Washington ? As literary squabbles go, the wretched brouhaha over Richard Blow’s book on John Kennedy Jr. is a bit like the Iran-Iraq war: It’s nasty, brutal and long, and neither side is warm or cuddly enough to generate much rooting interest.

On one side, there’s Blow, 37, a former editor at George, the now-defunct magazine run by Kennedy. After Kennedy’s 1999 death in a plane crash, Blow ordered George staffers not to talk to the media about Kennedy. Eight months later, he was hawking a book on his memories of Kennedy. Now the book, “American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy Jr.,” has appeared, and it turns out to be primarily a portrait of Richard Blow, with Kennedy and his wife, Carolyn Bessette, who also died in the crash, acting in supporting roles.

On the other side are Blow’s critics, who accuse him of sins ranging from hypocrisy to disloyalty to, believe it or not, “necrophilia.” They tend to be former George folks or self-proclaimed Kennedy pals. Some argue that any public discussion of Kennedy is unseemly. But others have denounced Blow for telling Kennedy anecdotes, then shared their own Kennedy anecdotes with People magazine.

For instance, Matt Berman, George’s former art director, told People that Blow’s generally fawning portrait of Bessette failed to capture her sense of humor, which Berman demonstrated by telling a story of how she’d stood over his desk at George, eating potato chips and dropping crumbs all over him.

“The crumbs were falling on me,” he said, “and she was getting greasy fingerprints all over my screen.”

Yuck! With friends like these, who needs a tell-all biographer?

Meanwhile, Blow has sold “American Son” to CBS, which plans a made-for-TV movie, and the book will debut Sunday at No. 8 on the New York Times best-seller list.

Cutting remarks

Reviews have run the gamut from merely scathing to truly vicious.

“No reputations are eviscerated; no choice muck is flung,” Entertainment Weekly said. “‘American Son’ is exactly as interesting as listening to someone else’s office gossip.”

“To call Richard Blow a low-rent opportunist would be unfair,” the Hartford Courant said. “To low-rent opportunists, that is.”

“Blow’s efforts to sound like a member of Kennedy’s inner circle are so strained,” wrote the Chicago Sun-Times, “that they come across like excerpts from a parody in the Onion.”

If you think those reviews are rough, just wait until the June issue of GQ arrives, with a review/temper-tantrum by former George contributor Bob Drury. Drury opens his bizarre screed with an account of how Blow had the audacity to edit 1,900 words out of Drury’s piece on presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, including Drury’s favorite line: “Pat Buchanan’s idea of immigration is David Niven.” Now, Drury gets his revenge, calling Blow’s book “banal, insipid and pathetic,” as well as “an oozing bit of necrophilia.”

“I’m a little surprised at how personal the debate has become,” says Blow. A product of Groton, Yale and Harvard, and a former editor of Regardie’s, the now-deceased Washington business magazine, Blow is a tall, thin patrician with a boyish face.

“I don’t get it,” he says. “Here’s a book that for the most part paints a very positive portrait of John, and people accuse me of disloyalty. It’s only disloyal if you feel that any discussion of John is disloyal.”

A question of hypocrisy

Blow’s controversial saga begins in 1995, when Kennedy hired him as one of the original editors of George. A glossy pop political magazine, George debuted in September 1995 with a cover showing supermodel Cindy Crawford dressed as George Washington. Later covers featured Jenny McCarthy, Kate Moss, Robert De Niro, Demi Moore and Charlize Theron but few actual politicians. Inside, however, were some excellent political profiles. Financially struggling even while Kennedy was alive, George folded about a year after his death.

“It was,” says Blow, “a magazine that was wildly inconsistent.”

When Kennedy died, Blow briefly became the magazine’s top editor. His first act was to order the staff not to talk about Kennedy to any other media outlets.

Contributing editor Lisa DePaulo, George’s star political writer, disobeyed that edict, contributing a short laudatory anecdote to an oral history of Kennedy published in New York magazine. Shortly thereafter, Blow canceled DePaulo’s contract. Blow denies the firing had any connection to her comments to the magazine. DePaulo begs to differ.

“There is no question that if I’d obeyed the omerta,” she says, “there would have been no problem with my contract.”

Blow’s critics accuse him of hypocrisy for ordering staffers to be silent about Kennedy, then writing a book on him. They also allege his book violates an agreement that Blow and some other George staffers signed, promising not to disclose confidential information about George or Kennedy.

“He violated both the letter and the spirit of the agreement,” says Gary Ginsburg, the lawyer and Kennedy friend who drafted the agreement. “No one was to exploit their proximity to John for profit.”

Blow says the agreement is no longer binding now that both George and Kennedy are dead.

“If you say that a confidentiality agreement about one of the most famous people in the world can continue indefinitely after his death,” Blow says, “then what is to stop George W. Bush or any corporate executive from doing the same thing? Think of all the books that wouldn’t get written.”

“I signed the agreement,” says Berman, George’s former art director. “I didn’t think twice because (Kennedy) was a nice man and I had no qualms about it.”

Looking for attention

Berman says Blow violated the agreement by writing the book “absolutely!” But Berman doesn’t feel that he violated it when he told People magazine stories about Kennedy and his wife, including the now-famous anecdote about the cascade of potato chip crumbs.

“That story doesn’t violate it,” he says. “It just shows how warm and funny she was.”

Berman says Blow’s book is “bull” and “junk.” He also says he hasn’t read the book, although friends have read “bits and pieces” of it to him on the phone. Those excerpts were enough for Berman to construct a psychological theory about the book.

“Rich was always looking for levels of attention from John that he never got,” he says, “and the book is just him putting it all on paper to make it real.”

Actually, Blow’s book may prove valuable for historians and scholars of the future.

For instance, it will be very helpful for graduate students researching dissertations on “Arcane Office Politics at Mediocre Magazines in the 1990s.”