Posted on 02/01/2008 12:46:09 PM PST by Kaslin
The gods have made their choice. The Olympians have found their anointed one. Bow, bow, before the vessel of the Divine Spark!
So sayeth the priestly class of the mainstream media as they witness the divine laying of hands from the Kennedys upon the New Deliverer, Barack Obama.
He is, quoth ABC's Terry Moran, the "new son of Camelot." Moran continued: "Ted and Caroline Kennedy pass the torch to Barack Obama to carry the legacy of JFK." David Wright, also of ABC, proclaimed, "the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny ... Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot."
MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "Today, for a brief shining hour, the young got to see what we saw, not the gauzy images of Camelot, but the living spirit of the New Frontier."
CBS's Harry Smith proclaimed: "In the civic religion that is Democratic politics, the most treasured covenant was passed to the young senator from Illinois."
One would think that in this age of hysteria about global warming, the press would show some restraint in releasing so much hot air into the atmosphere. Of course, in a gasbaggery race with Ted Kennedy, everyone needs to go into overdrive.
Still, it is a startling thing to behold: Nearly 45 years after the man's tragic death, the liberal establishment remains enthralled to the cargo cult that is the John F. Kennedy myth.
And it is a myth. Start with the "Camelot" label. It's worth remembering that nobody used that word to describe JFK's presidency when he was alive. The media's marketing of the term stems from Jackie Kennedy's recollection that her husband liked the Broadway musical "Camelot," which had opened a month after Kennedy's election. Theodore White, a journalist-admirer of Kennedy's, convinced Life magazine to run with the idea. The musical's tagline "for a brief shining moment" became an overnight cliché to describe the supposedly glorious idealism of Kennedy's "thousand days."
As James Piereson argues in his brilliant book, "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution," the mythmaking industrial complex kicked into overdrive largely to compensate for the fact that Kennedy was killed not by the American right but by a devout Marxist red named Lee Harvey Oswald. The propaganda campaign to blame "forces of hate" - code for the American right - was one of the most fascinating instantaneous "happenings" in U.S. history. For example, a young Texas reporter got hold of a false rumor that a classroom of schoolchildren in Dallas - aka the City of Hate - cheered when they heard Kennedy had been murdered. The local CBS affiliate concluded the story was untrue. But the enterprising reporter did an end-run and filed the story with the network in New York anyway. And with that, a young Dan Rather was off to the races.
But the mythmaking hardly ended there. Suddenly, JFK was hailed not merely as a liberal but as a sort of liberal messiah, martyred for trying to save America. Washington's Methodist bishop, John Wesley Lord, said Americans must "atone" for their role in Kennedy's death. The best way to "thank a martyr for his death and sacrifice" was to embrace liberal politics. Vast conspiracy theories were churned out that Kennedy was murdered because he was going to pull us out of Vietnam. The Oliver Stone crowd has argued ever since that Oswald was the fascist military industrial complex's fall guy. This makes no sense. Kennedy ran to Nixon's right on foreign policy in 1960. Mere hours before he died, Kennedy was boasting to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce that he had increased defense spending on a massive scale, including a 600 percent increase on counterinsurgency special forces in South Vietnam. The previous March, Kennedy had asked Congress to spend fifty cents of every federal dollar on defense. One of JFK's original apostles, former speechwriter Ted Sorensen, is touting Barack Obama as JFK's "heir." But heir to what? Certainly not policies of any kind. Obama is dovish in every way JFK was hawkish. Indeed, Obama is to Hillary Clinton's left. National Journal rated him the most liberal senator of 2007. Sorensen himself admitted in a 1983 Newsweek interview that JFK "never identified himself as a liberal; it was only after his death that they began to claim him as one of theirs." He went on to say that "on fiscal matters (JFK) was more conservative than any president we've had since." But Sorensen has now been overtaken by nostalgia. The legitimacy of Obama's coronation as our new "photogenic redeemer" (a phrase historian Douglas Brinkley used to describe John F. Kennedy Jr.), rests on cloud-castle platitudes about hope and unity, lacking even the slightest ballast of realism. It's political divinization, not policy detail. But what else would you expect from a party that has become a civic religion?
I’ve long called JFK the greatest Cold Warrior of them all but without any positive response.
This is an excellent article.
This whole Kennedy thing has become so nauseating, enough!
He was a good tax-cutter, too.
The whole thing was Jackie’s fashions. She had the style. JFK tried to look suave beside that, with some success.
To me, the whole Kennedy “Camelot” thing fails to rise to the poetic level of myth. It is merely a lie.
You get a ^5 from me.
JFK -
Largest tax cuts in American history
Pro-gun (NRA Life Member)
Anticommunist and not afraid to use troops for America’s national interest
Anti-abortion (we can assume by being a ardent Roman Catholic)
Bona fide war hero - personally brave and deeply patriotic
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
“To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required”
“Lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”
“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
JFK would be shunned by the left today...
“JFK would be shunned by the left today...”
He’s too conservative for most Republicans nowadays.
You got that right. JFK, if he were running today, would be among the most conservative candidates. The left would hate him and the GOP would try to marginalize him (a la Duncan Hunter or Fred Thompson).
If you get a chance sometime, watch the Jackie tour of the White House. It will destroy any mystique regarding the woman. It was downright painful. Her composure more closely resembled that of an uncertain 18 year old than a socialite.
Look, I respect Jackie Kennedy a lot. Not because of her ideology or family or their views, but because Jackie handled herself masterfully as the wife of a man struck down, conducting herself as a nation’s first lady should have.
That Admin is current events for me. It is fashionable now on FR to say mean things about JFK, but we thought at the time he brought some flair to the office and didn’t bother us every darned day like Bill Clinton.
Not to rain on the parade, but Kennedy was far from a perfect cold warrior.
He started out his term with the Bay of Pigs. Eisenhower, as he left office, warned Kennedy not to start a war with Cuba he didn’t intend to finish. Kennedy paid no attention, but started it, immediately repented at the first sign of resistance, backed out, and left the Cuban freedom fighters to their fates.
As a result, the USSR concluded that he was a pushover, and they pushed, again and again. Kennedy stood up to them, but he wouldn’t have had to do so so often if he hadn’t begun on the wrong foot.
Kennedy’s other major screwup was to allow Henry Cabot Lodge, a blue-blooded idiot, to persuade him to assassinate Diem. That was the worst single mistake of the whole Vietnam War, and it led to endless further, and unnecessary, difficulties.
On a personal level, Kennedy was a serial womanizer of the worst kind, basically a different woman or two every day, and as I have heard from private sources, some of them were pretty much railroaded by a man who wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. This led to political complications, when he took a spy for his mistress, or when he got involved with Marilyn Monroe—not the first time that he offended the Mafia with his proclivities. Remember Judith Exner.
Yes, compared to recent Democrats, he certainly looks pretty good, but let’s not get carried away.
The idea that this man would remind anyone of a mystical man of honor, leaves me shaking my head.
If they try the same thing with Obama, I hope folks slap the media so hard it’ll loosen it’s dentures.
Maybe, most probably unlikely, but all irrelevant.
I understand that take on things. Don’t you think that if we had the internet and alternative press we do today, that Kennedy wouldn have suffered much the same fate as Clinton?
If we had know about his dad and the mafia payout, the dirty trick that got him his first office, the ghost written book, the devilish things he did in real time... I don’t think you would be able to say that today.
Not trying to be arguementitive, but it does seem he was quite problematic.
That’s pretty much my take as well.
I certainly recognize that Kennedy was by no means a democrat by today’s standards, but he did have some clear problems.
You and I do have to acknowledge that Kennedy was at times a man that we could appreciate. He screwed up the Bay of Pigs considerably (did have some help doing it BTW, security agencies), but the stood there in front of God and nation and took full reponsibility.
Like him overall or not, that was the right thing to do.
Liberalism Today-"As not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you".
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