Talking JFK Fixation Blues on WNYC's "On the Media"

Go here to listen to the discussion or click above to hear a conversation I had with Bob Garfield of WNYC's On the Media about my recent Daily Beast story, "JFK Still Dead, Baby Boomers Still Self-Absorbed."

Comments

[Irish]

Theodore Dalrymple has a pretty good take down of equality fetishists.

Quoting from a lancet article:

Although Indonesia has reduced child mortality by 40% during the past decade, data from 2007 show that children in rural areas were almost 60% more likely to die than those living in urban ones, while those in the poorest 20% were more than twice as likely to die as those in the richest 20%, and girls were 20% more likely to die than boys.

Oh no! People farther away from medical services might have worse medical outcomes? Who even cares that infant mortality has dropped almost in half, this is a tragedy!

In a country the size and complexity of Indonesia, with hundreds of inhabited islands, some of them very remote, it is hardly surprising that there should be quite wide geographical variations in health, wealth and productivity. It is no more inequitable that there should be these variations than that the French should have so much better health than the Americans, or for that matter than the Bangladeshis.

That's crazy talk, Theo. You're saying that someone on a small island far from civilization may have worse health outcomes than someone down the street from a hospital? BULLSHIT!

[Gozer the Gozerian]

Paging Dr. Sowell...

[Caleb Turberville]

Didn't the JFK assassination sorta invent the notion of the 24-hour news cycle?

[Mike M.]

Yep, and that's exactly what the famed "Buckwheat has been shot" skit on Saturday Night Live was satirizing.

[in4mation]

No. "Buckwheat has been shot" was satirizing the news cycle when Reagan was shot.

[Anomalous]

JFK was less interested in Camelot than he was in cameltoe.

[Scarecrow Repair]

I like to see wht you did there.

[Apologies to Herman's Hermits]

To the tune of Henry the VIII?

I'm the American Voter, I am
The American Voter, I am, I am
Oswald shot a Kennedy from the seventh floor
They've been shot at many times before

And if ev'ry one shot a Kennedy (Kennedy!)
We wouldn't have a worry or a sound (No sound!)
'Cuz there's only one good Kennedy
And that's a Kennedy we're certain is dead!

Second verse, same as the first!

I'm the American Voter, I am
The American Voter, I am, I am
Oswald shot a Kennedy from the seventh floor
They've been shot at many times before

And if ev'ry one shot a Kennedy (Kennedy!)
We wouldn't have a worry or a sound (No sound!)
'Cuz there's only one good Kennedy
And that's a Kennedy we're certain is dead!

[HarryUSA]

JFK is known for his work on civil rights, yet botched Cuba and Vietnam. Why did he have to use violence in Vietnam and Cuba? We could have offered something as a token of friendship.

Ho Chi Minh was supposedly leaning towards befriending the US. [Vietnam a Television History] Castro according to a professor at NEIU was only inflamed at the US after the Bay of Pigs. A friendship with Castro would have saved a lot of anguish no?

Kennedy seemed to shine on civil rights, but Vietnam and Cuba were disasters.

[Scarecrow Repair]

Ho Chi Minh started as a revolutionary after WW I when he tried to get Woodrow Wilson to back independence from France, as included in Wilson's Twelve(?) Points. But Wilson just brushed him off, and after fighting the French, Japanese, and French again, he took whatever allies he could get. The US has only itself to blame for his turn to Communism.

[BeevaloBill]

I was born in the middle of the baby boom. Nick Gillespie is on point here about the boomers. Living in Madison WI, there is little doubt that boomers mistakenly believe that what proceeded them never achieved the potential of enlightenment that the 60's and what their generation wrought.

Here in Madison, they cling to power, never trusting those who follow (many of whom are upset they could not be part of the 60's). Truth is that the 60's was an era of indulgence, where the 'greatest generation' coddled the tantrums and narcissism of 'young people' - as if being young was a qualification to reinvent society.

Ironically I think the boomers are the first generation of minds to be manipulated by "Ad Men" and the pablum that dished out by the media. And the boomers naively believed their own press clippings.

The boomers' fundamental transformation of America into a statist utopia is embodied in the age of Obama. And as was expected, their utopian dreams just foundered on the rocks of reality. Since October 1, we now know that there is no free lunch; free people take responsibility for themselves and others and do not depend on the state to make life's decisions for them; and free people are empowered to create, innovate, and fashion a life they think worth living.

There are many great lessons from the 'narcissist generation' - primarily in the form of what not to do.