Posted on 02/15/2012 6:40:55 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
Last week, the other slipper dropped daintily when 69-year-old Mimi Alford, whose dalliance with the leader of the Free World as an intern had been documented earlier by Sally Bedell Smith and Robert Dallek, described in her own words her seduction at 19 by John F. Kennedy.
She thereby became one of a circle of "friends" entertained by our hero during a presidency that was doomed to be short, but intense.
In this, we learn that she was seduced on her fourth day at work, (and in Jackie's bedroom); that they sometimes played with rubber ducks in a bathtub, and that on two occasions he asked her to service his friend and his brother, giving new meaning to the words "executive order" in ways that are creepy indeed.
For this, he was not unfairly described as a "monster" by Timothy Noah, in a post praised by Powerline's Steven Hayward, in a rare note of bipartisan unity. Rich Lowry said it proved Kennedy's life was a "lie."
But was it? The idea that a man who will be betray his wife will also betray his country is one of those sayings that ought to be true, but is not.
Alexander Hamilton, Franklin Roosevelt, JFK and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. betrayed their wives often, some of them frequently, but all would have died before betraying their country, and did.
Victor Davis Hanson, a colleague of Lowry's, notes that Kennedy was far more honest in public than Richard M. Nixon, whom we believe never strayed.
In his defense, should there be one, Kennedy grew up believing this behavior was normal, seeing his father bring floozies into the household, warning female houseguests to lock the doors to their bedrooms, and rounding up women to sleep with his father whenever old Dad came to town.
His father-in-law slept around on his honeymoon, (one reason Jackie's perspective was also distorted.) In the Senate, he hardly stood out in a body that held Lyndon Johnson, Estes Kefauver, his old friend George Smathers, and 30 years later still sported Gary Hart and Bob Packwood. This partly explains, but does not excuse his behavior, which is only a part of the whole.
He was not a monster when he lied his way into the Navy, volunteered for hazardous duty and saved his crew when catastrophe struck it, swimming miles pulling a badly burned shipmate by a strap that he held in his teeth.
His crew did not think him monstrous when he swam into the ocean alone for miles at night, looking for rescue. He wasn't a monster when he gave his salary each year to charity.
He wasn't living a lie when he supported the Marshall Plan in one of his earliest speeches, and became one of the three early Cold War presidents who helped to design the institutions and strategies with which the war would be won.
His excessive side shocks because it seems so unlikely: He was not weird like Hart, hungry like Clinton, or an unbuttoned wreck like his kid brother, Ted.
He was otherwise disciplined. His other appetites were modest, and easily satisfied. Extreme adulation made him uneasy. He was stoic, and bore pain without complaint or self-pity. His sin seems less part of a pattern than a stand-apart blemish and flaw.
He deserves a kick in the groin from his wife and his intern, but not the back of its hand from his country, to which he always was faithful. He was a cad, and a patriot.
Deal with it all as you will.
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to TheWeekly Standard and author of "Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families."
What a steaming, fetid pantload.
What a steaming, fetid pantload.
Most historians believe that Kennedy's boat was idling on one engine to avoid detection of her wake by Japanese aircraft. JFK reportedly would say to friends that the Navy was either going to court-martial him for losing PT-109, or give him a medal.
He got the medal.
The guardians of Camelot will acknowledge some of this stuff to innoculate their hero so that the larger myth survives. It also helps gin-up book sales — always good to keep this mission on a paying basis.
“OK, Mimi, this little yellow duckie is PT 109 and this little yellow duckie is the bad Japanese destroyer. See how the PT 109 duckie bravely lets the bad Japanese destroyer run him over! They say that I was sleeping at the wheel. I wasn’t sleeping!.....I was just resting my eyes so I could see better at night. Whoops! There’s a submarine in the area. Mimi! See if you can find the submarine’s periscope! Pull it to the surface!”
Some girls would listen to the tales of drugs, alcohol, and adultery and steer clear of the Kennedys. Other girls would listen to the same tales and make a beeline for the Kennedys.
“Mimi, enemy fighter sighted. Quick, dock the submarine in the submarine pen.”
I heard that Obama had them put one of those kiddy boat rides in the White House, and he has Biden ride in the boat behind him while he screams, “Slow the ride down so that Joe, er, I mean the Japanese destroyer can run me down so I can get re-elected.”
His dad got him into the navy because he was screwing the wrong person’s wife. So diddy made him go away for a while.
A PT boat getting run over by a cruiser? Sounds like they were all asleep.
Unfortunatly, I think he would be as heavily protected by the media of today as he was 50 years ago. If it wasn't for Matt Drudge blowing the whistle on a squased story, 14 years later it would be "Monica who? Monica what?"
Kennedy Worship - media madness for the masses.
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME.
The internet, tabloids and talk radio would get him.
“I still can’t buy into the PT 109 thing. How can you not hear a destroyer or a cruiser coming on open water?”
I read here on FR many, many months ago, and no, I did not save the article, they were ALL asleep in that PT 109.
It finally made sense to me.
Kennedy was not the hero they painted him to be in this PT wreck. He was the problem.
“However, if there is one man who can take the most credit for the 1965 act, it is John F. Kennedy. Kennedy seems to have inherited the resentment his father Joseph felt as an outsider in Boston’s WASP aristocracy. He voted against the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, and supported various refugee acts throughout the 1950s. In 1958 he wrote a book, A Nation of Immigrants, which attacked the quota system as illogical and without purpose, and the book served as Kennedy’s blueprint for immigration reform after he became president in 1960. In the summer of 1963, Kennedy sent Congress a proposal calling for the elimination of the national origins quota system. He wanted immigrants admitted on the basis of family reunification and needed skills, without regard to national origin. After his assassination in November, his brother Robert took up the cause of immigration reform, calling it JFK’s legacy. In the forward to a revised edition of A Nation of Immigrants, issued in 1964 to gain support for the new law, he wrote, “I know of no cause which President Kennedy championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies.” Sold as a memorial to JFK, there was very little opposition to what became known as the Immigration Act of 1965.”
“...swimming miles pulling a badly burned shipmate by a strap that he held in his teeth.
“What a steaming, fetid pantload.”
I too consider this a bunch of hogwash.
Only if he were a Republican.
Please see my post #34.
Kennedys - Can’t skipper a boat...can’t fly a plane...can’t drive a car...can’t ski.......but they know what’s best for us.
He was a letch who treated women like meat. There is nothing to adore about the Camelot of a Kennedy - whichever drunkard letch it is.
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.