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Shamalot
Commentary ^ | Dec 2020 | P J O'Rourke

Posted on 11/21/2020 12:05:41 PM PST by Rummyfan

Jack Kennedy, we hardly know ye—and to know ye is not to love ye

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what the Kennedys ever did for your country. Bring the monkey’s paw of being telegenic into politics? Of all the things that the American political system needed, this was the last. And whatever it was that the Kennedys did, they did most of it a long time ago. The assassination of John F. Kennedy is almost as distant in time as the assassination of William McKinley was when Kennedy took office.

McKinley, by the way, also had great personal popularity. And greater political support, having won reelection in 1900 by a margin of almost a million votes out of some 14 million cast. McKinley’s murder by anarchist Leon Czolgosz grieved and shocked the nation (and gave rise to conspiracy theories) the same way Kennedy’s murder did.

And yet we didn’t endure six subsequent decades of public figures deemed “McKinleyesque.” Despite a late-1890s economic boom, fiscal and monetary policies more prudent than Kennedy’s, and a Spanish-American War conducted with a success very unlike the Vietnam conflict, the McKinley administration wasn’t mythologized in Broadway terms. No one called the McKinley years “The Mikado Era” (the hit musical of the day). The Kennedy tale ought to be finished. But JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century 1917–1956, by Pulitzer Prize–winning Harvard history professor Fredrik Logevall, brings us no closure and implicitly threatens a second 1957–1963 volume and even—spare us—a Legacy third.

(Excerpt) Read more at commentarymagazine.com ...


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To: Rummyfan

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61 posted on 11/21/2020 5:04:39 PM PST by Jeff Chandler (We flattened the heck out of that curve, didn’t we?)
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To: BatGuano

“...then cancelled all parties or celebrations post graduation...”


Yep, things like movie theaters closed, rock radio stations started playing religious music, on TV (such as it was at the time—I lived in SoCal and we had 6 channels to choose from) it was either funeral or religious movies. Having any kind of fun was right out.

9/11 was like it, but because of internet, cable, you could escape it for a while. The whole country was more or less held captive by the JFK thing for the four days from assassination to funeral. It was really like a weight being lifted when it was all over.


62 posted on 11/21/2020 5:49:12 PM PST by hanamizu
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To: hanamizu

A few years back, I heard clips of an interview with Jackie Kennedy from back during the Kennedy admin.

Her voice sounded like that of an 11 year old.

Why the heck would Onassis want to have anything to do with her since he had a continuing affair with the opera singer Maria Callas? It certainly wasn’t for love or companionship.

Then again, it supposedly cost the Hitler-loving ambassador $10M for Jackie not to divorce JFK, so there’s that gold-digger aspect, I guess.


63 posted on 11/21/2020 6:00:23 PM PST by Calvin Locke
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To: Covenantor
Kennedy was shot the Friday before Thanksgiving, November 22. Thanksgiving that year was on November 28.

November 22, 1963 was also the day that Walt Disney selected the site for the future Disneyworld in Orlando, FL while flying over Florida in a plane. That was also the day that The Beatles released "With The Beatles" in England. It would still be a couple months before they started gaining traction in America.

The opening credits for "Gilligan's Island" was filmed shortly after the assassination. If you look carefully, you will see one of the flags in the harbor flying half mast.

64 posted on 11/21/2020 6:13:40 PM PST by SamAdams76 (Orange Man GOOD!)
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To: SamAdams76

You’re right of course...though I can’t recall why we were let out early, maybe a teachers conference, those usually preceeded holidays.


65 posted on 11/21/2020 6:31:12 PM PST by Covenantor (We are ruled...by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who can not govern. " Chesterton)
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To: BatGuano

Sounds like NOT fun!


66 posted on 11/21/2020 6:35:30 PM PST by MayflowerMadam ("FRAUD VITIATES EVERYTHING." Landmark case - SCOTUS/ U.S. v. Throckmorton)
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To: Ebenezer
Th term "Camelot" was coined by none other than Jackie herself in an interview after the assassination in what was the opening salvo of an obvious effort to rehabilitate the image of her late whoremonger misogynist serial adulterer husband.


If the story holds true, there would have been no “Camelot” had Joe Sr. not bought extra votes from Chicago to send his kid to the White House.


There would have been no "Camelot" if Joe Sr. hadn't rigged JFK's bit to win a Massachusetts congressional seat in 1946, his first effort to stand for public office.

For starters, Kennedy didn't live in the district he was running in. Joe selected it for him it because its population was overwhelmingly Catholic.

Second, the incumbent was a wildly-popular former Boston mayor named James Michael Curley. When Joe Sr. found out Curley was being investigated for mail fraud, he figured that Curley was vulnerable to bribery because he was guilty as hell and so could do with a stack of ready cash to perpetrate some bribery of his own. So Joe bought him off him not to stand for re-election. Then Joe Sr. hired a janitor named Joseph Russo to get his name on the ballot because there was a legitimate candidate named Joseph Russo standing for the same office and Joe Sr. hoped the confusion would prevent wither Russo from winning. All paid for in ill-gotten gains come by primarily through illegal insider trading and rum-running.

67 posted on 11/22/2020 8:22:23 AM PST by Paal Gulli
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To: utahagen

i know he responded... but he should have responded with my suggested response... his response was too nice...


68 posted on 11/22/2020 7:11:30 PM PST by latina4dubya (when i have money i buy books... if i have anything left i buy 6-inch heels and a bottle of wine...)
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To: rintintin
Is PJ a never-Trumper?

Yes he is. he supported Jeb! in 2016

69 posted on 11/25/2020 4:31:36 AM PST by Sir_Humphrey (Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people -Socrates)
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