Prochnau on JFK

 

A column by William Prochnau was recently distributed by Reuters. It is about JFK. According to him, an assessment of JFK occurred the day of his death to the effect that JFK would not be remembered. This lack of remembrance was asserted because his administration did not last long enough and he had accomplished nothing. Others have said he was all starts and proposals. [Doesn't it all start somewhere, somehow?]

Prochnau denies that he was a great president. He wasn't much of a president but he was a hero. He was "modern, handsome and princely" with words and gestures others did not have. He was glamorous, a celebrity, and a media president. [Anything of substance is denied him. He didn't "detail" himself for the tube. Recall that "TV" as an entity was much different then.]

Jackie Kennedy created Camelot, a false view of the president and his meaning for us. She wanted to counter those who sought yet another false, bitter, view of him. Assassination conspiracy theorists created still another view that was less and less about him and more and more about them. [Who says gentle perversity or a raging lie is the last word on JFK? He set a standard as yet unequaled.]

Like TV was as an entity unlike today, Vietnam was an entity unlike how it is known today. Prochnau says JKF started it all for Vietnam. [Others affirm he would have stopped it. There was much, too much, that he wanted to change. Government was not the enemy, as Prochnau notes, and some feared his power to change what he said he would change. So he was murdered. The government not being the enemy worked against him.]

[Once upon a time, if you saw it on TV, that TV of long ago, it had to be true, "I saw it on TV". They used to ask, "Can I say that on TV?" Camelot and conspiracy were on TV. Even then, among those people then alive, neither Camelot nor conspiracy was fully accepted. Each had elements of truth and still do. Then and now if it is in print it must be worried over. The printed word is still accepted by some as what "is". It is reality. Reality then was never a Camelot. Did anyone ask them about it? They knew reality could be sordid, vile, dangerous, and horrid. Those today, idealists that think the contrary, indulge in a fantasy as stupid as the one they condemn. Reality never is a take-all and a cake walk and an endless torture chamber. Not, anyway, for most, then. But they have gone away. They can't tell you there was never a Camelot for them nor conspiracy, if wacko.

The intervening decades contain people born and raised lacking education - in school and life - such that they care little about "the nature of things" be it Camelot, Vietnam, assassination, Hollywood, reality TV, D.C., the Simpsons, housewives of La-La Land, nor any appreciation of style, grace, power, smarts, and the arts. They didn't have homes, family, and adventure. Hard work never accomplished anything for them. It was never about the loss of "innocence", it was about a loss of confidence in the trust of things wholly too large to know well.

Once is was, "Spring came on forever" - to borrow a phrase from the Civil War. We are in the autumn depicted by Keats. Winter is not far off.]