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On the topic of John Kennedy Jr. and his family in general, most of the folks I know are torn between two conflicting sets of equally sound advice. It was the Roman statesman Cicero who first said "Let nothing but good be said about the dead". It was the American wag Dorothy Parker who said "If you can't say anything good about people, come sit right here next to me". Miss Manners would no doubt agree that Cicero was correct. You and I know however that Dorothy Parker had a lot more fun. Frankly if the subject is just JFK, Jr. I don't have much problem following Cicero's dictum. About the rest of that family, and especially the nauseating non-stop whitewash of their record that the plane crash let loose, I am firmly in Ms. Parker's camp. I have a definite case of Kennedy bulimia, brought on by 10 days of force feeding by the media. In the interest of the truth, let's venture down memory lane just for a bit. Shortly after President Kennedy's assassination, Jackie Kennedy made a conscious decision to try and raise JFK, Jr. and Caroline as "her" children, not just two more faces in the already crowded Kennedy family photo. She made every effort to give them real childhoods, if that is possible under those conditions. She was determined to let them develop as themselves, not just as Kennedy clones. Obviously the family ties were still there, and they took part in most of the Kennedy family functions. Yet Jackie and her children lived in Greece and then New York - not Massachusetts or Hyanisport. She made sure that a discreet distance was kept. All indications are that her precautions and care paid off, as John and Caroline grew up to be apparently normal, well adjusted adults. Neither JFK, Jr. nor his sister shared any of attributes and attitudes of spoiled rich kids that so envelopes so many Kennedys. Jackie's kids never made headlines because of irresponsible behavior of any kind, including the Kennedy trademarks of booze, drugs, or sex. Some of the more Herculean family members manage to shine in all three of those categories. So my point is not to cast stones at JFK, Jr. or even to complain about the extra efforts made in the search and recovery efforts. Frankly I expect that the efforts would have been basically the same had it been a Ford, Carter, Reagan or Bush child. I might even have been able to put up with the hype had the media restricted itself to maudlin reminiscences about President Kennedy, his son, his wife, or her sister who became sort of the "non-person" in this story. But no, following their motto that too much of a good thing is never quite enough, our talking heads and "chattering class" were in full roar, romanticizing and flat out lying about anything that remotely had the mark of Kennedy on it. According to our media, America never had a time as good as the "Camelot" of JFK's 3 year term. We've never had a family that has contributed as much to our national life as the Kennedy's. Particularly vomitous were the attempts to use the country's emotional response to a plane crash to rehabilitate that waddling sot of a family scion, Senator Ted. Well hogwash. There are a few relevant points that were never mentioned in the effort to use JFK Jr'.s death to cleanse, purify and canonize all things Kennedy. For starters, let's talk about how the family fortune got started. Joe Kennedy Sr. was a bootlegger during prohibition. A rank crook. He broke the law, selling contraband to his fellow citizens. This great American "dynasty" was founded on smuggled scotch. FDR got tired of Joe's political conniving and sent him to England as our ambassador. Once there Joe parroted the attitude of both the British and American upper class and social elite, i.e. that Adolf Hitler was the result of complex social and historical forces, someone to be "reasoned with". (Our elite's view of the Nazi butcher nicely presaged their views of subsequent Communist butchers.) When Hitler's savagery and initial military success made clear that his was a "kill or be killed" proposition, Joe joined the chorus of appeasers predicting the collapse of Great Britain. He thought Winston Churchill a "rabble rouser" and was openly skeptical of the great man's ability to rally the British. How wrong can you get? President John Kennedy was nominated and elected thanks to help from organized crime in this country, aka the Mafia. Once in the White House he shared a mistress with mob boss Sam Giancana. A recent Showtime documentary on Joe Bonano's biography makes several things clear. Bonano claims, and he is not the only source to do so, that Joe relentlessly pursued the mob - whom he knew from his bootlegging days - for help in electing his son President. They gave that help, then felt double-crossed when Attorney General Bobby Kennedy continued to prosecute them. Bonano - who was certainly in a position to know - avers that Joe had promised him in a face to face meeting to rein in Bobby. Joe had a stroke shortly thereafter. Bobby was not reined in. Bonano claims that the mob was in on the assassination in Dallas as pay back for what they saw as a bald faced betrayal. But the mob got JFK into the White House, and didn't that bring about our national renaissance known as "Camelot"? John Kennedy's two main achievements as President both involved Cuba. The first was a bungled invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs. The freedom fighters failed only because JFK lost his nerve at the last minute and never delivered promised air support to the Cuban brigade trying to liberate their country. The much-ballyhooed Cuban Missile Crisis did not end because JFK stood firm and Kruschev "blinked", as Kennedy sycophants would have you believe. It ended because President Kennedy gave Kruschev the two things he really wanted - a removal of American ICBMs from Turkey and a pledge never to invade Cuba in the future. Impoverished and oppressed Cubans are still paying the price for that today. And then there is the hero of Chappaquiddick, the U.S.Senate's resident hypocrite, demagogue and buffoon. Let's cut to the chase here and just say this. There is little doubt that Ted Kennedy was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne when he drove his car off of that bridge and just left her there. There is even less doubt that had his last name been anything but Kennedy, he would have been tried and convicted of 1st or 2nd degree manslaughter and served serious prison time. That he continues to serve in the Senate, and while there mouth platitudes about "women's rights", is a national disgrace. Uncle Ted though has obviously been an inspiration to the younger generations. Joe Jr. overturned a jeep, leaving his brother's girlfriend paralyzed. Bobby Jr. introduced mescaline to his 13 year old brother David, who eventually died of an overdose. Michael slept with his kids' teen-aged baby sitter. William Kennedy Smith went out carousing with Uncle Ted, brought home a woman and was tried unsuccessfully for rape There was no hint of course of any of this in the media orgy of fawning. They were all singing off of the official Kennedy "Home on the Range" song sheet - as never was heard a discouraging word. The Kennedy family fortune was founded on illegal activity? Joe wanted the United States to abandon England to the Nazis? JFK was elected with help from the Mafia and possibly assassinated by the same? Teddy let a woman drown in his car while he went back to his motel and slept? You are a rank troglodyte if you don't realize that none of that is as important as brainwashing the American people about how lucky we are to have a rich, ultra-liberal family willing to be our "royalty". Frankly most of the above would have been just interesting history had the news coverage restricted itself to the tragedy of the plane crash and John's father and mother. But the left-wing bias of the media runs deep, and the opportunity to score political points disguised as mourning a sad death was impossible to pass up. With nothing substantive to fill their endless hours of air time, our major media opted to whitewash Joe Kennedy Sr., look at JFK through heavily rose-tinted glasses, and create a responsible and accomplished persona for Senator Ted that no thinking American would remotely recognize. Had the media kept itself under control most of us could have happily sided with Cicero. Their complete abandon of objectivity in turning this one death into a 10 day long bacchanalia of blind praise for all things Kennedy make a compelling case for the "rest of the story" to also see the light of day. I guess Dorothy Parker was right.  |
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