Posted on 11/22/2002 7:52:30 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
It's 39 years today since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a motorcade in Dallas when a rifle bullet shattered his skull.
His promise was unfulfilled, his administration unfinished. The pervasive sense of sudden loss was devastating to millions.
But the gauzy legend that sprang up around him after his death is now the dusty stuff of history, its magic overcome by the clarity of hindsight. The Kennedy name is now as much a curse as a blessing.
Roughly 102 million Americans alive today were not born when Kennedy moved into the White House in 1961. They know him only from the vast distance of time, his image distorted by slanderous movies, wild-eyed conspiracy theories and other mindless claptrap peddled by hucksters out to make money or earn notoriety.
Many of us who actually knew him and were with him in Dallas that fateful Nov. 22 -- first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, officials, staffers, Secret Service agents, reporters -- are gone now, too. Kennedy was 46 years old when he was shot. We who were adults in his era are all older now than he was then.
Time has taken its toll on the once-presumed inevitability of another Kennedy presidency. Sen. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in the midst of his own 1968 presidential campaign. Sen. Edward Kennedy's White House prospects died in 1969 when an aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in the car he accidentally drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass. John F. Kennedy Jr., heir to the most famous political name of our era, died childless at the age of 38 in a plane crash off Martha's Vineyard in July 1999.
Robert Kennedy's children, who comprise the bulk of the family's second generation, have not been good dynasty material. A longtime family associate says sadly, "They were so spoiled."
Joe Kennedy served six undistinguished terms in Congress but dropped out of a 1997 race for governor of Massachusetts amid scandals about himself, his ex-wife and his brother Michael. Another brother, Max, declined to run for Congress. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joe's older sister, was beaten this month when she ran for governor of Maryland. Mark Shriver, the son of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, lost a Democratic primary for a Maryland congressional seat this spring.
Camelot, the mythical embodiment of Kennedy glamour, was never real. Jackie made it up. A pleasant but transitory illusion, it could not be sustained in the face of several accounts written since John Kennedy's death exposing his relentless philandering.
The recent release of detailed records showing how expertly Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis restored his reputation somewhat. But now comes the discovery by the noted historian, Robert Dallek, that Kennedy suffered from undisclosed maladies that required him to constantly take a shocking array of powerful drugs. Dallek and a physician, Dr. Jeffery A. Kelman, examined previously sealed medical records of the last eight years of Kennedy's life stored in the Kennedy Library. The pair found that Kennedy had been taking antispasmodics, antibiotics, hydrocortisone, testosterone, salt tablets, antihistamines, an antianxiety drug, antidiarrhea drugs, codeine, Demerol, methadone, Ritalin, meprobamate, librium, barbiturates for sleep, thyroid hormone and injections of gamma globulin, apparently to combat infection, and procaine, to kill back pain before public events. He was a walking medicine cabinet.
Throughout his earlier career and during the White House years, Kennedy and his advisers heatedly denied that he had serious health problems. Understandably, he wished to project the illusion of youthful vigor, and he did. But it was a frightening deception. The public had a right to know of the frailties that could have interfered with his ability to function at any moment.
The last man standing in the Kennedy family saga is Ted. The senator from Massachusetts has survived more personal and professional crises than the biblical Job -- sex scandals, a divorce and gross weight fluctuations. Kennedy ran for president in the 1980 Democratic primaries but could not overcome the Chappaquiddick tragedy. Furthermore, in a serious lapse of judgment, he ran against the incumbent president of his own party, Jimmy Carter.
Since then, however, Kennedy has worked hard to become a serious legislator, and with Sen. Strom Thurmond's retirement, he is now the third-longest serving senator. A recent biography by Adam Clymer concludes that his influence on the nation after more than a third of a century in the Senate is far greater than that of his brothers John and Robert, whose lives were cut short. His son Patrick, 35, is a four-term congressman from Rhode Island, doing a sound if unspectacular job and apparently content to stay where he is.
For Ted Kennedy at 70, there are still things to be done. He successfully spearheaded a recent campaign to bring the 2004 Democratic National Convention to his native Boston. Ironically, the nominee crowned there just could be a Massachusetts senator. But it would be John Kerry, not another Kennedy.
Duh.
Within a few months of taking office, Kennedy managed to get the Tibetans annihilated to the last man,
Hadn't heard about this. Thanks.
I have read a lot of vague references to the Tibetan operations over the years, but the first direct reference to Kennedy's hand in their demise, oddly enough, I read in JFK Jr's "George" magazine. When I read this, it startled me, but it also gave me the impression that JFK Jr was a man of some integrity.
I have since seen other articles presenting essentially the same story.
Oh stop it, lady! Your tendancy, like the Democrats, to rely on the superficial, either in personal appearance or political dogma, is the reason there is so much ugliness and suffering in the world.
Your post could start a campaign to:
For, if you are unable to tell the difference between the Commie Network (of which I am not a member) and the Birchers (of which I was proud to call myself a member ..at least up until very recently) then you are going to have a very difficult time finding the Perceived Truth from the Actual Truth in as much as the usual Bushbotz that exist over here......
Just go on back to sleep and let the ones of us that do understand what is happening around this Nation do what we need to do - to keep the rights that the US Citizens are supposed to have . . . .
I suggest that you try to solve this, it would be sad if nobody else did ... Nostradamu, Quatrain X.72: deception and fulfillment
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1334226/posts
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.