[AgThorn]

The headline caught my attention i.e. My sentiments exactly .. Also, Buckley asks some really good questions on what exactly was JFK's legacy other than just a personal one.

Anyway, highlighting to the article is my own, but it's a good piece. Ann Coulter made me aware that JFK got us into VietNam shortly after his Bay of Pigs fiasco and look at THAT legacy. Talk about lives lost, prestige lost, etc.

[Cicero]

So the one thing JFK has going for him is that he was good looking?

[concerned about politics]

JFK's "heroism" is just left wing propaganda.
I've already discussed this with friends and my kids. He wasn't that great a president at all. His legacy is that he was assinated. That's about it. Clintons legacy is that he was impeached. Big deal.
I just turned off the TV when Kennedy PR came on. It was a waste of air time, that's for sure. BORING.

[liberallarry]

This is a superb article by Buckley.

Others who seek to criticize Kennedy worship - in particular Christopher Hitchens - should be forced to read this and see a master at work; command of the facts, easy to read and understand, no ad-hominems, credit and criticism where due.

I thought Buckley was over-the-hill. Apparently I was wrong.

[Savage Beast]

"the legacy of John F. Kennedy is his sheer ... beauty."

Maybe in your eye, Bill, but not in mine. You are not the only beholder who was beguiled by this rather unremarkable man, but what you mistook for "beauty" was in fact something else. William of Carmichael succeeded in identifying it where you failed:

"Why John Kennedy was a great president: He was telegenic."

Some obviously found Kennedy breathtakingly, irresistably attractive. I didn't. I also did not consider him handsome--or "beautiful".

[Young Werther]

Sept 1960 and my high school trooped out to our main street to view JFKs motorcade. He was a vigorous, heroic figure whose bright smile and beautiful family was insopiring.

On Oct 23, 1957 "Navy Log" had broadcast the story of Lt Kennedy. The famous coconut with the messsage carved in the husk was shown and the swimming feat of dragging an injured crewman belied a physical disablity!

Camelot was hype and spin, to say the least, and his legacy is the dreams that men are made of!

He did set us on our trek to the stars, and I believe that he and Roddenberry, (a naval aviator during WWII) would have hit it off!

[potlatch]

Watching his beautiful family live on through the years, then Jackies death and John Jr's, helped prolong our fascination with them.

[Old Professer]

It's always a shame to watch a respected elder lose it.

[Lijahsbubbe]

I don't even see it as JFK worship.

I see it as many of us, reaching back, trying to inhale a piece of that time that seemed the end of a season in our country and our lives.

If you were a baby boomer, or in adulthood, you experienced the assassination of three important leaders, the civil rights movement and riots, from leave it to Beaver to Laugh-In, to a televised war, from Dean Martin to Jimi Hendrix, the sexual revolution and women's rights.

I know people are tired of hearing about it, but everything changed dramatically in our country that decade. It was an incredible time in history, and the assassination of JFK was the beginning to many.

[Allan]

I can remember very clearly the Nixon-Kennedy race and Kennedy's election.

I was very unenthusiastic about the outcome.

I felt Kennedy was pompous, shallow and dull.

But maybe I am abnormal.

[CWOJackson]

I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but Kennedy's death was the saving grace of his Presidency. He brought the world very close to nuclear war over Cuba...a situation he created through his incompetent handling of that problem to begin with.

One of my father's greatest fears, and he was career military, was that it was the generals/admirals who killed Kennedy because of how close he brought the world to destruction.