Reply #49: Folks, Folks, Folks....

[T Town Jake]

...I was only four, and don't remember the event itself.

But -

It always bothers me, this Messiah-grasping at the threads of renowned men's (or women's) done lives: men (or women) of greatness who would snicker at the retrospective pretensions surrounding their times, and what they did in them.

Yes, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a horrible moment in American presidential history. But it was not the equivalent of the Visigoths charging over the last of the Seven Hills.

He served two years, ten months, and four days in that office - and he was a good, though not by any means great, president during that limited time.
Perhaps had he lived he would've progressed to greatness - though his dedication to the Vietnam War (which his successor simply tried to emulate) would've no doubt made him radioactive around here in 2006 - had history turned out the same way, and again rendered "Vietnam" a defeat instead of a triumph in our memories.
Similarly, his well-documented reluctance to engage the premiere domestic challenge of his times, Civil Rights, had he lived to finish out his two terms would cause many at the DU of 2006 to spew venom in his direction for the mere "sin" of such historical pauses in that period of 1961-1963, even though the cultural time & place that make those "pauses" understandable in retrospect are often shrilly ignored: we always love to judge the past by the present, after all, and inevitably we find it lacking.

Especially the most flame-throwing historically-ignorant in our ranks, of which there seems to be a small yet steady supply on constant loan from the Angry-R-Us part of the Web that constantly afflict sites across this vast thing we call the internet.

But he, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, would be the first to tell you, no doubt, the following: quit trying to fill up the void you feel about life in your times by fantasizing about mine - or me. I'm not a lost savior to be worshiped: live your lives, meet the challenges of your era as best you can with what you've got, and above all enjoy the time you have in this world. And while you're at it, let me rest in peace.

Anyone who has studied that extraordinary life in depth, as I have, knows that, while I am extrapolating on what he might say, I'm hitting it pretty close to the mark.

"Sad stories of the death of Kings" on this day are, no doubt, appropriate: fictional paeans to a messiah who never was would infuriate that departed "King" (President) more than anyone else, realist and real life person that he was.

Want to celebrate the life of President Kennedy today? To paraphrase H.L. Mencken: Wink your eye at some sinner, and drink a Heineken (his favorite beer); he never took himself 1/1000th as seriously as some folks who write - and post - about him do.

Seriously.