(Image source: ABC News)

BY BRICE SANDER

You're watching multisource entertainment news analysis from Newsy.

Jackie O. finally speaks. Following months of speculation, a set of secret recordings with the former first lady went public on ABC’s Nightline. So, what’d she have to say?

In the tapes, Kennedy covers everything from life inside the White House to her thoughts on her husband’s fellow political figures and friends.

Some outlets- like Inside Edition- call the tapes scandalous.

ANCHOR: “Jackie offers biting comments about her successor as first lady, Lady Bird Johnson-

JACKIE KENNEDY: “She was sort of like a trained hunting dog.”

ANCHOR: “And she accuses her sister-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver- Maria Shriver’s mother- of pressuring JFK to appoint her husband, Sargent Shriver head of the department of health education and welfare.”

But- a MinnPost writer gives Jackie O. the benefit of the doubt, saying you try being under that much pressure.

“...this was a 34-year-old woman with a captivating, almost sexy voice who had been the nation's third youngest first lady and who also had just lost her husband to a gunshot assassination… How many of us would have been able to hew to a totally politically correct line during such interviews...”

And the New York Times argues the tapes are a good reminder that the Kennedy’s may not be quite as scandalous as we’ve made them out to be.

“Time has a way of oversimplifying the past, and many people remember the Kennedy administration for just two things: cold war and hot sex… Now is as good a time as any to rekindle the family flame...”

According to Caroline Kennedy- that’s exactly what she intended to do by releasing the tapes. Here she is on ABC’s Good Morning America-

CAROLINE KENNEDY: “This wasn’t sort of an interview that was accidentally recorded-

GEORGE STEPHANOPOLOUS: “She knew what she was doing.”

CAROLINE KENNEDY: “This is something, um, where she felt the obligation to be honest and, um, and she had always told us that she was going to put it away 50 years and, so, it seemed like this would be a time when people would be able to put it in context- and that’s the most important thing.”

So what’s the lasting legacy here?  A blogger for The Huffington Post suggests- when taken in context- the tapes provide added insight, but not much else.

“While the content may challenge some factual misperceptions about her husband, dismantling the familiar Icon that became her primary public venue of identification for half a century may prove impossible.”

An accompanying book- Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy- is on shelves now.

Transcript by Newsy