Frank Rich: What Killed JFK

[Iwillnevergiveup]

The hate that ended his presidency is eerily familiar.

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/jfk-2011-11/

"Thanksgiving week is a milestone for Barack Obama, but not one that many are likely to commemorate. The president who seemed poised to inherit John F. Kennedy’s mantle—in the eyes of Kennedy’s last surviving child and brother as well as many optimistic onlookers (me included) in 2008—will now have served longer than his historical antecedent. Obama, surely, does not want to be judged against any JFK yardstick, longevity included. It’s his rotten luck that he incited such comparisons at the start by being a young and undistinguished legislator before seeking the presidency; by giving great speeches; by breaking a once-insurmountable barrier for African-Americans, as Kennedy did for Roman Catholics; and by arriving in the White House with his own glamorous wife and two adorable young children in tow. He has usually shrugged off these parallels gracefully. These days, with his honeymoon long over, it’s particularly in his interest to do so. But Obama can’t escape JFK’s long shadow, and neither can we. Another wave of Kennedyiana has arrived just in time for the holidays: three major new books, all three already best sellers. But in the second decade of the 21st century, what, exactly, are the customers buying?"

[MADem]

1. That's a rather creepy connection to make.

What killed JFK was the top of his head coming off, and a bullet fired at high velocity.

Obama is his own man. This is not Camelot. Yes, each is/was a young President with a pretty wife and two kids, but everything else is forced. Different life experiences, different backgrounds, different worlds they grew up in.

A lot of Kennedy books are coming out because there's a Big Anniversary coming up--2013. The paperbacks will be selling like hotcakes right around that time.

[pscot]

2. Profoundly depressing

[bertman]

3. Sorry, Frank, but you missed the biggest factors of all: the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

the CIA, the Steel magnates that Kennedy faced down, the oil barons (many from Dallas) whose gravy train Oil Depletion Allowance that JFK tried to shut down, and the Mafia. In other words, he pissed off the biggest power constituencies in the United States.

Why any legitimate compilation relating to President Kennedy's death would leave out those players is beyond comprehension. But, then again, Rich never mentions a seminal work on JFK that was published not even two years ago: JFK and the Unspeakable; Why He Died and Why It Matters by James Douglass.