40 Years ago…
[This is from Gus but was posted only on the other site]
Everybody…everybody who is old enough to remember 22 Novemeber 1963, knows exactly where they were and exactly what they were doing at 1:20 pm EST when television and radio stopped their broadcasts with the words, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin…”
And if you’re looking for a point, even a minute, to chart the beginning of how we got from “the 50’s” to where we are now. 1:20 pm, 22 November 1963 is probably the best place to begin, the moment Jack Kennedy died.
Kennedy’s election, a squeaker like George W Bush’s, had changed the mood of the country because of the youth and glamor of the Kennedy family.
The Eisenhowers and the people around them, the Nixons, John Foster Dulles and the rest of the Millionaire Cabinet plus the Secretary of Labor, Martin Derkin, who was a plumber (really), were reminiscent of the Depression and WW II.
The Kennedys were the new youth, prosperity, celebrity worship and hedonism. The Administration played touch football at Hyannis, the Kennedys were unquestionably rich, Peter Lawford, a real movie star, was a brother-in-law and physical activity, whether it was sex, sports or the new dance craze, “The Twist”, were in.
The notion that the Kennedy years were “Camelot” is of course nonsense but it is not true to say that it was a total falsehood.
The next time you’re in the gym, just rememeber that the reason all those people are on all those treadmills, is because President Kennedy challenged his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to a run along the Chesapeake Canal.
Two other changes that the Kennedys introduced were the “coolness” of public service and an honoring of taste and culture that was Jackie Kennedy’s unique contribution.
A number of public servants, and not bad ones, got there inspiration from the Kennedys’ dedication to public service. “Ask not what your country can do for you…” has become a cliche but it ignited a number of people to take an interest in their communities and their country.
Mrs Kennedy deserves a special word. She was in her 30’s when she was First Lady, very reserved and spoke with a small, shy voice.
I imagine she was at one time a perfect target for feminists who hankered for a Hilary Rodham Clinton.
Mrs Kennedy brought taste, culture and style to the White House in addition to raising what appears to be
two fine children.
She had the building refurnished with original furniture in addition to having great artists perform there.
There was a new respect for the arts by someone who really knew something about them and really loved them.
On the other hand Mrs Clinton brought a load of anger with her as soon as she walked throgh the door and a disasterous misunderstanding that she was somehow a “co-President” who then went on to mess up the national health care effort.
She concluded her term as First Lady with delusional statements about “vast right wing conspiracies”.
Her delusions continue with the notion that as President she could effectively deal with people like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
I know nothing about Chelsea Clinton so I’ll leave her out of this.
Returning to the Kennedys, it became fashionable after the grief of the assassination wore off to say that Kennedy was all style and no substance. The darker truths about his womanizing and the ruthless and corrupt style of Kennedy politics only added to the downward spiral of the estimation of the Kennedy Presidency.
Two things should be remembered however. If Ronald Reagan ended the Soviet Union, Jack Kennedy and Nikita Khruschev (whose son ironically is now an American citizen) ended the nuclear phase of the Cold War. Never again after the Cuban Missile Crisis did the world believe that Washington and Moscow would “nuke it out”.
Kennedy in a great speech at American University in August of 1963 put the conflict in its starkest perspective, “We all breathe the same air, we inhabit the same planet, we all have children and we are all mortal.”
Everyone realized that whatever the differences were between communism and capitalism, they would have to settled without nuclear weapons.
Baby Boomer New Left people either lie about the Cold War or just deny it. Their passionate need to defend collectivism and the utter failure of the Soviet Union require this but it is time for people who lived through that time or had visisted the Soviet Union to speak up.
I qualify on both counts.
Had it not been for the West, the world would be the drab gulag described by Solzhenitsyn. And he was there.
Civil Rights was the other issue that was defined during the Kennedy Presidency. We remember and justifiably celebrate Dr Martin Luther King, Jr’s great “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial but the stage for that speech was set by one a year earlier by Kennedy after two little black girls had been killed by a bomb explosion in Birmingham.
Kennedy framed the issue in moral and traditional American values when he said that it was, ” as old as Scriptures and as relevant as the American Constitution.”
That defined the issue.
After that, the question was no longer “whether” but “how” racial justice was to be achieved.
It will take decades to unravel the Kennedy years, the deep shadows and the great lights, but one thing is sure: on 22 November 1963 at 1;20 pm, EST, a world died.

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