dagblog - Comments for "That Anniversary Again"

The two generations to which

Barth — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 04:22:31 +0000

The two generations to which I was referring were the ones that followed his death. It can scarcely be questioned that those forty years were a march toward selfishness and a rebirth of the gilded age, after thirty years going in quite the opposite direction.

The Kennedy debunkers ignore how much he inspired so many of us who "learned the language" during his presidency. I have spent a lifetime in public service based largely on his call, and I am not even remotely alone in that.

What he meant in fulfilling his campaign promise to get this country moving again, tempered by his warning in his famous inaugural about how we will not be finished even during our time on this earth, should (and does) have meaning today.

Let us begin.

I was there with you, AA,

Red Planet — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 03:29:45 +0000

In reply to Hate cost us a president and

I was there with you, AA, working my first job out of college and glued to the television set from the night after the murder through the shooting of Oswald to the funeral caissons rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.

And I did not witness the "killing of two generations of progress."

The Jack Kennedy I remember was a divisive figure. He was young, inexperienced, and his brief tenure was studded by many gaffes and a few tense, brilliant moments. He frightened many traditional Americans. He was not yet a President fully in charge of his powers and his administration.

No one knows whether he would have sent more troops to fight in Vietnam. No one knows whether he would have been able to steer civil rights legislation through Congress. No one knows whether

But "only the good die young" is a meme that has been kind to him.

I was a fan of Jack Kennedy. But he was not a mythical figure. Smart, courageous, fascinated by governance, and getting better at it. Then he was gone.

And hate? it was not a culture of hate that killed Kennedy. it was a sociopath with a rifle against a background of political conflict not unlike any time in the history of the world.

LBJ was hated more, and not assassinated. Dick Nixon was hated more, and not assassinated. Ronald Reagan was loved, and seriously wounded. Bill Clinton was hated with an almost unimaginable venom, and not killed.

I don't see the predictive connection between hate and assassination.

Oh Jeez, Mathews almost had

Richard Day — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:38:34 +0000

In reply to That Anniversary Again

Oh Jeez, Mathews almost had me weeping.

Now I'm done!

Hate cost us a president and

artappraiser — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:53:25 +0000

In reply to That Anniversary Again

Hate cost us a president and almost two generations of progress

As a counterpoint view to the "two generations of progress" part, I recommend Frank Rich's article for the Nov. 28 issue of New York Magazine,

What Killed JFK
The hate that ended his presidency is eerily familiar.

wherein the anniversary can be discussed in comparison with current events and what we now know about past events, without hagiography of JFK (or Obama for that matter.)

P.S. I was alive and witnessed the aftermath. I didn't see the "killing of two generations of progress," I saw a country coalesce in shock (where there had been disagreement before) for a short time around the successor and the government, and then in short order, this sort of youthquake started up in opposition to their elders....