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I’m Sick of Hearing about JFK
I know, Friday is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. It was a pivotal moment in many people’s lives. It changed the course of the 1960s and cruelly cut short the young life of a charismatic politician.
Got it.
It is impolitic to say, if not downright rude, but I am sick of hearing about John F. Kennedy.
When JFK is mentioned on cable news, I jump for the remote. When he’s on a supermarket magazine cover, I swing to the latest checkout-line Kardashiana. A blog’s new conspiracy theory? Off to a different website.
Born in the late ’60s, I have been subjected to the Kennedy myth my whole life. My Democratic mom chose my name in part to honor the 35th president and was horrified that my delivery date was right around Nov. 22. (Luckily for both of us, I was hatched the day before.) I can understand the deeper personal connection for Irish and Catholic Americans, but we were lowly Finnish Lutherans.
I grew up assuming Kennedy’s accomplishments ranked somewhere between Lincoln and Jesus, but the more I read, the more that view faded. He seemed a nice enough bloke: charming, educated and blessed with a photogenic family. But the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, and his modest list of successes hardly merited hagiography. And let’s not even mention his horrifying private life.
In retrospect, Kennedy seems a more palatable Democrat than today’s crop of progs. He was anti-Communist, pro-Israel and suspicious of high taxes. He also said the right things about civil rights, though few actions followed.
Considering all the facts, why does Kennedy have such a hold on the American imagination? Why does America need to see story after story, book after book, film after film about a guy who was only in office for two-and-a-half years?
I don’t believe that 1951 was filled with movies on William McKinley’s assassination while Killing McKinley raced up bestseller lists. Some say that JFK’s death was the Boomer version of 9-11, but we don’t even see video of that dark day let alone detailed retrospectives.
Am I just being a grumpy Gen X-er or is the JFK worship completely overboard?
JFK portrait via thatsmymop / Shutterstock.com
Published in General
Why don’t we have any TV Movies of the week about Silent Cal?!!!!
Jon,
I was 11 years old when I woke up early one morning in the Philippines and turned on the radio and heard that President Kennedy had been assainated. I had to ask my brother what “assasinated” meant and then we went and woke up my dad to tell him the news.
All that to say, I’m totally on board with your opinion. We as a society tend to make heros out of people for no apparent reason. (i.e., Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize for… what did he get it for again? Being Obama I think.)
At any rate, stop the hero worship until we actually have a hero.
As a student of the Kennedy Assassination, I find the reminder instructive. When the government truly fails to properly investigate something as consequential as the Kennedy Assassination, you find a public that still has a majority who believe that a conspiracy took place because the crime was never properly investigated (regardless of whether you accept the WC’s conclusion, it wasn’t a true investigation. It was a typical political butt-covering move by Johnson to remove suspicions before the ’64 election.)
For my money, the House should keep these lessons in mind when considering the events in Benghazi and investigate while the key personnel are still available to testify and their memories are relatively fresh.
Why does Kennedy have such a hold on the American imagination? Because his time was cut short, thus allowing everyone to paint their own aspirations on a blank page.
Why are we all hearing about him these days? I think Tom Brokaw is selling something or other.
I was 7 years old, came home from school and told my Mother that the President had been shot. I got an immediate spanking for telling such a “horrible tale”. Later I was showered with hugs and kisses and apologies. Both of us lost some innocence that day.
I judged some high school debates this past weekend. One of the debaters said that the current primary system favors the rich, like Mitt Romney. And because of that, people like Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy wouldn’t stand a chance today.
I assigned the win to the other team.
Bay of Pigs (stranding many freedom fighters to die on beaches after promising, then reneging on help)
Apparently behind Diem coup in Vietnam.
Perceived weakness precipitating Cuban missile crisis
Serial adulterer
Did I miss anything?
I just finished the article in NR and didn’t learn much more than I already knew. JFK was a Cold Warrior and a great believer in economic growth; he cut income, capital gains and corporate taxes in his first year of office. He did not rest easy with liberal democrats Humphrey and Stevenson although he did support unions and the expansion of certain New Deal policies.
He was also very much a product of his time when the two parties had both a conservative and liberal wing and were less defined by ideology than socio-cultural mores and personal history.
Me too.
By March of 2010 Obama had subjected the American people to a massive expansion of the budget and Obamacare. Kennedy never proposed or passed anything as fundamental transformational. ·30 minutes ago
I would add that for all his shortcomings, JFK had a better grasp of economics than all of today’s Democrats and half of today’s Republicans.
I will say this for JFK: had he lived he would not have lived through the letdown that Barack Obama is in for after his term.
JFK was an OK President, luckier than skilled, and more sensible (and palatable) than Jimmy Carter.
But getting killed made him.
On my high school class website (next year is our fiftieth reunion) there has been some discussion of the day of the Kennedy assassination. One of the guys wrote of a girl whose family had fled Cuba:
Oh, I see you are one of those Geeks Born For Speed (and Ugly Buildings). You people would make Lemminkainen want to drive into the Gateway Arch in a Formula One automobile.
Thanks for the references. I love looking up new and interesting people on Wikipedia.
I thought all Finnish men had names like Joona Koskinen or something like that. ·1 hour ago
Edited 1 hour ago
Worse than a grumpy GenX-er, you’re passing over a learning opportunity for conservatives and Republicans.
The ongoing remembrance is an opportunity for Republicans to look at the old videos, listen to the speeches, the debates, and especially the televised press conferences, to learn from the master of spontaneous media politics.
Reagan was the Great Communicator, without political peer from a script, but Kennedy was the best off script, and powerful with the sound off, too.
McLuhan said that TV is an x-ray. The facial close-ups, body language, and vocal timbre all reveal the inner man. It’s not just about good looks. Dan Quayle is good looking. It’s about elusive, fleeting glimpses of smile lines, and of confidence, intelligence, honesty, certainty, inspiration, rueful humor, and honest moments of genuine shame, too.
When JFK admitted his mistakes at the Bay of Pigs, or leveled the October threat to Khrushchev, or made his stand at the Berlin Wall, he came across the millions as credible and real, one of us, speaking for us.
Our candidates should go to school on JFK. Our commentators and analysts need to accept that in the media age, form always trumps content.
I agree with everything said here. I grew up in a New England Puritan family with little sympathy for the Irish Catholics who surrounded us, BUT BUT BUT my mother thought Jack and Jackie were cool. She wanted America to be stylish and attractive. And she admired the Kennedy family. There is something to be said for having a president whose picture is hung in peasant shacks around the world. A good image can carry you a long way.
I did want to comment further on this post because I, too, am sick of hearing about JFK, but only as the liberal media defines him. I’m weary of the stories of the glamour, charisma, stylish wife, and supposedly intellectual prowess. (Fast forward to BHO and Michelle; we all know where this takes us.)
The U.S. enjoyed a decade of economic growth in the 1960s due, in no small part, to many of the conservative fiscal policies instigated by JFK; I resent that liberals continue to ignore their impact.
OCTF: Lee Harvey Oswald went to my high school!⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️⭕️Voted Most Unlikely To Succeed, if I’m not mistaken.
People see what they need to see. He was not just a President, he was a personification of mid century American popular culture. His unexpected death sealed the deal.
Apparently behind Diem coup in Vietnam.
Perceived weakness precipitating Cuban missile crisis
Serial adulterer
Did I miss anything? ·1 hour ago
Strung out on pain killers.
Brother as AG (Holder, anyone?)
And the worst: before ordering the cutting off of relations and travel with Cuba, orders many boxes of Cuban cigars for his own enjoyment.
JFK was no saint, although he played one on TV. As has been commented upon earlier, the antics of his family fit right in with the picture we can now clearly see that was hidden with the assistance if the media at that time.
That said, of all of the Democratic Presidents since Wilson, JFK and Clinton have been the only ones to pursue or accept domestic policies with which center-right leaning people can be comfortable. No Democratic President since Truman has operated in foreign affairs with significant positive results.
Admit it, its all about your mother Jon, isn’t it?
Roosevelt famously had newspaper editors over to the White House for intimate dinners. He was affable, showed them respect, kept them in the loop, and that’s largely why average people thought “FDR got us [or is getting us] out of the Depression.” Even though the GDP in 1939 was pretty close to what it had been in 1929, and unemployment was still about 17%.
Roosevelt fed them. They were grateful.
Sports teams do the same thing with the press.
Kennedy fed the press. In return, they fawned over him. They fawned over Jackie.
Ben Bradlee even appears in the Kennedy home movies.
Dr. Strangelove, Seven Days in May, Failsafe, et al were movies about Kennedy’s brinkmanship, not any other president’s.
When I was growing up, I’m told children who were my age were frightened by the prospect of imminent nuclear war. I don’t remember feeling that at all. How many young kids contemplate their own mortality in the first place?
However, I watch those old movies, and read about the “Missiles of October” and I realize maybe I should have been.
Yet the press always hung on every sentence uttered by JFK mentioning “peace.”
And Kennedy was always calling for peace.
In reality, Kennedy was what would later become known as a “Scoop Jackson Democrat.”
After Jackson died, these Democrats would be called “neoconservatives,” except by then they weren’t so much Democrats anymore.
Reagan evoked Kennedy in his tax legislation debates. Dan Quayle echoed those sentiments and was taken to task by a deranged demagogue in the VP debates of ’88. All the liberal press pretended that Bentsen had trounced Quayle over his Kennedy remark.
But it turns out that Quayle was right and Bentsen was merely the jackass we all thought he was.
In the 1990s, even Seymour Hersh was attempting to bury the Kennedy legacy. Kennedy had been more conservative than half the Republican Senators in the 90s. The Democrat Senators by then were all so liberal that it turns out they’d been writing Moscow letters promising to help them defeat Reagan’s foreign policy just a few years before.
It had been a long time since they were the “party of JFK.”
They’re reviving Kennedy now because they obviously have nothing else to hang their liberal hats on.
Johnson? Heh. Carter? Tee-hee. Clinton? Obama?
Because talkies came along.
Amen, Jon!
Never has so much ink been spilled on behalf of a mediocre president who couldn’t keep his pants up to save his soul.
Kennedy was shot while I was in my 3rd-period 9th-grade English class. Even this “We like Ike and Dick” Republican was sad. I was sad in spite of my disgust with the non-stop idol worship of JFK by the popular media that had been going on since the 1960 campaign.
I think the whole progressive establishment–from politics through entertainment and higher education and into the news media–was joyful when JFK’s election allowed America to return to its FDR-initiated New Deal default. I’m sure the years under stodgy old Ike were very tough on them. The headwinds Obama has enjoyed up until recently are nothing compared to what we saw during the “Camelot” administration.
Kennedy was good, but I don’t think his jokes would have been quite as funny in front of a tougher audience. Watch his press conferences; they worshiped him.
Then, when he was killed by a commie, the establishment was beside itself. They couldn’t, although they tried, get much mileage by blaming it on the reactionary right, so they had to turn JFK into Abraham Lincoln as a way to extend the life of their renaissance.
Thank you for a moment of sanity.
JFK was an OK President, luckier than skilled, and more sensible (and palatable) than Jimmy Carter.
But getting killed made him. ·3 hours ago
Death is always a good career move. JFK, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, etc.
I heard someone a few years back talking about how “Beautiful” Marilyn Monroe would be if she had lived. No, she’d be Liz Taylor…
To be fair, consider how we’d lionize Reagan today if Hinkley had shot and killed him in 1983, after he’d had time to accomplish some things, but prior to Iran Contra and some of the second term disappointments.
SDI would have been to Reagan as the Apollo program was to Kennedy – we’d probably have had a working space-based system by the early ’90s.
For that matter, if JFK hadn’t been killed, would we have made it to the moon at all, or would Apollo have been cut in the mid-60s as the deficits mounted?
I remember the air raid drills, and crouching under my desk with my coat over my head. I remember being in the row next to the windows, and looking up at the giant windows wondering if my coat and desk were really going to help. I remember people going to Mass during the missile crisis, and how you couldn’t get in the door of the church.
When I was growing up, I’m told children who were my age were frightened by the prospect of imminent nuclear war. I don’t remember feeling that at all. How many young kids contemplate their own mortality in the first place?
However, I watch those old movies, and read about the “Missiles of October” and I realize maybe I should have been.
Yet the press always hung on every sentence uttered by JFK mentioning “peace.” ·1 hour ago