The American Spectator

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No Time for Sentiment

11.24.03 @ 12:01AM

THAT DAY AND JFK
Re: Wlady Pleszczynski's November 22, 1963:

Thanks for Wlady Pleszczynski's iconic recollection. On the day President Kennedy was shot, I was 18 years old, on a two-year stint between high school and college, working as a quality control technician for a wire company in Redwood City, California. I remember the color and gauge of the insulation I was testing with a high-voltage charge when our supervisor ran into the QC lab and told us to turn on the radio. All of us who were over seven years of age at the time remember exactly what we were doing on the day Kennedy was murdered. It was at least another week, though, before I learned of another premature death which, even then, seemed to me more consequential. On the same day President Kennedy was assassinated -- November 22, 1963 -- C.S. Lewis died.
-- John R. Dunlap
San Jose, California

On That Day, 11-22-63, I was 10 years old, in Painesdale, Michigan (or rather, in the fifth grade classroom of Mr. Anderson, in the Adams Township Elementary School in South Range, Michigan), and in the late afternoon, he received a phone call, left the classroom, and returned shortly to tell us that the President had been shot.

The bus took me home, where my parents were speechless. But you must understand, my Father was a Lapsed Trotskyite. Some months before, I had first heard about the concept of "The Political Prisoner." I asked Pa about what that meant, and he told me that if he were to stand on the street corner in America and say that Jack Kennedy was an idiot, all he would suffer was opprobrium. (And maybe unemployment: he was a college professor.) Were he to stand on the street corner in Peking and say that Mao Tse-tung was an idiot, he'd be shot.

We in the Upper Peninsula considered ourselves lucky: those missiles that Khrushchev installed in Cuba didn't have the range to reach us. No thanks to JFK. But once he was gone, the Presidency devolved on LBJ, and God help us all.

JFK was elected with a bare majority; our household held the man in great contempt. Let us not join in his apotheosis, for such is greatly unjustified.
-- James R. Stevenson
San Diego, California

Wlady, Wlady, Wlady... Your missive of 22 November 2003 about JFK is sentimental drivel, useful not in the least, except, perhaps, to illustrate how an adolescent might have his immature world-view misshapen and distorted by some shocking event.

Based on your comments, I expect we agree JFK's substantive contributions were minimal. In reality, I would say the best thing he did was NOT having blundered into a nuclear war, which he might just as easily have done, and which, I acknowledge, was a good thing. But, bestowing upon him a status as most princely and stylish of presidents ascribes more to ersatz legend than in any way deserved.

JFK was the son of a bootlegger. Joseph Kennedy purchased his family's moneyed trappings, pseudo-respectability and political power using the proceeds from his days as a mobster. Yet, this appears of no import to a bedazzled and gullible public accepting of what sycophants in the media project.

Beyond this, the evidence is shockingly sparse that JFK took many things in his life very seriously (except drugs and sex). To the contrary, it appears he fecklessly used his inherited wealth and position to merely play at real life.

Stylish? I don't think. False, pretentious, and gilded? Yep, that's what I think.

So, Wlady, come on, please. You of all people should avoid aiding and abetting the undeservedly admired and, in truth, hollow charade that was JFK and his so-called Camelot. It was constructed on soft, shifting sands of emotionalism, and should, and I for one expect, will never stand properly exacting tests of history.
-- Al Reynolds

JUDGE NOT
Re: Shawn Macomber's Make Way for Moore:

It has been many years since the Southern Poverty Law Center has undertaken any "task" for the downtrodden. The last I recall was its precedent-setting litigatory attack on the KKK, but it has since evolved into a money-grubbing machine, whose public pronouncements, and publicity-seeking activities are for the purpose of deceiving its gullible contributors. The SPLC bank account is reputed to be in excess of $100 million.

There was a many page exposé of the SPLC in the Montgomery Advertiser some years ago that you would find enlightening. Not that you have been fooled, I gather from the tenor of your remarks.
-- G.B. Hall
Montgomery, Alabama

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