This is an edited excerpt of the last extensive interview conducted with John F. Kennedy Jr. It was published in the March issue of Brill's Content magazine.

BRILL: In the current issue [of George magazine] you've got [former] President Reagan on the cover. Is that something where you said, "Let's do that?"

KENNEDY: What really happens is, we have meetings with the senior staff and in a kind of Socratic method, we vet the ideas. And the ones that stand up under that scrutiny, and the ones [for] which we have a writer that can deliver it, get done in the magazine. There was always, from the beginning of this magazine, a certain skepticism of me. Was I [the] front man for this?

BRILL: That's why I'm asking.

KENNEDY: Frankly, I'm not sure I want to dignify it with an answer.

BRILL: That's why I didn't ask it directly.

KENNEDY: [Laughs] This enterprise has consumed almost six years of my life. It came at considerable, personal kind of risk. There [were] a lot of people who would have loved to see this be a farce, and it hasn't been.

BRILL: Do you read everything that's in the magazine?

KENNEDY: Do I read every word? No. I'll skim stories, and I'll get very involved in some stories that I think are important.

BRILL: If you were the editor of Salon, would you have reported on the sex life of [Illinois Republican Congressman] Henry Hyde?

KENNEDY: Was I dismayed that it happened? No. Any time there is an element of hypocrisy lingering, it's interesting to read about it.

BRILL: So you would have done it?

KENNEDY: For us to do it, it would have looked weird . . . There are obviously my own family issues in which it looks hypocritical. It looks too partisan. So would I have done it in our magazine? No.

Pub Date: 7/20/99