Well, this excellent. One of those one's I hesitate to comment on because it's perhaps a bit out of my league and my coment may sound dull. Ill-informed.
I copied this to the clipboard.
" -claimed Kennedyism for themselves in their rhetoric and personal grooming. "
Really interesting, thanks Roy. I can confirm that growing up working class in the Bronx in the late 60’s-70’s and living in an extended family situation, in our kitchen we had framed photos of the Pope, JFK, and more atypically, Walter Reuther (the UAW President) with MLK, Jr. – my father and grandfather were both UAW men and my grandfather was quite the socialist/commie type.
In talking about cults of personality, I can understand JFK and even, although I disagreed with his politics, Reagan being cult figures. But seven years later it still boggles my mind how Trump attained that status. Truly, we are in Idiocracy.
Man, this triggered a shit storm of pessimism and cynicism -- as y’all can imagine. And imagine if you want because I’m too tired to detail.
But maybe I’ll leave it at this: we got the society the powers that be want: depressed, incapable or opposed to action, compliant because the alternative is unaffordable.
BTW: How much the Dems lost the white working class is subject to debate, obfuscated by the MSM.
"The “death of the Sixties” wasn’t just about politics; its major social effect was to replace optimism with paranoia, which is Kryptonite to Kennedyism."
Kennedy may have been coached or scripted, but his oratory and rhetoric were truly a projection of America at its best. An America that, at least on the surface, was engaged in uplifting the world.
Contrast any Kennedy speech with anything uttered by, say, Dubya. Trump, of course, is an incoherent imbecile. Even Biden's speeches are not even pale comparisons to even the most banal Kennedy speech. (Of course, it didn't hurt that Kennedy was also quite witty and quick on his feet. The classic being when he presented Alan Shepard with a medal and he dropped the medal before giving it to Shepard. " . . . and this decoration, which is going from the ground up.")
All excellent points, Roy. The phenomenon of Kennedyism deserves better analysis by future historians who struggle, amid the ruins of American democracy, to understand how it all went to shit. One additional observation: the reaction to Kennedy’s assassination devolved into the conspiracy-laden, anti-factual paranoia that now characterizes right-wing reaction to any disturbing threat.
I see the other side of Kennedyism as Nixon. Nixon (groomed by fascist California power brokers that owned most of its press) was a grievance driven, purely political animal. Power was to be used only to reward friends and punish enemies. (Reagan, groomed by the same people for the same purposes, was a happier shinier version.) Therefore from Nixon there was to be no art, no music, no aesthetics. Most of what we react to about Kennedyism is, whether we realize it or not, via Nixon.
Growing up, we had a small bust of JFK on the living room coffee table. Definitely purchased by my mother, who fell under the spell of Camelot. Must've been one of her last acts of rebellion somehow allowed by my father, who worked enthusiastically for the Goldwater, then Nixon campaigns. (And in his later years, after these two NYC-born children of immigrants had moved to Texas, he stuffed envelopes for his Representative and personal hero, Tom Delay). Alas, Fox News claimed my mom sometime in the 90s or early aughts. Now if you mention Kennedy, you'll get an earful about Mary Jo Kopechne.
Yes, it’s quaint the old concern about Catholics being ineligible for higher office because they would be controlled by the pope considering that Republicans just pushed through an actual cult member for the Supreme Court who has vowed obedience to a charismatic cult leader.
God, to have an eloquent president. I love Joe and I think Obama was a good speaker but not in the same vein. My mother had the inaugural speech in a frame on the wall.
My first memory of presidential politics was the Kennedy-Nixon race (i was a Catholic, half-Irish kid, so guess who my parents were for, and so, then, was I). My adult disilluminationment came with learning more, and yes, Chappaquiddick contributed.
“respect and hunger for education had (briefly, alas) pushed a little ahead of anti-intellectualism in the American psyche.”
A decade ago I jotted down some thoughts on that facet of the era. Excerpt:
****
…I do miss the cultural polity that was a model for the striving US middle class in the calm and complacent fifties and sixties. Complacent? There were, to be sure, nerve-racking episodes like the Cuban Missile Crisis of half a century ago, but with the admittedly conspicuous exception of the fear of being blown to isotopes, there was a certain security in believing that rational men [𝘮𝘦𝘯, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦] were seeing to the affairs of the country. The American middle class of the day was largely optimistic and hence progressive: if upward mobility was a condition of civic and economic life, who would not look forward to the future? But this model of economic advancement had its counterpart in the intellectual realm: the suburbs, seeded with college grads who’d made it that far on the strength of the GI Bill, would breed a brighter new generation for a confident country at the top of its game. I'm thinking particularly of what has lately been called the “Mad Men” era, from the late Eisenhower years through the abrupt end of Kennedy’s Camelot, with that forward momentum of idealism and optimism carrying the culture into mid-decade, when those characteristics began rapidly to transmogrify into something rich and strange and still quarreled over as the so-called “Sixties.”
I’ll pause here to make the standard and obligatory stipulation (obligatory, that is, for those of us outside the fevered fantasies of the nascent* brownshirt movement that afflicts our public life today) that the era under consideration is not universally remembered as a vanished golden age by sundry classes of then politically, economically, culturally or sexually disenfranchised Americans. You may imagine this disclaimer to be as eloquent and as detailed as you like, and I will sign it…
I sometimes wonder how all the blame for Vietnam got attached to Johnson, and none to Kennedy.
Vietnam was another example of Kennedy's optimism, OF COURSE the United States of America would go in and wrap up that little insurgent problem they had in short order and then lead the grateful people of Vietnam to peace and prosperity.
Well, this excellent. One of those one's I hesitate to comment on because it's perhaps a bit out of my league and my coment may sound dull. Ill-informed.
I copied this to the clipboard.
" -claimed Kennedyism for themselves in their rhetoric and personal grooming. "
What a fine phrase!
Really interesting, thanks Roy. I can confirm that growing up working class in the Bronx in the late 60’s-70’s and living in an extended family situation, in our kitchen we had framed photos of the Pope, JFK, and more atypically, Walter Reuther (the UAW President) with MLK, Jr. – my father and grandfather were both UAW men and my grandfather was quite the socialist/commie type.
In talking about cults of personality, I can understand JFK and even, although I disagreed with his politics, Reagan being cult figures. But seven years later it still boggles my mind how Trump attained that status. Truly, we are in Idiocracy.
Man, this triggered a shit storm of pessimism and cynicism -- as y’all can imagine. And imagine if you want because I’m too tired to detail.
But maybe I’ll leave it at this: we got the society the powers that be want: depressed, incapable or opposed to action, compliant because the alternative is unaffordable.
BTW: How much the Dems lost the white working class is subject to debate, obfuscated by the MSM.
"The “death of the Sixties” wasn’t just about politics; its major social effect was to replace optimism with paranoia, which is Kryptonite to Kennedyism."
Alas.
All the sadder with the Heir, JFK Jr., out there stanning for Trump (while looking, post-mortem, remarkably like Roberto Begnini).
Kennedy may have been coached or scripted, but his oratory and rhetoric were truly a projection of America at its best. An America that, at least on the surface, was engaged in uplifting the world.
Contrast any Kennedy speech with anything uttered by, say, Dubya. Trump, of course, is an incoherent imbecile. Even Biden's speeches are not even pale comparisons to even the most banal Kennedy speech. (Of course, it didn't hurt that Kennedy was also quite witty and quick on his feet. The classic being when he presented Alan Shepard with a medal and he dropped the medal before giving it to Shepard. " . . . and this decoration, which is going from the ground up.")
All excellent points, Roy. The phenomenon of Kennedyism deserves better analysis by future historians who struggle, amid the ruins of American democracy, to understand how it all went to shit. One additional observation: the reaction to Kennedy’s assassination devolved into the conspiracy-laden, anti-factual paranoia that now characterizes right-wing reaction to any disturbing threat.
I see the other side of Kennedyism as Nixon. Nixon (groomed by fascist California power brokers that owned most of its press) was a grievance driven, purely political animal. Power was to be used only to reward friends and punish enemies. (Reagan, groomed by the same people for the same purposes, was a happier shinier version.) Therefore from Nixon there was to be no art, no music, no aesthetics. Most of what we react to about Kennedyism is, whether we realize it or not, via Nixon.
Growing up, we had a small bust of JFK on the living room coffee table. Definitely purchased by my mother, who fell under the spell of Camelot. Must've been one of her last acts of rebellion somehow allowed by my father, who worked enthusiastically for the Goldwater, then Nixon campaigns. (And in his later years, after these two NYC-born children of immigrants had moved to Texas, he stuffed envelopes for his Representative and personal hero, Tom Delay). Alas, Fox News claimed my mom sometime in the 90s or early aughts. Now if you mention Kennedy, you'll get an earful about Mary Jo Kopechne.
Yes, it’s quaint the old concern about Catholics being ineligible for higher office because they would be controlled by the pope considering that Republicans just pushed through an actual cult member for the Supreme Court who has vowed obedience to a charismatic cult leader.
God, to have an eloquent president. I love Joe and I think Obama was a good speaker but not in the same vein. My mother had the inaugural speech in a frame on the wall.
My first memory of presidential politics was the Kennedy-Nixon race (i was a Catholic, half-Irish kid, so guess who my parents were for, and so, then, was I). My adult disilluminationment came with learning more, and yes, Chappaquiddick contributed.
My BIL was still hanging on in the 70's. Nam vet, still holding onto the inspiration of fighting Commies
everywhere. Optimistic about America. Declaring William Devane the greatest living actor for his portrayal of JFK.
“respect and hunger for education had (briefly, alas) pushed a little ahead of anti-intellectualism in the American psyche.”
A decade ago I jotted down some thoughts on that facet of the era. Excerpt:
****
…I do miss the cultural polity that was a model for the striving US middle class in the calm and complacent fifties and sixties. Complacent? There were, to be sure, nerve-racking episodes like the Cuban Missile Crisis of half a century ago, but with the admittedly conspicuous exception of the fear of being blown to isotopes, there was a certain security in believing that rational men [𝘮𝘦𝘯, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦] were seeing to the affairs of the country. The American middle class of the day was largely optimistic and hence progressive: if upward mobility was a condition of civic and economic life, who would not look forward to the future? But this model of economic advancement had its counterpart in the intellectual realm: the suburbs, seeded with college grads who’d made it that far on the strength of the GI Bill, would breed a brighter new generation for a confident country at the top of its game. I'm thinking particularly of what has lately been called the “Mad Men” era, from the late Eisenhower years through the abrupt end of Kennedy’s Camelot, with that forward momentum of idealism and optimism carrying the culture into mid-decade, when those characteristics began rapidly to transmogrify into something rich and strange and still quarreled over as the so-called “Sixties.”
I’ll pause here to make the standard and obligatory stipulation (obligatory, that is, for those of us outside the fevered fantasies of the nascent* brownshirt movement that afflicts our public life today) that the era under consideration is not universally remembered as a vanished golden age by sundry classes of then politically, economically, culturally or sexually disenfranchised Americans. You may imagine this disclaimer to be as eloquent and as detailed as you like, and I will sign it…
*“𝘕𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵” 𝘯𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳, 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦.
This is super extra good, Mr. Roso. Now I must look up which man said what about Pericles and this Phidias guy.
I sometimes wonder how all the blame for Vietnam got attached to Johnson, and none to Kennedy.
Vietnam was another example of Kennedy's optimism, OF COURSE the United States of America would go in and wrap up that little insurgent problem they had in short order and then lead the grateful people of Vietnam to peace and prosperity.