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Re: That Most Searing Day



I've been ignoring this thread, but I can only assume from this particular post
that things have gotten a tad nasty.  I for one wasn't born (and wouldn't be for
some time) when JFK was killed, but I think historical perspective is sort of
useful when this kind of thing comes up.  I imagine that the reaction (of
Europeans of a particular social class, granted) was similar when the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand was killed, igniting WWI.  Perhaps there was similar distress
when Caesar was stabbed (Et tu, archivist?)

I think that assasination is, like it or not, part of human existence, and has
been for many thousands of years.  Kennedy's death is different, if only because
the images have been broadcast so vividly and so quickly.  Add the mystique of
the Kennedy family, the telegenic first family, JFK's relative youth, and you've
got the makings of a cultural icon and the enormous outpouring of grief still
felt to this day.

It will take a more distant, dispassionate crop of historians to fit JFK and his
assasination into its proper historic context.  I understand that JFK's track
record as president was mixed, and had he not been killed, I suspect he would
have been pilloried or praised, depending on the political bent of the writer,
but he probably wouldn't have been sanctified (if not deified.) I can respect
the trauma that the event had on people who witnessed or experienced it, but I
don't think it's fair to expect everyone else (foreigners, those of us unborn,
etc.) to share the same feelings.

Just my two cents, dropped into the already roiling waters.

DS

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