, the Cuomos, the Patersons, the Bidens, the Bayhs, the Daleys, the Gores, etc.)—and where one’s bad name can be a big liability (see Rod Blagojevich and the failed senatorial bid of Rep. Ima Commey).
If we can admit that names matter generally, we must also admit that names matter when it comes to Caroline Whatever-We-Call-Her…and that, furthermore, passively allowing for the streamlining of Caroline’s surname smacks of pro-Camelot, if not pro-Caroline, bias. It glosses over the choices Caroline has made over the past several decades—choices that have moved her farther away, not closer to, her political legacy—and suggests that, of all the things that are in a name, the first of them is entitlement. As the New York Post’s sports columnist, Hondo, declared late last week, “Caroline Kennedy might be the favorite to fill Hillary’s double-wide Senate seat, but she wouldn’t even be under consideration if her name were, say, Schlossberg.”
I'm glad you guys picked up on this, which I wrote about in a letter to the CJR about a week ago. Incidentally, the N.Y. Times was sent a copy, but they did not print it.
Posted by Stephen G. Esrati on Tue 23 Dec 2008 at 01:03 PM
Wow. And Hillary thought that the folks who wrote about her were sexist- what is this all about?? Columbia Journalism- I'm appalled.
Or am I missing something- is this supposed to be satirical?
Posted by marggie skinner on Tue 23 Dec 2008 at 01:54 PM
Hi, Marggie. I'm curious: What do you find to be sexist here?
Posted by Megan Garber on Tue 23 Dec 2008 at 02:25 PM
The two places you quote Caroline directly, she clearly indicates that she never changed her name and doesn't want to expend the energy to manage this issue. You do record that appending her husband's surname has been an invention of the press---and yet, somehow, her simply sticking to the name she has retained all along as she puts herself forward as a choice to fill Hillary's seat is a manipulation on her part. If she never cared to use her husband's last name, then it is sexist to claim that she wouldn't be understood to be who she is (Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John, niece of Edward and Robert) if she had assumed her husband's name. That is basically re-enacting what assuming the husband's last name has often enough been about: property rights over women.
Posted by Lindsay Gillies on Tue 23 Dec 2008 at 04:55 PM
Thanks for writing, Lindsay. You're right: it would be sexist--or, at least (since I think we tend to throw that loaded term around much too glibly), it would be unfair--to claim that Caroline, as you put it, "wouldn't be understood to be who she is...if she had assumed her husband's name." But, then, that's not what I said. Nor did I say that Caroline herself is being manipulative about her name.
All I'm saying--and all I said above--is that the media, in suddenly changing the way they refer to Caroline (after having spent the past twenty-odd years referring to her as "Ms. Schlossberg"), are suggesting a bias toward Caroline, the pseudo-candidate, and toward the mythology her famous family represents.
Posted by Megan Garber on Tue 23 Dec 2008 at 06:12 PM
Is there something illegal about using your real name now? What's the problem? What's the point of this article?
Posted by Peter on Wed 24 Dec 2008 at 11:57 AM
What "the media" is doing is using her REAL NAME now that she is -the- -only- Kennedy running for the Senate in New York instead of being just one of -dozens- of Kennedys doing philanthropic work, who all blur together in people's minds. They had been using 'Schlossberg' to tell people that she was -the- Caroline and not some obscure cousin.
Posted by Peter on Wed 24 Dec 2008 at 12:04 PM
Question: What does or did Caroline's husband do for a living?
Posted by Richard on Thu 25 Dec 2008 at 11:34 AM
First, let's find a fact here. Here's one: Women take their husband's name in marriage. That would make her Caroline Schlossberg. Here's another fact. She said on national TV she never changed her name. That makes her Caroline Kennedy. End of discussion. Why does the press play this game?
And second, could it be she was eyeing Hillary's Senate seat as far back as this summer at the DNC? Why else would she have the big banners with her name on them, like campaign banners? Was she smart enough to bet everything that even if Hillary didn't win the nomination or the Presidency that she's vacate the seat anyway? Hmmmmm.....maybe not. What it most likely meant is that if Hillary didn't win, she's not out anything, but if she did win, she would have the backing of Obama-nuts to have her get appointed to Hillary's seat.
Either way, she's an Elitist Limousine Liberal, jumping into Democrat-controlled political machine territory that favors proven Liberals, team players, and Kennedys. Nothing about this will surprise me.
Posted by NoGuff on Fri 26 Dec 2008 at 07:37 AM
Interesting article. I have not followed CK for a long time, not being in that geographic area. I thought the press were dropping her married name, and dropping it 1)to give name value and 2)possibly because of antisemitic issues. Your review of her comments about using her name over time are interesting. She does not come across as a very focused person--what do 9/11 and Obama have to do with the current American fiscal crisis?--or else her ex tempore comments are just not sharp. If she has advisers, why haven't they been advising her on simple questions like her own voting record? In short, this speaks to the mindlessness and star-struck attitude of the press. Also, I am disappointed but not surpised at the single issue (sexism) of your female readers. Perhaps they would do well to examine the women who have made a mark politically and see that it is more what bthey bhave done than what they have called themselves that counts.
Posted by Brana Lobel on Sat 27 Dec 2008 at 01:58 PM
All your article shows is that 1) the media is sexist enough to assume that a woman has changed her last name just because she married and 2) the media is so sloppy that even when she states on national television that she kept the same name she had all her life they call her by her husband's name. Did it ever occur to you that the way she was billed at the 2000 Convention might have been a low-level staffer's mistake, which she went along with in a misguided effort to be polite but made sure didn't happen again in 2008? If the media re-christened you Meggie Garber-Snickety and nobody paid any attention to your statements to the contrary, what would you do? The media is finally getting Ms. Kennedy's name right, as it should have all along. It's the attempts to stick her husband's name onto her that you should analyze, because that was repugnant.
Posted by J. on Mon 29 Dec 2008 at 03:34 AM
Wow, an entire article on someone using the same name as is on her birth certificate. That's shocking! How dare she! And the liberal media goes along with it, cravenly calling her by the name she's had her whole life and used on her books for decades rather than the one you think she should have? Thank you for your brave exposé! You're on your way to a Pulitzer!
Posted by Matthew V. on Mon 29 Dec 2008 at 10:39 PM