According to stopkennedysmears.com, “The script for the upcoming “The Kennedys” miniseries on The History Channel is right-wing character assassination, not “history.”” Um, sure. I suppose it would be assassinating Kennedy’s liberal character to expose him as a supply-sider? I say that any honest account of the Kennedy family would be filled with nothing but “smears.” (Naturally this excludes any film directed by Oliver Stone.)
I defer to Christopher Hitchens for historical commentary on the goons that comprise the Kennedy family: “Had [JFK] lived and been re-elected, the anti-war crowds would have been chanting, not “Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?” but “Hey, Hey, JFK….”
For one thing, he would never have dared tell his tyrannical old father, who had paid for his entire political career and was probably the source of the family’s connection with organised crime. For another, as innumerable members of his court have attested, the intervention in Indochina was a test, as he thought, of the young Kennedy’s own masculinity. And we know how fragile a plant that was.
Machismo is most often a sign of insecurity and it recurs throughout the Kennedy drama.
He tried to create panic among voters when he first ran in 1960, accusing President Eisenhower of allowing a “missile gap” to develop between the USA and the USSR. It was, as Kennedy well knew, a precisely false description of the real balance between the two superpowers. And the same dangerous rhetoric necessitated, when in office, a crazy invasion of Cuba and a later confrontation which nearly took the world over the nuclear brink.
Of course, among his worshippers JFK gets credit for avoiding the crunch that he helped to precipitate. He didn’t destroy the human race after all! Well, thanks a lot. (The chapters in Dallek’s book, describing the daily intake of drugs while Kennedy was quarrelling with Krushchev, make alarming reading.)
I wonder what the liberals would say if George Bush was to appoint his brother as Attorney-General, as JFK did. Actually, I know there would be much angry talk about dynasties and hereditary privilege. But even today, the star-struck Kennedy fans refer breathlessly to them as “America’s royalty”. And this brings me to another aspect of their eclipse.
There are too damn many of them, and many of them are not much damn good. It really is uncomfortably like the House of Windsor, in other words.”
Assuming the proposed miniseries did actually expose Kennedy’s less-than-stellar record, I truly doubt it is possible to change popular opinion on “America’s royalty.” I say anyone who wants to learn American history should forget the Kennedy biopics, and read a book by Amity Shlaes or Tom Woods!
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Another interesting thing is happening. First the background"
THC website has a "discussion" forum where you can register and participate. One contentious catagory is "Current Events". It has been taken over by radical leftwingers in the last few months. And while the moderators of the forums claim that personal insults will not be tolerated, harsh perjoratives against conservatives are allowed to stay (racist, teabagger, bigot, et al).
But for the last few days, some of the more conservatives members of THC forum of Current Events have been disappearing. I have been a member of that board for seven years, but today, I was notified that I was banned permanently for the use of the term "leech" against a far left winger.
I am of the understanding that The History Channel is owned by GE, run by none other than Jeffrey Immelt. Remember, GE also ownes MSNBC. With the change in power in the U.S. House, and the fact that the "Fairness" Doctrine is pretty much a dead issue, do the left winger intend to silence conservative voices, or anything that doesn't play in their favor, by stealth?
Is this the Reistag (sp?) syndrome?
My husband was very impressed with this book. Here is a different (and very important) view of the Kennedy assassination (taken from the product description on Amazon.com):
In "Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism", James Piereson examines this seminal event from an entirely new and provocative point of view…What needs to be explained, he argues, is the bizarre aftermath of the assassination: Why in the years after the assassination did the American Left become preoccupied with conspiratorial thinking? How and why was John F. Kennedy transformed in death into a liberal icon and a martyr for civil rights? In what way was the assassination linked to the collapse of mid-century liberalism, a doctrine which until 1963 was the reigning philosophy of the nation?
On the "crazy invasion of Cuba"…. That was an Eisenhower policy continued by Kennedy. Pres. Ike laid the ground work & put in place the resources for an invasion of Cuba which Kennedy continued (and later cut the air support for, dooming the entire operation to certain failure.)
I've heard enough to know what I think about JFK and his family. The adoring left has shown itself immune to the truth. So what's the point?
It sounds like more salacious TV that I wouldn't watch anyway.
Hitchens wrote, "I wonder what the liberals would say if George Bush was to appoint his brother as Attorney-General, as JFK did. Actually, I know there would be much angry talk about dynasties and hereditary privilege."
There was talk about that even though there was no such appointment. At least, I sure ran into it.
On his radio show, (some 15 years ago now), Gordon Liddy wondered "How a 40 knot PT boat could be cut in half by a 30 destroyer?"
I am surprised to see the Confederate Apologist Woods recommended here. The man is no conservative as he both has a sympathy for the traitors who discarded the American Revolution and attempted one which had as its self admitted prime purpose the preservation of slavery; and he is a "cultural conservative"–no conservative at all, but a sort of totalitarian–but someone who will never find a mouldered branch to take off, if it is one endorsed by his religious sect.
Interesting comment from Retire05 about The "History" Channel.
I watched a 2 hour doc on THC about Jefferson, which was full of presumptions and left wing fantasy. The docu was biased against Jefferson and pro the whole" Sally Hemmings was his concubine" thing; I researched the PhD "experts" who were sitting in their plush university offices, surrounded by expensive leather bound tomes and antique heads of Aristotle, speaking condescendingly to the unwashed ignorant masses and guess what.
All left wing whack jobs who smile preciously with smug suggestions that the real Jefferson was a racist who took advantage of a beautiful vulnerable black woman who was enslaved.
The truth is all those so-called learning channels have deteriorated into shows about ghosts, aliens, the Mayan 2012 predictions, Nostradamus and phantasmagorical images meant to trigger our shallowest instincts as human beings.
They're such a reality-based channel!
http://www.libertasfilmmagazine.com/surnows-kennedy-series-pulled-by-history-channel-due-to-networks-rigorous-standards-ancient-aliens-apparently-ok/
I wonder if the mini-series would have addressed the lobotomization of Rosemary at her father's direction when she became too assertive and willful. From Wikipedia: "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. … "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." … When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.