CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: ... AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

My friend Tina is sighing over a stack of tabloids these days.

John-John went and got married.

"To somebody else!" Tina wailed.

The Globe, a venerable supermarket tabloid that has devoted many column inches to the Kennedy clan over the years, apparently tracked John F. Kennedy Jr. and his blushing bride down to Istanbul, where they're honeymooning after a top-secret wedding.

Istanbul? Honeymoon? Can those two words be used in the same sentence? But I guess the closest thing America has to a crown prince can't go to Cancun like the rest of us.

Well, like some of the rest of us, anyway.

There was a time when two of Tina's greatest desires were to enter a convent and/or marry a Kennedy.

One of her lesser desires was a weekend fling with Rick Springfield or Don Johnson, but that came after the nun phase.

Sean Connery's made that list in recent years, too, but that's another column.

Somehow the Kennedy phase has never quite vanished, although it's certainly faded. She doesn't have JFK Jr.'s picture framed on her dresser anymore, and she's probably stopped lighting candles on his birthday.

Her mother would have been thrilled. A nice Irish Catholic boy.

With a trust fund.

I imagine a lot of women all over the country feel the same sense of loss Tina does.

After all, how often does the rich, handsome scion of a political dynasty stay a bachelor long enough for the rest of us to get our hopes up?

Why we bothered getting our hopes up when he was dating the likes of Darryl Hannah, I don't know, but it's a free country.

I seem to have noticed a pattern in marriages in certain circles: If you want to marry someone rich and gorgeous, you have to be rich and gorgeous yourself.

Given that pattern, the only Kennedy Tina or I are likely marry is Tommy Kennedy, the biker-boy hood we went to school with.

Tommy was the only boy in the whole fifth grade with a tattoo.

Not the rub-on kind.

He's probably out of prison by now.

There are still some young, rich, famous men available out there. ...

Macauley Culkin ... Michael Jackson. ... Macauley Culkin.

Hey, he's old enough to have a driver's license, and he can probably work for a few more years.

I'm not sure if all those Mrs. Kennedy wannabes are upset because JFK Jr. himself is off the market or because one more rich, gorgeous bachelor has bitten the dust.

And there's always the question of whether the fascination is with John-John or with his father.

I think the Camelot image of the Kennedy Administration summed up for many people the perfect American life.

But as we've all learned, image isn't everything.

You'll notice Amy Carter's wedding didn't create a media frenzy.

At least I can stop worrying about Tina moving to Manhattan to be closer to John-John.

Maybe Rick Springfield's still available. ...

~Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.