A SOBER LOOK AT TED KENNEDY

As we celebrate fifty years of GQ,
we take a look at some of the best journalism the magazine has
published. In 1990, Michael Kelly—who later became the first American
reporter to die in the Iraq war—gave us this memorable and
devastatingly candid portrayal of the last Kennedy brother

Perhaps
this seems unfair. From all available evidence, God created our elected
officials to drink and screw around. Arrogance, too, is common. So is
sexual recklessness (witness Gary Hart, Robert Bauman and Barney
Frank); power dements as well as corrupts. But Kennedy’s behavior
stands out. The two most infamous Terrible Teddy stories make the
point. Both take place at Washington’s La Brasserie, where Kennedy is a
favorite customer.

Brasserie I: In December 1985, just before he announced he would run
for president in 1988, Kennedy allegedly manhandled a pretty young
woman employed as a Brasserie waitress. The woman, Carla Gaviglio,
declined to be quoted in this article, but says the following account,
a similar version of which first appeared in Penthouse last year, is full and accurate:

It is after midnight and Kennedy and Dodd are just finishing up a
long dinner in a private room on the first floor of the restaurant’s
annex. They are drunk. Their dates, two very young blondes, leave the
table to go to the bathroom. (The dates are drunk too. “They’d always
get their girls very, very drunk,” says a former Brasserie waitress.)
Betty Loh, who served the foursome, also leaves the room. Raymond
Campet, the co-owner of La Brasserie, tells Gaviglio the senators want
to see her.

As Gaviglio enters the room, the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound
Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on
the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and
cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick
are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table and throws her on
Dodd, who is sprawled in a chair. With Gaviglio on Dodd’s lap, Kennedy
jumps on top and begins rubbing his genital area against hers,
supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this,
Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two
dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and
angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the
room. Kennedy, Dodd and their dates leave shortly thereafter, following
a friendly argument between the senators over the check.

Eyewitness Betty Loh told me that Kennedy had “three or four”
cocktails in his first half hour at the restaurant and wine with
dinner. When she walked into the room after Gaviglio had gone in, she
says, “what I saw was Senator Kennedy on top of Carla, who was on top
of Senator Dodd’s lap, and the tablecloth was sort of slid off the
table ‘cause the table was knocked over—not completely, but just on
Senator Dodd’s lap a little bit, and of course the glasses and the
candlesticks were totally spilled and everything. And right when I
walked in, Senator Kelly jumped off…and he leaped up, composed himself
and got up. And Carla jumped up and ran out of the room.”