Kennedy shook the world like 9/11

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 11/19/03 | Janet Daley

[South40]

Sorry...wrong Kennedy.

[Paul Atreides]

The deification moves ever onward...

[Burkeman1]

I suppose that the effect of it was not equalled until September 11, 2001 when Americans realised in a quite different way that their security could never be taken for granted.

Must we forever suffer this orgy of "remembrance" every year about Kennedy and his assassination? Yes- everyone alive then knows where they were when the heard about his assassination. Yes it was a big deal. Does it even approach an event like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor? No. I actually find the comparison highly inapropriate.

[kylaka]

Every flat surface in my county library is decked out with JFK books. Hundreds of them.

[Paul Atreides]

The same people who sneer at Republicans' reverence of Ronald Reagan are the same ones who go into fits of orgasms at the mention of any of "America's Royalty."

[LibKill]

Must we forever suffer this orgy of "remembrance" every year about Kennedy and his assassination?

It looks like we're stuck with it. I don't know why, I got over it by 1964.

[lavrenti]

I'll never understand the collective madness following the assassination. It was embarrassing, unbecoming of a great nation.

It was calculated, fueled by the media. It was the first trash-TV reality event on American television.

Thank God I was a year old when this stupidity happened. Ugh, I sometimes I wonder "these were the people who went through the Great Depression and WWII?" I have to conclude it was some sort of PTSS that snapped with millions.

It really was stupid.

[Burkeman1]

The media came darn close to acting like the fawning Cult of Personality media in the Soviet Union in their coverage of Kennedy. They all knew what he was really about and yet they acted like propagandists with their "Camelot" crud. They prortrayed him as a Saint. That is a major reason why people acted like they did when he was killed. My mother cried like a baby. But later in life she had no idea why she cried and felt foolish about it. She was taken in by the propaganda surrounding Kennedy as many Americans were.

[Rightone]

The big media loved JFK. He was their "icon." And, with the Camelot fable, he was elevated even higher.

Sadly, today Kennedy would be considered almost a conservative as the left and media has drifted so far to the left in the past 40 years.

[Maynerd]

What a joke. JFK cut taxes, got us hip deep in Vietnam, eff up the Berlin Wall, lurched into the Cuban Missile Crisis,since Kruschev believed he was a weenie. And the left loves him!

[ladyinred]

I will never forget that day either. The total shock, and horror of it all is something that changed our country forever. Like it or not, JFK was not the liberal democrat of today, and he was my inspiration for getting involved in things political. I will always admire him, in spite of the snide remarks around here if you say so.

[lavrenti]

I think the coverage exposed the immaturity of so many people, particularly the creeps who manipulated the event for their own uses.

[lavrenti]

Kennedy was a jumped-up boob, from a family of wolves.

[yooper]

The author minimizes Kennedy's presidential achievements. I'm a rock solid conservative anarchist, and I despise Ted Kennedy more than Satan, but JFK and RFK delivered a political and patriotic masterpiece with regard to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Love em' or hate em', we're alive now because Kennedy refused to listen to the advice of men who were hired to give him good advice, but didn't. He trusted his own judgement over the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a gamble which must have turned his stomach.

Today's democrats might do well to follow Kennedy's lead with regard to not following polls and moron advisors, but, being morons themselves, they won't.

[auboy]

Kennedy shook the world like 9/11

My Butt! What a stretch.

[Senormechanico]

"Must we forever suffer this orgy of "remembrance" every year about Kennedy and his assassination?

It looks like we're stuck with it. I don't know why, I got over it by 1964."

I was a sophomore in HS when it happened. All the usual crying etc. was going on around the school. Call me jaded, but I thought, "Get over it, he wasn't THAT great." If I could have voted in 1960, it would have been for Goldwater.
(flameproof suit on)

[mikeb704]

The JFK obsession: 40 years and still going strong

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Could it really be 40 years? Has the best part of half a century gone by since the assassination of President Kennedy? I scarcely know a single American of my generation who does not regard that event as a seminal point in his own life: a moment after which everything changed.

The Dems never got over it. In fact, to them, his legacy permeates the present.

_______

Excerpt from Charles P. Pierce's article in Esquire magazine, Oct 2003:

JFK at 86

He's still with us. Not in the way Elvis still lives, but in the way his personality, his looks, his scandals, his words, his celebrity, his failures, his assassination, and the suspicion it engendered still set the agenda for America.

_______

Naturally, I looked for the requisite word "Camelot" before I even read the article. I didn't have to look far. I found it in column 2 on the second page. These Kennedy worshippers are so predictable.

[Cicero]

The assassination of a president is bound to be a big shock, whatever your politics might be.

But it was hardly an excuse for taking drugs or going bananas. Events can shock you, but they can't make you do anything you don't choose to do.

1968 was the seminal year in Europe, when the French students rioted and even Charles de Gaulle was struck with fear and fled Paris. That didn't have much if anything to do with Kennedy's death. Frankly, it was much deeper than that.