A Message From John Fitzgerald Kennedy On November 22, 2006

I wonder how many times history has been rewritten since JFK was assassinated? I graduated from High School the year JFK was shot when LBJ took rein of the government. Many socialist programs were started during both of their terms, more during LBJ's term. LBJ didn't deal well with the Viet Namese drive for unification and independence from semi-Colonial rule though and that War clouded over his merits for helping the poor and working class.

I believe that JFK inherited the Bay of Pigs fiasco and believe that his execution was retributation for not supporting the assault against Castro by the Cuban American Right Wing. Perhaps the article is sappy to you, that's okay, but to many of our generation, the Kennedy's offered hope for change from the McCarthy, "kill a commie for Christ" mindset.

This country could have been a fair and honest place for all Americans. In my view, the beginning of the end for hope of a better world began with JFK's assassination. It's been all downhill since then. The majority of the citizens now alive have no reference to a compassionate leader, so they've learned to accept someone like Bush with an I.Q. of what, 85?

For me, I'm on that slow moving drive that ends in a stampede towards that Cosmic bright light. My biggest regret is that myself and my generation failed miserably in our attempts to make an equal and just world for everyone. I never stopped trying but biologically, I'm wearing out and have to pass the torch on.

My advice to everyone is find another country to live in that's not all about how much money or power you can have over those that either choose to or just end up not having the power to put wealth before humanity nor defend themselves from that greed. Looking back now, if I were younger, I'd sure have done that myself. The USA is what it is, a capitalist magnet for the rest of the world so it's all about money.

This is not the time or place for flaming.

Jack Kennedy was a patriot. Brent is a patriot, and you, I trust, are a patriot as well.

There is nothing empty-headed about any form of patriotism when it is sincerely felt. Just as we express our grief in different ways at a funeral, so we express our patriotism in different ways on Nov. 22.

I remember that day, as everyone does who was alive then, with perfect clarity. My heart still aches; tears are not far away.

Personally, I don't feel I've done all I could have done to live up to JFK's challenge. I wish I had the years back. Since that is impossible, like Brent, I hope those younger than I will do better.

I love my country.

I was a child when JFK was elected. My mom voted for Nixon but my fathers voted democrate. I was proud of my president. He carried himself with grace and dignity. I wanted RObert to win in 1968 and wore his button proudly. My husband left when my daughter was 7 years old and I worked my way through college. We were really poor, but during the Reagan administration Teddy gave me hope. In a time of crisis the Kennedy family vision is for us to work toward common good, not to shop until you drop. I am embarrassed and angry at how george bush and his administration represents our country. The Kennedy's did not divide our country but tried to bring us together. The world did not make jokes about us. TOmarrow I will be thankful that god gave us the Kennedy family to help us have compassion and hope.

The murders of JFK, MLK, RFK and John Lennon.

I miss him. JFK was a great man. America needs a person of thet stature to lead us into the 21st century instead of the pitiful excuse we have now.

tseving
-Surviving Bush one day at a time
Politics Plus

this is such an old school rah-rah piece of flag waving propaganda...someone hold my head as I retch?

This is the first notice I have seen of the anniversary of President Kennedy’s Assassination. Yesterday the media noted the 28 years since Peoples Temple and MSNBC devoted at least 30 minutes of original program time to it, along with an exhaustive discussion of the racist
outburst and staged apology of a minor figure in a long-ago TV show…

But then given the incestuous relationships between the various organs of the media, this does not surprise…
Perhaps if Fox or GE had a book they wanted to push or a movie to plug we would have seen some more attention paid…

As to your article, I must admit difficulty in hearing President Kennedy actually say the words that you have written, eloquent and wise as they are… In searching, lightly, I could not find a reference to your date of birth, and based on my prejudices and my familiarity with your writings, I can only assume you were born and came to maturity many years after Mr. Kennedy’s death.
I could be wrong…

I too am somewhat younger than Mr. Kennedy’s contemporaries, I am 50. My awareness of the larger world was first stimulated by the events of 11/22/63, I was seven. We were told of the Assassination in the cafeteria, and then were sent home for the rest of the day, this being in an era in which your Mom did not work and most of us had one…and a Dad too…

My reaction to the sadness and tears I found at home was one of confusion and insecurity. This man was the President, and though I had no concept of really what that meant, it was clear that my parents must’ve known him well. But of course they had never met him, in fact my father had voted for Nixon… Kennedy being too young and inexperienced… But in his short Presidency he had come to symbolize the aspirations of his peers, he had begun to speak for that generation born, as he said, in this century…

Over the next four days I rarely left the TV set, except when they did all the dreary and very long Latin stuff at the funeral, that seemed a bit much as I recall and no cartoons…! Again I may need to pull the rank of seniority and perhaps explain as I did to my children… Animation in 1963 was either lousy or very expensive and was only seen on Saturday mornings before noon… or oddly in prime time with Bugs and the Flintstones… We had no Cartoon Network or color for that matter…I didn’t see Walt Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color”, in color, until at least 1968 and the rabbit ears were on the TV not Bugs… So to have all of the channels (all four!) running exactly the same thing for four days was really unique.

And it changed America, it changed us by providing at least the illusion of community and a shared loss.
We, all of us at the same time, shared the emotions and we mourned as we had never done, as one. And it transformed Kennedy as well, cast him in stone at the moment of his greatest attainment, in his relative youth, forever. It raised the political questions of the day from the mundane to the profound, much of what we see as his legacy, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and NASA occurred well after his passing, but was accomplished in large part due to the impact his life and death had on America.

I still get goose pimples when I hear his voice and the words spoken so plainly still speak to us today,with the heft of history and the road we have traveled since 11/22/63. And so, as much as I enjoyed your remarks as JFK in retrospect, from on high, I must take issue with at least your perspective.

As wise as he was, as intelligent, cultured and erudite as his words, he was no liberal. Devout Roman Catholics rarely are… Progressive, yes, Liberal, in the way in which we define it today, not likely. Had he been an elder statesman in the 1970’s I think it likely he would have opposed abortion on demand. Tempered by War this decorated veteran was a Cold Warrior of first rank. Let us not forget "Why England Slept" because JFK never did... His election as President was the culmination of a campaign run well to the right of Mr. Nixon. Most of us living today don’t recall the “Missile Gap”, mainly because it never existed, though it was a centerpiece of JFK’s 1960 campaign, establishing his national security credentials and putting Mr. Nixon on the defensive… And in an odd twist, Mr. Nixon had the numbers to prove him wrong but since they were classified he kept silent, allowing JFK to paint him as weak on defense and out of touch… Imagine such ethics today, from the Newest Nixon….

No, let us be at least as honest as he was and say “Johnny, we hardly knew ya”… But let us also resolve to never forget as well, to always strive to achieve the ideals that history has lent to John F. Kennedy. To truly create that shinning moment on the hill, that Camelot of our dreams… To walk as a Nation in step with Abraham, Martin and John. And Robert…

It is my belief that only in truth can we, as a great nation, truly be Free. The events of 11/22/63 still resonate today, its truths echoed in Watergate, seen in starker reality by the Church Committee, buried in limited hangout and plausible denial by those who “knew better”, by those like LBJ, Earl Warren and Nixon who feared the truth. Obscured, obfuscated, obliterated by those who keep the secret like Gerald Ford, GHW Bush and Arlen Spector and taken to the grave by many who
might speak out, Hale Boggs, Rosselli, Giancana, Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald, to name just a few.

It is not fashionable to be a student of history, but in the larger picture 11/22/63 is as current and recent as 9/11/01, and its truths may be just as revealing. To suggest that the world you read about in the papers is not the real world, is the greatest heresy.

But there it is, everyday…

RG Johnson
San Jose CA
RGJ/Dallas112263
Al Gore will emerge as the consensus candidate in 2008
Not because he is running
But because he is LEADING!

JFK said that his father was willing to buy the election for him but that he was "damned if he'd pay for a landslide."

But he wasn't joking around when he swam through the Pacific towing his shipmates in a raft with the rope held between his teeth. He knew when to be serious, and more important, so did we.

Somewhere along the way, however, we lost the ability to do much more than mock. My generation's greatest cultural contributions are National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, and their many descendants.

In Kennedy's time, the serious men could tell jokes, but in ours only the jokesters--Maher, Colbert, etc--can make a serious point.

Thank you presenting a November 22 message without varnish: idealism, courage, dignity, and commitment matter, even in an age dominated by derisive, but ultimately empty, wit.