JFK Library

Went on Sunday, February 3, which is Jordan Sara’s birthday – an almost groundhog – first time in a few decades. It has not changed except for the 100th birthday 100 objects show added. I’m still processing my feelings. Example: the first lines of the introductory film talk about how mythology can hold you back, how it prevents you from seeing, and yet the entire museum is an exercise in mythology. There’s the family mythology: Joe Senior as SEC Chairman and Ambassador to Britain, with no mention of his bootlegging – or that in another era a man such as that could run the SEC – or of course his pro-German, anti-British attitudes though those became a real issue. There’s a mention of a sister having mental illness but no mention I saw – or remember – of what was done to her (i.e., a lobotomy). I don’t know what to make of it: I don’t expect a family run building to present a full historical picture but this was highly skewed. I don’t even know what to say about his womanizing. Every reference to JFK I’ve ever come across in a book about that period details a blunt form of sex addiction. As to the politics, they do a somewhat better job historically, with a recording of JFK going through who was in favor and who against killing the President of South Vietnam – which we did. They reference the Bay of Pigs. The emphasis is not on these things, which I found much more excusable, because there’s too much history to cover in detail so they rightly, in my view, focus on positives like advancing civil rights.

I never know what to make of JFK. When I was little, I was inculcated with the hero worship we were sold. My opinion revised with Vietnam, because LBJ – who was not a foreign policy expert – followed the path and advice of the Kennedy people down the road they began. JFK prided himself on foreign policy but his decisions were, in retrospect, generally not good. Again, I expect them to focus on the Peace Corps, the Mercury astronauts, and the establishment of a ‘hot line’, which was really a telegraph, to the Kremlin. In the RFK room, which has his desk as Attorney General – can you imagine appointing a relative to a position of that importance? – they show material about James Meredith, including a letter of thanks.

In terms of today, it’s unfathomable to think of a world of that privilege covering up that much. There’s some footage of FDR standing, which of course required that he be locked in place in his braces, and bundled to and from in a charade to make it look like he walked. JFK strolled through Choate with lousy grades into Harvard, where he was a mediocre student. The family machine turned his college thesis into a book: edited by a Pulitzer Prize winner, with a forward by Henry Luce, the founder of Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. Later, for Profiles In Courage, a team did the research work and, at a minimum, Ted Sorensen ghost-wrote the book, which he later said he essentially wrote. JFK took credit. I refer to these works as ‘from the studio or workshop of …’ because the Kennedy family ran a process that generated them for their benefit. But mostly of course it’s impossible to imagine a President bringing prostitutes into the White House, with the Secret Service watching the President have sex, or a President sharing women with Mafia leaders.

As to what kind of a man JFK was, here’s an excerpt from one article: ‘On the morning of August 23, 1956, a month before another baby was due, Jackie awoke and cried out for her mother – she was hemorrhaging. She gave birth to a stillborn infant, while JFK was on a yacht with friends of both sexes cruising the Mediterranean. Racing back to his wife did not seem to occur to the Massachusetts senator until wiser friends suggested that public shame over his absence threatened to tarnish him forever in the eyes of women voters. His friend George Smathers put it bluntly to him: “You better haul your ass back to your wife if you ever want to run for president.”’ Other versions of the story make clear JFK was with another woman. One month before his wife was due. After she’d already miscarried once. And he didn’t go back until he was told it was necessary. I don’t care how articulate he was, that’s not a good person.